More About Director Muriel Box

 Yesterday, Wednesday, social media was sweetly lit up with birthday greetings for actress Glynis Johns. It was her 99th birthday. Earlier, during the weekend, I happened to watch the actress in a comedy/drama remake directed by British filmmaker Muriel Box. My mother loved Glynis Johns. When I was a kid, and Mom introduced me to some of Johns' work, I immediately loved her too. I fell for that voice that sounded like a crackling fire in the fireplace of a friendly, warm cottage.  Glynis Johns delighted me in THE COURT JESTER with Danny Kaye, in NO HIGHWAY IN THE SKY with James Stewart and Marlene Dietrich, in THE SUNDOWNERS with Deborah Kerr, Robert Mitchum and Peter Ustinov and MARY POPPINS with Julie Andrews. Over the weekend, I watched her in 1954's THE BEACHCOMBER. She played a fiercely independent, intelligent and disciplined Christian missionary woman in the tropics. She holds classes for the islanders. She doesn't smoke or drink. Into her life comes a local resident. He fled England. He's called "Honorable Ted." He's a beach bum who's scraggly, loves to drink and has an eye for the island babes. In short, he's a mess. When these two opposites -- Honorable Ted and Martha the missionary -- collide into each other's lives, you just know that they will come to have affectionate feelings for each other by the end of the film. Cholera brings them together.

Is it a true classic like the 1951 Oscar winner, THE AFRICAN QUEEN, starring Katharine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart? No. However, it does have verve, color, action and good performances. It's entertaining. 1954's THE BEACHCOMBER, directed by Muriel Box, is a remake of a black and white 1938 film of the same name starring Charles Laughton and Elsa Lanchester in the lead roles. It's a bit creaky now. Box did a good job with the remake, keeping faithful to the original and injecting the remake with some thrilling action. The business with the elephant is exciting and fun. In the original, young actor Robert Newton played the colonial governor on the island. In the remake, he takes on the Charles Laughton role. 

Muriel Box's THE BEACHCOMBER is another of one her several films that was pretty much dismissed by British critics. I've written about director Muriel Box in previous blog posts every time I saw -- and reviewed -- films she'd made. Films of Box's I saw include 1953's BOTH SIDES OF THE LAW (aka STREET CORNER), 1954's CASH ON DELIVERY, 1955's SIMON AND LAURA, 1956's EYEWITNESS, 1959's SUBWAY IN THE SKY and 1964's RATTLE OF A SIMPLE MAN. I found some of the British reviews, all written by men in the 1950s. I firmly believe that the blanket dismissal of her films was rooted in misogyny. I am irritated by the fact that this female groundbreaker is never mentioned -- not even today -- in the conversation about women directors.

We have just about canonized actress/director Ida Lupino -- and rightly so -- for breaking a Hollywood glass ceiling in the 1950s. Lupino, an excellent actress who delivered some strong performances especially during her Warner Bros. years -- went behind the camera and directed about five black and white dramas in the 1950s that did well at the box office. Lupino was never nominated for an Oscar. 

Muriel Box won an Oscar for her original screenplay in the 1946 release, THE SEVENTH VEIL, starring James Mason, Ann Todd and Herbert Lom. In the 1950s, she too went behind the camera and directed movies. She broke a glass ceiling in British filmmaking. She directed about 10 films during the 1950s -- British films that had top British and Hollywood stars -- Peter Finch, Kay Kendall, Sir Ralph Richardson, Peggy Cummins, Laurence Harvey, Van Johnson, Julie Harris and Shelley Winters. Box directed comedies and dramas. A trademark of her films is good roles for women and stories that give a woman's viewpoint.  Muriel Box was also a screenwriter on some of the films she directed.

She was an Oscar winner and the most prolific female director of British films in the 1950s. She and her work deserve to be remembered. It's a shame that she's overlooked. Here's a bit more of Muriel Box's THE BEACHCOMBER.