One, Two, Three

C.R. "Mac" MacNamara is a high-ranking executive in the Coca-Cola Company, assigned to West Berlin after a business fiasco a few years earlier in the Middle East (about which he is still bitter). While based in West Germany for now, Mac is angling to become head of Western European Coca-Cola Operations, based in London. After working on an arrangement to introduce Coke into the Soviet Union, Mac receives a call from his boss, W.P. Hazeltine, at Coca-Cola headquarters in Atlanta. Scarlett Hazeltine, the boss's hot-blooded but slightly dim 17-year-old socialite daughter, is coming to West Berlin. Mac is assigned the unenviable task of taking care of her. An expected two-week stay extends into two months, and Mac discovers just why Scarlett is so enamored of West Berlin: she surprises him by announcing that she's married to Otto Piffl, a young East German Communist with ardent anti-capitalistic views. When the Southern belle is confronted about her foolishness in the matter of helping him blow up anti-American "Yankee Go Home" balloons (how the couple met) she simply replies with, "It's not anti-American, it's anti-Yankee. Where I come from, everybody's against the Yankees." Mac tries to come to terms with letting his boss's daughter marry a Communist and learns the horrible truth: the couple are bound for Moscow to make a new life for themselves ("They've assigned us a magnificent apartment, just a short walk from the bathroom!"). Since Hazeltine and his wife are coming to Berlin to collect their daughter the next day, Mac deals with the disaster by bribing East German officials to steal Scarlett’s marriage certificate from the archives. Mac also frames the young Communist firebrand Otto, resulting in his being arrested by the East German police, by planting on his motorcycle a "Russky Go Home" balloon and presenting him with a wedding present of an Uncle Sam cuckoo clock wrapped in the Wall Street Journal. After Otto, during interrogation, is forced to listen endlessly to a cover of the song "Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini" (which is intentionally badly distorted as it plays) he cracks and signs a confession saying that he is an American spy. Under pressure from his exasperated and disapproving wife Phyllis (who wants to take her family back to live in the US), and with the revelation that Scarlett is pregnant—and, worse, unmarried with her East German marriage certificate gone—Mac must now fix the mess he has created. He must restore the marriage certificate and bring Otto back with the help of his new Soviet business associates on whom Mac uses all his wiles, as well as his sexy secretary, Fräulein Ingeborg. With the boss on the way, he finds that his only chance is to turn Otto into a son-in-law in good standing—which means, among other things, making him a capitalist with an aristocratic pedigree (albeit contrived by adoption). Mac arranges to have Otto adopted by an impoverished count, who now works as a washroom attendant, and includes a photo of the ruins of the family castle with the price of adoption ("U.S. Air Force, 1944?" "No,Turkish Cavalry, 1683."). Scarlett is dubious that her father will be fooled by the ruse but is reassured that her baby will now be part of a long line of bleeders, which will please her snobbish mother. In a frenetic race against time and the arrival of the Hazeltines' plane, Mac outfits Otto in complete paraphernalia befitting his new aristocratic status, while Otto rails against being forced to join the detested bourgeoisie (his Communist Party membership is paid up through the year). Meanwhile, Scarlett and Mac coach Otto on how to speak to her conservative Southern father ("The Civil War was a draw..."). In the end, the Hazeltines approve of their new son-in-law, Otto, who Mac learns from Hazeltine will be named the new head of Western European Operations, with a disappointed Mac getting a promotion to VP of Procurement back in Atlanta. Mac reconciles with his family at the airport. To celebrate his promotion, he buys them Cokes from a vending machine. After handing out the bottles, he discovers that the last one actually is a Pepsi-Cola.

Plot from One, Two, ThreeCC BY-SA 4.0