The Impersonator

USAF sergeant John Crawford is told off by his colonel to take fifty local children to the Christmas pantomime to make the locals like them. No such thing happens of course, since the head of the school board lives right under a flight path and the local biddies go hmmph! about Yanks throwing away money and they can take their own brats to the pantomime if they want. It does get him a date with Jane Griffiths, but they cancel the bus on him and she leaves after waiting. When he shows up at the rendezvous, Patricia Burke is closing up, so he asks her. After a perfectly nice time, he bids her goodnight, he heads back to the base, and she walks into a murderer. The police, being in let's-arrest-the-wrong-guy mode, settle immediately on Crawford as a suspect.

It's a perfectly ordinary thriller, since there's no mystery involved, but it does show a goodly part of a British Christmas pantomime, which is new to me. It's the fourth and final movie directed by Alfred Shaughnessy, who spent most of his career as a writer. His best-remembered writing? He did about a third of the scripts for UPSTAIRS, DOWNSTAIRS. HE DIED IN 2005, age 89.