Portrait of Alison

A car plunges over a cliff in Italy. Both passengers, newspaperman Lewis Forrester and actress Alison Ford, are killed.

In London, Lewis's brother, Tim, is an artist. He is painting his favourite model, Jill, for a beer advertisement. She and Tim apparently used to date, as Jill says that she is looking to give up her party lifestyle and settle down, but that Tim seems not to be the marrying kind. She is now going out with Henry Carmichael, who asks her to marry him. However, she is kissing Tim passionately when a police inspector arrives.

Tim receives a strange commission, from a Mr Smith, to paint Smith's dead daughter, Alison, the other car crash victim. Smith gives Tim a photo to work from and a beautiful pink dress to use in the picture. Jill sees the dress and admires both it and the portrait of Alison. She goes to meet her fiancé for lunch, but forgets a box she was to give him.

Jill is found dead in Tim's flat, wearing the pink dress. The face on the portrait has been erased and the photo on which it was based has disappeared. The police arrive and ask if they can open the box. It contains an empty bottle of Chianti with a British label, "Nightingale & Son" – a firm that does not exist. The Chianti bottle is sketched in the corner of a postcard from Rome sent to Tim from Lewis. Tim is now a prime suspect in the murder.

It transpires that Alison is not dead, as she is seen walking around London. She appears at Tim's door and explains that the woman killed in the car crash was not her; when they were driving, Lewis told her that he was on to an international diamond smuggling ring, and that her father was part of it. She angrily left the car, and assumes that Lewis must later have picked up a hitchhiker, whose dead body was then mistaken for hers. She thinks Lewis was deliberately killed, but wants to be sure that her father did not know that the "accident" in the car was to occur.

Tim invites the police to his flat to prove that Alison is alive, but she has disappeared again. She has gone to see her father in a hotel to make him tell the truth about the diamond smuggling, but he is terrified, and plans to flee the country. She telephones Tim to bring him up to date.

As the story unfolds, a number of mysterious, unsolved questions emerge, along with two more murders and a suicide. It turns out that no fewer than four of the major characters are part of the international ring of diamond thieves, and that an independent blackmailer is at work as well.

After arrests are made, Tim and Alison are alone. He asks if she can stay with him until he completes her portrait. She asks how long this will take. When he answers "All my life", she replies "That's fine".

• Terry Moore as Alison Ford
• Robert Beatty as Tim Forrester
• William Sylvester as Dave Forrester
• Geoffrey Keen as Inspector Colby
• Josephine Griffin as Jill Stewart
• Allan Cuthbertson as Henry Carmichael
• Henry Oscar as John Smith
• William Lucas as Reg Dorking
• Terence Alexander as Fenby
• Sam Kydd as Bill, telephone engineer

Film rights were bought by Tony Owen, the husband of Donna Reed who set up a film making operation in England. Ken Hughes co-wrote the script.^[7]

Guy Green said the story "was full of holes". He worked on the script with Ken Hughes "and we had to try to fill in all these holes."^[8]

Terry Moore was borrowed from 20th Century Fox to star. Filming began in April 1955.^[9]

In May 1955 RKO agreed to distribute in the USA.^[10]

The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "Adapted from a television serial, this is a crime thriller in which most of the plot manceuvres can be rather too readily foreseen. The story is moderately eventful, and direction and playing standard for the type".^[11]

In British Sound Films: The Studio Years 1928–1959 David Quinlan rated the film as "average", writing: "Smoothly-made jigsaw-type thriller".^[12]

British film critic Leslie Halliwell said: "Solidly carpentered mystery with all the twists expected from this source".^[13]

• Portrait of Alison at IMDb
• Postmark for Danger at Rotten Tomatoes
• Review of film at Variety
• Complete film at Internet Archive