Betty Box, ‘The Lady in Charge'

If, in the precarious fortunes of the British film industry, success may be measured in terms of staying power, then Betty Box must surely be counted among British cinema's highest achievers. In 1946 Box was appointed head of production at Gainsborough's Islington studios at the remarkable age of twenty-six, thus overcoming the dual obstacles of gender and youth. She produced ten films in two years for Gainsborough (a staggering output given the cramped and dilapidated conditions of the Islington unit), ¹ and went on to become one of Rank's most prolific and consistently profitable producers throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Collaborating with director Ralph Thomas on over thirty films, Box produced some of the most popular (if often critically reviled) British films of the postwar era (the Huggett series for Gainsborough and the Doctor films for Rank, for example). Yet, curiously, Box's substantial contribution to the industry seems to have made little impression on existing historical and critical accounts of British cinema.