It Started in Tokyo) is a 1961 American mystery film starring David Janssen, Jeanne Crain, and Dina Merrill.

Prompted by a Los Angeles police friend to poke his nose into the murder of a movie star's fan club secretary, he becomes intrigued by its potential connection to the disappearance of a then 16-year-old Doris Delaney, a wealthy young woman who went missing from her New York City school 13 years earlier.

Alder’s investigation also brings him back into the sphere of teenage flame Linda Foster (Crain), who had sent him a Dear John letter while he was serving in the Korean War.

While on a plane to New York City to pursue the Delaney case still on his own dime, Alder is seated next to Nikki; sensing something familiar about her, he starts a conversation.

Alder eventually remembers meeting a woman too close to being Kovacs not to be at an escort club in Japan while recuperating from a wartime combat wound.

Calling herself Lily Brown, she was sympathetic to Tom's Dear John woe, and alluded to deep troubles of her own, kept just as deeply buried.

Putting puzzle pieces together Tom recognizes that she is the missing heiress Doris Delaney, and races to Chicago to pick up her trail.

Fearing she'd be shared with him as well, she had shot and killed the rapist, then fled in too great a shame to subject her family both to her pregnancy and a murder trial.