A Town Like Alice (1956 film) put Jack Lee and Joe Janni under contract for two years as a team. They went on to make "Robbery Under Arms" with Finch. A Town Like Alice (1956 film) A Town Like Alice is a 1956 British drama film produced by Joseph Janni and starring Virginia McKenna and Peter Finch that is based on the eponymous 1950 novel by Nevil Shute. The film does not follow the whole novel, concluding at the end of Part Two and truncating or omitting much detail. It was partially filmed in Malaya and Australia. In post-Second World War London, a young woman, Jean
A Town Like Alice have to leave the town to find work in the bigger cities. Having worked with a firm in Britain that produced crocodile-leather luxury goods, she gets the idea of founding a local workshop to make shoes from the skins of crocodiles hunted in the outback. With the help of Joe and of Noel Strachan, who releases money from her inheritance, she starts the workshop, followed by a string of other businesses; an ice-cream parlour, a public swimming pool and shops. The third part of the book shows how Jean's entrepreneurship gives a decisive economic impact to develop Willstown into "a