Tread Softly Stranger

Diana Dors - Calico
George Baker - Johnny Mansell
Terence Morgan - Dave Mansell
Patrick Allen - Paddy Ryan
Jane Griffiths - Sylvia
Maureen Delaney - Mrs. Finnegan

Gritty Northern crime thriller Tread Softly Stranger was based on the play Blind Alley by Jack Popplewell and taken from a screenplay by George Minter and Denis O'Dell. Producer George Minter was so determined to have Diana Dors as good-time girl Calico in this feature that he delayed location filming in Rotherham for several months until she was available. The theme song is sung by Jim Dale.

Johnny Mansell (George Baker), a losing gambler, flees London leaving behind his gambling debts and returns home to Rawborough in Yorkshire. Once home, he moves into rented accommodation with his brother Dave (Terence Morgan), an office clerk in a nearby steel mill. Johnny also runs into Calico (Diana Dors), Dave’s eye-catching and unscrupulous girlfriend who works as a dancer in a local nightclub.

Calico is ‘high maintenance’ and Dave is struggling to keep her in the style to which she has become accustomed with expensive presents and clothes. It transpires that Dave has embezzled £300 from the wages at Mallabys and spent it on Calico – and now has one week to return the money or risk being exposed. Johnny goes to Kempton Park in an attempt to win the money his brother requires, but when Johnny is late returning, Dave surmises he must have lost and goes ahead with a plan to rob Mallabys payroll from the wages office. Johnny discovers what he brother is intending and arrives at the wages office just as Dave is leaving with £6,000, but they are disturbed by elderly security guard Ryan, who is subsequently shot and killed in a struggle with Dave.

The police struggle for clues, but Ryan’s son Paddy (Patrick Allen), is convinced it was an inside job and suspects he knows who was behind his father’s murder. To make matters worse for Johnny and an increasingly guilty-looking Dave – Paddy takes a room in their boarding house. Later, the police arrive and take away Johnny to the station for questioning; consequently Paddy seizes the chance to pressurise Dave further by confronting him with a witness.