It stars Clifton Webb, Dorothy McGuire, Jean Peters, Louis Jourdan, and Maggie McNamara, with Rossano Brazzi, Howard St. John, Kathryn Givney, and Cathleen Nesbitt.

The film's main title song "Three Coins in the Fountain", sung by an uncredited Frank Sinatra, went on to become an enduring standard.

[8] Young American secretary Maria Williams arrives in Rome and is greeted by Anita Hutchins, the woman whom she is replacing at the United States Distribution Agency.

They drive to the Villa Eden, which Anita shares with Frances, the longtime secretary of American author John Frederick Shadwell, an expatriate living in Rome.

Later that evening at a party, Maria becomes smitten with the handsome Prince Dino di Cessi, despite being warned by Frances and Anita of his reputation as a womanizer who is notorious for taking his girlfriends to Venice for romantic trysts.

Determined to win Dino's affections, Maria collects information about his interests and preferences, including his love of modern art and his favorite food and wine.

Frances returns home to comfort the guilt-stricken Maria, who also plans to leave Rome because Dino has not contacted her since her admission.

The next morning, Frances suddenly announces to Shadwell that she is returning to the United States, not wanting to end up as an old maid in a foreign country.

Dino and Giorgio arrive, and as the men embrace their respective girlfriends, Frances is joined by Shadwell, and they happily admire the fountain.

A nice way to take the movie audience on a sightseeing tour of Rome, with a flying side trip to Venice, through the courtesy of CinemaScope, has been devised in Three Coins in the Fountain, a handsomely colored romance that 20th Century-Fox delivered to the Roxy yesterday.

The trick is to underpin the picture with flimsy and harmless accounts of the plainly romantic adventures of three American girls in Rome and then chase them with the camera around the Eternal City as they pursue their destinies.

The first was the 1964 musical The Pleasure Seekers starring Ann-Margret, Carol Lynley and Pamela Tiffin, directed by Jean Negulesco.