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Muriel Box (22 September 1905 - 19 May 1991) was a prolific English screenwriter and director in what at the time was basically a male industry, and is generally considered to be one of the most successful females in the history of British film. She was born Violette Muriel Baker in Tolworth, Surrey, England in 1905. When her attempts at acting and dancing proved to be unsuccessful, she accepted work as a continuity girl for British International Pictures. In 1935, she met and married journalist Sydney Box, with whom she collaborated on nearly forty plays with mainly female roles for... MORE

Muriel Box (22 September 1905 - 19 May 1991) was a prolific English screenwriter and director in what at the time was basically a male industry, and is generally considered to be one of the most successful females in the history of British film. She was born Violette Muriel Baker in Tolworth, Surrey, England in 1905. When her attempts at acting and dancing proved to be unsuccessful, she accepted work as a continuity girl for British International Pictures. In 1935, she met and married journalist Sydney Box, with whom she collaborated on nearly forty plays with mainly female roles for amateur theatre groups. Their production company, Verity Films, first released short propaganda films (including The English Inn in 1941, her first directing effort) during World War II, after which it branched into fiction. The couple achieved their greatest joint success when they won the 1946 Academy Award for Best Writing, Original Screenplay for The Seventh Veil. After the war, the Rank Organisation hired her husband to head Gainsborough Pictures, where she was in charge of the scenario department, writing scripts for a number of light comedies, including two for child star Petula Clark, Easy LESS