Margarete Kupfer

The daughter of the Parisian countess Lafitte, named "Baby", is supposed to go to an English boarding school, but she's much more interested in variety shows. Nevertheless, she travels with her friend Susette to London, who also wants to make a career for herself as a showgirl. During the journey, Baby is mistakenly considered to be a showgirl and she does nothing to dissuade two young English lords from believing so. The girls continue to live under false pretenses even when they arrive in England, with Baby being a soloist with the group "Babies" and Suzette passing herself off as the Contessa Lafitte for school exams. At the end -- a double marriage.

Gerhard Lamprecht sketches a cross-section of Germany's new post-war society, with its winners, social climbers, and losers, represented by the social microcosm of an apartment building. The gossip-mad Frau Mierig from the rear building gives the newly-arrived Frau Kaminski, the janitor's wife, a lively initiation into the tenants and their peculiarities.

If watching a fellow facing indifference/rejection in the slums of Berlin didn't convey enough pathos, Gerhard Lamprecht gathered much of the same crew from Die Verrufenen and turned his attention to the city's population of unwanted children for the heart-tugging Die Unehelichen, released the following year. The trio of foster children at the center of Die Verrufenen are survivors who use their own resourcefulness to get by when the kids' guardians and the system itself let them down.

This operetta adaptation centers on two men who return to Hamburg from Brazil: one seeks a woman for love whereas the other seeks a woman who claims to be an heiress.