A Town Like Alice A Town Like Alice A Town Like Alice (United States title: "The Legacy") is a romance novel by Nevil Shute, published in 1950 when Shute had newly settled in Australia. Jean Paget, a young Englishwoman, becomes romantically interested in a fellow prisoner of World War II in Malaya, and after liberation emigrates to Australia to be with him, where she attempts, by investing her substantial financial inheritance, to generate economic prosperity in a small outback community — to turn it into "a town like Alice" i.e. Alice Springs. The story falls broadly into three parts. In Post-World War II London,
A Town Like Alice (1956 film) was written by W. P. Lipscomb, who concentrated on the first half of the novel (the second half being set in Australia). Producer Joe Janni sent a copy of the script to director Jack Lee who later recalled "the script made me cry and I knew it would make audiences cry too." Janni and Lee took the script to Rank, who agreed to finance. Lee did further work on the script with Lipscombe and then with Richard Mason. Lee flew to Singapore and Malaya and "soon realised that if we cast the film in the UK, decided on their exact