Plot[]
For three years, Tom Winters, a lawyer working for the U.S. State Department, has been separated from his wife and three children: David, Elizabeth and Robert. Tom returns to Washington, D.C. from Europe after his wife dies. The children want to stay in the countryside with their mother's wealthy parents and her sister Carolyn, but instead Tom takes them to Washington. One evening, they attend the Boston Symphony. Robert disrupts the concert by playing the harmonica. The conductor's daughter, a well-bred and affluent Italian woman, Cinzia, laughs. After the concert ends, Robert leaves the family and disappears. Cinzia has an argument with her father and ends up with Robert. They visit a carnival before Cinzia brings Robert home to a worried Tom. The next day, he hires Cinzia as a maid to care for the children. Misadventures follow as Tom attempts to move Cinzia and the children away from Washington to a house in the country. After a train destroys the house, they wind up as inhabitants of a leaky, rotting houseboat. However, a renovation of the premises proves successful, and their floating home becomes the backdrop for various episodes, where Tom discovers that Cinzia cannot cook, do laundry, or make coffee. David tries to leave in order to be with his aunt Carolyn. However, Tom rescues him when David nearly drowns. His sister-in-law, Carolyn, suspects that Cinzia's relationship with Tom is not entirely platonic. Tom's military aide, Captain Wilson, while somewhat drunk, jokes about Cinzia's living arrangement with Tom. All misunderstandings are explained, and Tom marries his maid as the children look on approvingly.
Cast[]
- Cary Grant as Tom Winters
- Sophia Loren as Cinzia Zaccardi
- Martha Hyer as Carolyn Gibson
- Harry Guardino as Angelo Donatello
- Eduardo Ciannelli as Arturo Zaccardi
- Murray Hamilton as Capt. Alan Wilson
- Mimi Gibson as Elizabeth Winters
- Paul Petersen as David Winters
- Charles Herbert as Robert Winters
- Madge Kennedy as Mrs. Farnsworth
- John Litel as William Farnsworth
- Werner Klemperer as Harold Messner
- Susan Cabot as Mrs. Eleanor Wilson
- Kathleen Freeman as Laundromat gossip