British producer Betty Box started out as a commercial artist. Her
brother Sydney Box was a documentary
filmmaker, and during World War II he asked Betty to join him at Verity
Films. She took to it like a fish to water, and by the time the war
ended she was in charge of almost a dozen documentary units at the
studio. She stayed at Verity until 1946, when she was hired by
Gainsborough Pictures to make features. After making several films at
Gainsborough she went over to Pinewood Studios, where she turned out
such well-received films as
Auf falscher Spur (1950) and
Aber, Herr Doktor (1954) in
partnership with director
Ralph Thomas. In fact, "Doctor in
the House" was such a hit that the studio insisted that she and Thomas
make more of them, despite the fact that they both wanted to move on to
bigger and better things. In the end, though, they turned out a string
of sequels, one of which
(Doktor Ahoi! (1955)) introduced
French sex kitten Brigitte Bardot to
British audiences.
While prolific, the quality of her output declined somewhat in the
latter part of her career, and by the 1970s she and Thomas were reduced
to making smarmy sex comedies such as
Percy - Der Spatz in der Hand (1971) and
Percy - Der Potenzprotz (1974), about a
young man who had the world's first penis transplant. She made her last
film in 1975, and died in 1999 in London, England, of cancer. She was
83.
