It follows a widowed lawyer , accompanying three children and a nanny on a houseboat. The film was presented in Technicolor and VistaVision. It premiered on November 19, For three years, Tom Winters, a lawyer working for the United States Department of State , has been separated from his wife and three children: David, Elizabeth, and Robert.
He returns to Washington, D. 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. That night, 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.
