Fram för lilla Märta / Here's to Little Märta

Sture and Kurre, friends and fellow musicians, are broke. Then Kurre sees a help-wanted ad for a cellist at a hotel in the small city of Lillköping. The catch is that they are looking for a female cellist to round out their women’s trio. Without further ado, Kurre convinces Sture to put on a dress and wig to audition for the position and he himself accompanies the newly-created “Märta”, posing as her fiancé. While Kurre unabashedly flirts with the violinist, “Märta” has to fight off the advances of a male suitor. Marta/Sture becomes a great advocate for women’s rights and stands for election to parliament … This Swedish precursor to “Some Like it Hot” was so successful that it was re-made in Denmark in 1946 and in 1948, Ekman made a sequel called “Little Marta Returns”. Unlike Billy Wilder’s Hollywood comedy, cross-dressing does not lead to gunfire here, but instead to the furtherment of a welfare state that provides equal rights to women.