Tiger Bay (1959)

Set in the port town of Cardiff in Wales, a gun obsessed tomboy (Hayley Mills) witnesses a Polish sailor (Horst Buchholz) murder his lover (Yvonne Mitchell). He ditches his gun but she steals it. When he confronts her, these two lonely people form a bond as a police manhunt combs the city looking for the both of them. Based on the short story RUDOLPH AND THE REVOLVER by Noel Calef and directed by J. Lee Thompson (GUNS OF NAVARONE). In the original short story, it's a boy rather than a girl that witnesses the killing but after John Mills was cast as the detective investigating the case, director Thompson met the young Hayley Mills and cast her without an audition. She was a natural and her excellent performance has none of the phony mannerisms of most child actors. So good in the role that Walt Disney snapped her up and imported her to America where she became one of the most popular child actresses of the early 1960s. The film is unusual in that Buchholz's murderer is sympathetic, a victim of circumstance killing in the heat of passion and Mills' tomboy instead of being an adorable moppet is a pathological liar and a bit of a brat. But by the film's end, we've been touched by them both. With Megs Jenkins, Anthony Dawson and Marianne Stone.