"Beware the men in black, for they shall invade your precious plot, set in a silver sea." ~Ada, who fancies herself a psychic.
OK. In the category of women directors, perhaps her work wasn't as acclaimed and polished as that of a Lina Wertmüller, Jane Campion, Julie Dash, Chloé Zhao, Kathryn Bigelow and Barbra Streisand. But, like Barbra Streisand, she was an Oscar winner who went on to become a film director. I'm speaking of Muriel Box, a female filmmaker I've blogged about before, a female filmmaker who's curiously and regularly excluded from the conversation and documentaries about women directors. From 1949 to 1964, after Muriel Box won an Oscar for screenwriting, she directed British films that presented top British and Hollywood stars. The list of stars she directed included Peter Finch, Laurence Harvey, Sir Ralph Richardson, Glynis Johns, Peggy Cummins, Shelley Winters, Julie Harris and Van Johnson. In England during the 1950s, Muriel Box was as much a groundbreaking woman director as actress-turned-director Ida Lupino was in 1950s Hollywood.
I found her 1952 comedy, THE HAPPY FAMILY. The U.S. title was MR. LORD SAYS NO. Director Muriel Box and her then-husband adapted the screenplay from the play, THE HAPPY FAMILY. As with her other films, most of the action is seen from the woman's viewpoint. In THE HAPPY FAMILY. we go to Great Britain in March 1951. A huge festival will take place in six months and the government is preparing London for the event. The film opens with shots of construction. The government plans to build a subway but it made a mistake in its calculations for construction. Its subway plans mean that it must demolish the longtime shop and home of Mr. and Mrs. Lord. The government will offer a compensation, but the Lords refuse to let their home and business be bulldozed. The Lords got the place when they were young marrieds, as Mrs. Lord tells us. She's delightfully played by Kathleen Harrison. The Lords started a business and had children. When the Depression hit and they were faced with going hungry, they went hungry but they made sure their kids did not. They lost a son in World War 2. There's a lot of history and love in their humble shop and home. Mrs. Lord gets unasked for advice from her friend, Ada, the self-proclaimed psychic. Mr. Lord has recently retired from 35 years working for the railway. He's played by Stanley Holloway, a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nominee for recreating his Broadway performance as Eliza Doolittle's dad in the film version of MY FAIR LADY.
Soon it becomes the colorful family of Lords versus the government -- the men in black -- as they refuse to take a compensation for the government's major miscalculation. A BBC radio reporter gets in on the story. Here's a trailer.
This movie runs a lively 90 minutes. It's quite touching at times and very entertaining. On the whole, the female characters are a hoot and the U.S. title probably should have been MRS. LORD SAYS NO.
Muriel Box won her Best Original Screenplay Oscar for 1945's THE SEVENTH VEIL starring James Mason. She co-wrote the script with her then-husband, Sydney. Before Barbra Streisand became a director, she won a Best Actress Oscar for 1968's FUNNY GIRL and a Best Song Oscar for "Evergreen," the song she co-wrote and sang in her 1976 remake of A STAR IS BORN.
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