Jean Negulesco
An expose of the lives and loves of Madison Avenue working girls and their higher ups.
Phaedra is a poor sponge diver on the lovely Greek isle of Hydra. While diving, she discovers an ancient brass and gold stature of a boy riding a dolphin, which is said to have the magical power to grant wishes. Her shiftless boyfriend wants to sell it to an unscrupulous art collector, but Phaedra wants to give it to anthropologist Jim Calder, who would return it to the Greek government.
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.
Unhappily married, Julia Sturges decides to go to America with her two children on the unsinkable Titanic. Her husband, Richard also arranges passage on the luxury liner so as to have custody of their two children. All this fades to insignificance once the ship hits an iceberg.
Three women set out to find eligible millionaires to marry, but find true love in the process.
A classical musician from the slums is sidetracked by his love for a wealthy, neurotic socialite.
