[BITList] The Seventh Veil

[John Feltham]

The British Film Industry…

"she had been removed from Road Safety for Children, as propaganda chief Arthur Elton believed that women were unsuited to directing."





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Box  [née Baker],  (Violette) Muriel  [other married name (Violette) Muriel Gardiner, Lady Gardiner]  (1905-1991), screenwriter and film director, was born on 22 September 1905 at Simla, Poplar Grove, New Malden, Surrey, the third child of Charles Stephen Baker (d. 1945), a clerk for the South Western Railway at Waterloo, and his wife, Caroline Beatrice, nee Doney (1872-1961), variously a pupil teacher, a maid, and an assistant in a magic-lantern shop. Nicknamed Tiggy, she received her primary education at St Matthew's School, Tolworth, Surrey, and in 1915 she began attending Holy Cross Convent in Wimbledon, only to be expelled, primarily because she had not been baptized. She then transferred to Surbiton high school, where she began to take ballet lessons and also studied drama under actor-manager Sir Ben Greet. Contemporaneously, a chance meeting with Joseph Grossman of Stoll Pictures led to her securing work as an extra in The Wandering Jew and in the thriller series The Old Man in the Corner (both 1920).

Muriel Baker became more fully involved in films in 1929, when she quit her typing job at Barclays Corsets in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, to join the scenario department of British Instructional Pictures. With the advent of talkies she was promoted to read unsolicited manuscripts and she rapidly developed both a sure story sense and a keen ear for dialogue, which she exploited in a series of short pieces, written for the Welwyn Folk Players. However, her real education in film came on Anthony Asquith's Tell England (1930), on which she served as continuity clerk. She soon transferred to British International Pictures at Elstree, where one of her assignments was Alfred Hitchcock's Number Seventeen (1931). In 1932, while based at Michael Powell's 99 Company, she unsuccessfully auditioned for the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, but found solace in aspiring playwright Sydney Box  (1907-1983). Following his divorce from Katherine Knight in 1934, he and Muriel Baker married at Holborn register office on 23 May 1935.

By this time Muriel Baker and Sydney Box had already published two collections of playlets, Ladies Only (1934) and Petticoat Plays (1935), which were written specifically for all-female amateur casts. Shortly after their debut professional production, Mr Penny's Tuppence, opened at the Opera House, Blackpool, they completed the first of their twenty-two film scripts, Alibi Inn (1935), an undistinguished melodrama, which was directed by Pen Tennyson. As she later explained, 'I used to do the overall plot, then Sydney would start work on it and "diddy it up" wherever he could ... it would usually go through five or six stages'  (McFarlane, 89). Following the birth of their daughter, Leonora, on 5 November 1936, Muriel Box resumed her writing career with the little-seen play Home from Home (1939) and she received her first solo screenwriting credit on the Ministry of Information's A Ride with Uncle Joe (1939). She then rejoined Sydney at Verity Films, which by 1942 was the largest documentary operation in Britain. Muriel Box's directorial debut, The English Inn (1941), was among the more than 100 information and training films that the company produced, yet, within a year, she had been removed from Road Safety for Children, as propaganda chief Arthur Elton believed that women were unsuited to directing.

Sydney Box, however, continued to exhibit unswerving faith in his wife and they coproduced 29 Acacia Avenue in 1945 (although it was not released for another two years, as the strict Methodist J. Arthur Rank considered it to be unwholesome). By this time the Boxes had won an Academy award for their screenplay for The Seventh Veil (1945), one of the first features to take psychiatry seriously. Yet Muriel was still frustrated in her ambition to direct, with Michael Balcon refusing to give the go-ahead to her 1950 reworking of Romeo and Juliet, as he reckoned she could never command the respect of a feature crew. It took Sydney's formation of London Independent Producers for Muriel to make the breakthrough. Shot in just twenty-three days, The Happy Family (1952) made little critical or commercial impact, but Street Corner (1953), a female riposte to The Blue Lamp, The Beachcomber (1954), a sturdy remake of The Vessel of Wrath, and the stinging television satire Simon and Laura (1955) were more warmly received. In spite of the social awareness and technical assurance of her work, Box always found funding difficult and had to make the Children's Film Foundation's Napoleonic drama The Piper's Tune (1962) for a mere £22,000.

Shortly after directing her thirteenth and final feature, Rattle of a Simple Man (1964), Muriel Box separated from Sydney and turned her back on film to co-found the UK's first feminist publishing company, Femina, which boasted Vera Brittain among its board members. Muriel Box personally edited the imprint's first volume, The Trial of Marie Stopes, although all attempts to bring it to the screen foundered. She was divorced from Sydney Box in May 1969 and on 28 August 1970 she married Gerald Austin Gardiner, Baron Gardiner of Kittisford  (1900-1990), lord chancellor from 1964 to 1970. He was the son of Sir Robert Septimus Gardiner, company director, and the widower of Lesly Doris, only daughter of Alderman Edwin Trounson of Southport. Following her marriage Muriel Gardiner became an increasingly active campaigner for women's rights, notably assisting Lady Edith Summerskill in her bid to reform the divorce laws. She completed her own memoirs, Odd Woman Out, in 1974, and published a biography of her husband, Rebel Advocate, in 1983. Although never an innovative or bankable talent, Muriel Box was justly, if belatedly, hailed in the 1980s as an inspiration to women film-makers everywhere for managing to overcome the prejudices of a male-dominated industry. She died on 18 May 1991 at Mote End, Nan Clark's Lane, Mill Hill, London, which had been her home since before her marriage to Gerald Gardiner. She was survived by her daughter, Leonora; Gerald Gardiner had died sixteen months previously.

David Parkinson 

Sources  M. Box, Odd woman out: an autobiography (1974) + B. McFarlane, An autobiography of British cinema (1997) + C. Merz, 'Muriel Box', The St James women filmmakers encyclopedia, ed. A. L. Unterburger (1999) + D. Quinlan, Quinlan's film directors, 2nd edn (1999) + The Times (22 May 1991) + The Independent (23 May 1991) + The Independent (30 May 1991) + The Independent (12 June 1991) + WWW + Burke, Peerage + b. cert. + m. cert. [Gerald Austin Gardiner] + d. cert.
Archives BFI, screenplays, diaries, and papers
Likenesses  photograph, repro. in The Times · photograph, repro. in The Independent (23 May 1991) · photograph, BFI [see illus.] · photographs, London, Kobal collection · photographs, Ronald Grant archive · photographs, Huntley archive
Wealth at death  £868,853: probate, 1 July 1991, CGPLA Eng. & Wales




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