Wealthy American Jervis Pendleton III (Fred Astaire) has a chance encounter at a French orphanage with a cheerful 18-year-old resident, Julie Andre (Leslie Caron). He anonymously pays for her education at a New England college. She writes letters to her mysterious benefactor regularly, but he never writes back. Her nickname for him, “Daddy Long Legs”, is taken from the description of him given to Andre by some of her fellow orphans who see his shadow as he leaves their building. Several years later, he visits her at school, still concealing his identity. Despite their large age difference, they soon fall in love.

American girls dream of finding romance in Rome, but there is none for secretaries, Anita tells her replacement at the USDA. But Maria soon meets Prince Dino de Cessi at a party at her boss’s home who invites her to fly to Venice in his private plane. Frances, who has been in Rome for 15 years as the secretary of a successful American writer who talks a lot like George Bernard Shaw and is just as elusive as Professor Henry Higgins in “My Fair Lady,” tells her at first to say “no” and then decides that together they can handle the man nicknamed the predatory prince. Coins tossed in the Trevi Fountain can indeed work magic.

An ambitious young man wins an heiress’s heart but has to cope with his former girlfriend’s pregnancy.