Centennial Summer is a 1946 film directed

Film director

A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...

 by Otto Preminger

Otto Preminger

Otto Ludwig Preminger was an Austro–Hungarian-American theatre and film director.After moving from the theatre to Hollywood, he directed over 35 feature films in a five-decade career. He rose to prominence for stylish film noir mysteries such as Laura and Fallen Angel...

. The musical

Musical film

The musical film is a film genre in which songs sung by the characters are interwoven into the narrative, sometimes accompanied by dancing. The songs usually advance the plot or develop the film's characters, though in some cases they serve merely as breaks in the storyline, often as elaborate...

, that stars Jeanne Crain

Jeanne Crain

Jeanne Elizabeth Crain was an American actress.-Early life:Crain was born in Barstow, California, to George A. Crain, a school teacher, and Loretta Carr; she was of Irish heritage on her mother's side, and of English and distant French descent on her father's...

 and Cornel Wilde

Cornel Wilde

Cornel Wilde was an American actor and film director.-Early life:Kornél Lajos Weisz was born in 1912 in Prievidza, Hungary , although his year and place of birth are usually and inaccurately given as 1915 in New York City...

, is based on a novel by Albert E. Idell.

It was produced in response to the hugely successful MGM musical Meet Me in St. Louis

Meet Me in St. Louis

Meet Me in St. Louis is a 1944 musical film from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer which tells the story of an American family living in St. Louis at the time of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition World's Fair in 1904...

The movie was nominated twice at the 1946 Academy Awards. One of those nominations was for Best Original Song

Academy Award for Best Original Song

The Academy Award for Best Original Song is one of the awards given annually to people working in the motion picture industry by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences . It is presented to the songwriters who have composed the best original song written specifically for a film...

 for the song All Through the Day, written by Jerome Kern

Jerome Kern

Jerome David Kern was an American composer of musical theatre and popular music. One of the most important American theatre composers of the early 20th century, he wrote more than 700 songs, used in over 100 stage works, including such classics as "Ol' Man River", "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man", "A...

 and Oscar Hammerstein II

Oscar Hammerstein II

Oscar Greeley Clendenning Hammerstein II was an American librettist, theatrical producer, and theatre director of musicals for almost forty years. Hammerstein won eight Tony Awards and was twice awarded an Academy Award for "Best Original Song". Many of his songs are standard repertoire for...

. In Kern's case, the nomination was posthumous as he had died on 11 November 1945.

Plot

The movie is about two sisters growing up in Philadelphia in the 1870s. They both fall for a Frenchman

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 who has to prepare the pavilion

Pavilion (structure)

In architecture a pavilion has two main meanings.-Free-standing structure:Pavilion may refer to a free-standing structure sited a short distance from a main residence, whose architecture makes it an object of pleasure. Large or small, there is usually a connection with relaxation and pleasure in...

 for the Centennial exposition.

Cast

• Jeanne Crain
  Jeanne Crain
  Jeanne Elizabeth Crain was an American actress.-Early life:Crain was born in Barstow, California, to George A. Crain, a school teacher, and Loretta Carr; she was of Irish heritage on her mother's side, and of English and distant French descent on her father's...
  
   - Julia Rogers
• Cornel Wilde
  Cornel Wilde
  Cornel Wilde was an American actor and film director.-Early life:Kornél Lajos Weisz was born in 1912 in Prievidza, Hungary , although his year and place of birth are usually and inaccurately given as 1915 in New York City...
  
   - Philippe Lascalles
• Linda Darnell
  Linda Darnell
  Linda Darnell was an American film actress.Darnell was a model as a child, and progressed to theater and film acting as an adolescent. At the encouragement of her mother, she made her first film in 1939, and appeared in supporting roles in big budget films for 20th Century Fox throughout the 1940s...
  
   - Edith Rogers
• William Eythe
  William Eythe
  William Eythe was an American actor of film, radio, television and stage.-Early life and career:Born in Mars, Pennsylvania, a small town located about 25 miles from Pittsburgh, he was interested in acting from a young age. He attended Carnegie Tech University and studied acting and he began...
  
   - Ben Phelps
• Walter Brennan
  Walter Brennan
  Walter Brennan was an American actor. Brennan won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor on three separate occasions, which is currently the record for most wins.-Early life:...
  
   - Jesse Rogers
• Constance Bennett
  Constance Bennett
  -Early life:She was born in New York City, the daughter of actor Richard Bennett and actress Adrienne Morrison, whose father was the stage actor Lewis Morrison , a wealthy performer of English and Spanish ancestry...
  
   - Zenia Lascalles
• Dorothy Gish
  Dorothy Gish
  Dorothy Elizabeth Gish was an American actress, and the younger sister of actress Lillian Gish.-Early life:...
  
  - Mrs. Rogers