Portrait of Alison

The film opens with a car plunging over a cliff in Italy. The killed driver is newspaperman Lewis Forrester. The woman with him is supposedly Alison Ford, an actress.

In London Lewis's brother, Tim, is an artist. He is painting his favourite model Jill for a beer advert. She tells him that she is giving up her party life to get married to Carmichael. However, she is kissing Tim passionately when a police inspector arrives.

Tim gets a strange commission, from a Mr Smith, to paint his dead daughter, the car crash victim. He gives him a photo to work from and a beautiful blue dress to be in the picture. Jill sees the dress and admires it and the portrait of Alison. She goes to meet her fiance for lunch but forgets a box she was to give him.

However, Jill is found dead in Tim's flat wearing the blue 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 a prime suspect in the murder.

Meanwhile we see Alison is not dead as she is seen walking around London (the portrait is used as a device to allow the viewer to know what she looks like). She appears at Tim's door and explains that the woman killed in the car crash was a hitchhiker but everyone presumed it was her. She is involved in an international diamond smuggling deal.

Tim invites the police to prove his point but Alison has disappeared. She has gone to see her father in a hotel. He seems involved in the diamond smuggling.

Alison is trying to solve what was in truth a murder to shut the newspaper man up, not an accident. She solicits the help of Forrester's brother, Tim, an artist. Then, as the story unfolds, a number of mysterious, unsolved questions keep emerging, along with two more murders and a suicide. And before it's over it has been learned that an international ring of diamond thieves is at the bottom of everything, that no less than four of the major characters are part of it, and that an independent blackmailer is at work as well.

In the end 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 sys 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, the telephone engineer

The film was based on a TV series, Portrait of Alison

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.[6]

They borrowed Terry Moore from 20th Century Fox to star. Filming began in April 1955.[7]

In May 1955 RKO agreed to distribute in the US.[8]

"The story is moderately eventful" said the Monthly Film Bulletin.[9]

• List of American films of 1956

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