The House in Montevideo (German: Das Haus in Montevideo) is a 1945 German comedy play by Curt Goetz. A strait-laced father of twelve discovers that his long-lost sister, who had been cast out of the family for having a child out of wedlock, has made a career as an opera singer in Montevideo in Uruguay, and has now died, leaving some real estate to his eldest daughter, but the bulk of her considerable fortune to any female in her brothers household, who will undergo "a tragedy similar to hers", that is, give birth to an illegitimate child. The play was staged on Broadway as It's a Gift. The story was based on a 1924 one-act play The Dead Aunt, which Goetz expanded and revised for the new work.
Adaptations
The play has been turned into films twice: a 1951 film The House in Montevideo starring Goetz himself and a 1963 version The House in Montevideo starring Heinz Rühmann.