John Box (Independent)
Hyfler/Rosner
March 17, 2005
BYLINE: Catherine A. Surowiec
IT TAKES a rare imagination, plus incredible technical
know-how, to create a snowbound Russia in midsummer Spain,
transform Wales into China, or paint desert sands black to
simulate a mirage. John Box was known in the film industry
as "The Magician", and for good reason. With four Oscars,
two Oscar nominations, four Bafta Awards, and a career that
included Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago, A Man for All
Seasons, Oliver! and The Inn of the Sixth Happiness, Box was
a legend in British film production design.
Box earned the nickname "The Magician" when he recreated
snowy Russia in scorching midsummer Spain for David Lean's
Doctor Zhivago (1965). The hauntingly memorable "snow
palace" interior was inspired by Scott's hut in Scott of the
Antarctic (1948), invaded by snow and ice, and was created
by a joint act of ingenuity:
The prop man Eddie Fowlie and I had this image, and we
didn't know how to do it. In the end, we just melted candle
wax, and he went round with a bucket of hot candle wax, and
threw it on the set. When I thought it looked right, I had
very cold water in a syringe, and hit it. That's how we got
the shape!
Equally memorable in impact was the train with red flags
crossing the wintry steppes, an example of Box's
understanding of colour, and when to hold it back for
effect. Lean and Box knew that for Zhivago they would have
to convey Russia's cold and climate without actually going
there to film. Locations in Finland and Sweden were scouted.
Eventually Box realised that they would have to create
Russia themselves. Where? In Spain, where they had filmed
much of Lawrence of Arabia:
We ran out of winter; we had to completely create it. But
that is making movies. It's the art of the impossible.
Film was a lifelong love. Born in London, Box spent his
childhood in Ceylon, where his father worked as an engineer.
He saw his first films there as a schoolboy: he later
remembered an Al Jolson film, accompanied by lots of
mosquitoes and twinkling fireflies. He also remembered a
teacher who taught Classics, and read Treasure Island aloud:
To a kid of about eight, in the tropics, your imagination
whirred up . . . Long John Silver, the Black Spot. I suppose
that is why I came into films, looking for creative
excitement.
At the age of 11 he and his brother went home with their
mother to Maryport, Cumberland, a cold, grey mining district
far from the heat and sun of Ceylon. His mother died a year
later, and he went to live with an uncle near London.
As he was good at boxing, it was suggested he join the
Metropolitan Police, but with the support of his father he
chose to study architecture, applying to the Polytechnic of
North London, on Holloway Road. His engineer father wanted
him to get down-to-earth training, with regular types,
learning all the basics. It was sound advice, literally
laying the groundwork for his future film career of building
sets and technical practicalities.
The very first day, the instructor told them that making the
first line was all important, a dictum that he never forgot,
saying later:
One of the great things (about architecture school) was the
miles of working drawings you did. You gained the value of a
line, not only proportionately but economically . . .
Whatever you design has got to be practical to work.
War broke out three years into his five-year course, and he
spent the next six years in the Royal Armoured Corps, ending
the Second World War commanding a tank regiment, in the
vanguard of troops entering Paris after the Liberation.
Demobbed, he finished his architecture degree at Holloway,
earning his RIBA qualification.
However, in the years of post-war austerity and continued
rationing, there was not much to design. At least not in the
real world. So, after seeing John Bryan's stunning
black-and-white design of David Lean's Great Expectations
(1947), Box decided to try the cinema. Bryan referred him to
Edward Carrick, then supervising art director at Pinewood,
who sent him out to make two drawings of an ornate Victorian
pub: one as it was, another as it could be utilised in a
film - a valuable lesson, which Box passed with flying
colours.
He entered the film industry in 1948, aged 28, at Denham,
assisting the veteran Alec Vetchinsky. The first film he
worked on was Joseph Mankiewicz's Escape (1948), a Fox
British thriller starring Rex Harrison and Peggy Cummins.
The studio system taught Box the basics of building sets,
budgets, economy, and time-saving short-cuts and tricks of
the trade. Another valued early influence was Carmen Dillon,
for whom he worked on Anthony Asquith's The Browning Version
(1951) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1952).
Box's first big break came on The Black Knight (1954), an
Alan Ladd film largely made in Spain; Vetchinsky came down
with typhoid while on location in Madrid, and Box took over.
Box also met his second wife, the costume designer Doris
Lee, while working on this film.
His first film as full art director, The Million Pound Note
(1953), starring Gregory Peck, was produced by his design
idol John Bryan. Box loved to tell the story of how he was
drawing an elaborate full facade of the US Embassy for one
scene, when Bryan interrupted to advise that he could simply
suggest it, with steps and a flag, looking downwards - a
money- saving and imaginative solution, which Box never
forgot.
In the mid-1950s, when Box's contract with Rank expired, he
signed with Warwick Films, an American outfit. Working on
films like Malta Story (1953) and The Cockleshell Heroes
(1955), he practised his craft and went from strength to
strength. The peak from this period was Twentieth Century-
Fox's The Inn of the Sixth Happiness (1958), his first epic
production, set in China, starring Ingrid Bergman and Robert
Donat, with a huge set at MGM's Elstree studio, and
locations in Wales. Box thought Wales had the quality of
Chinese watercolours, and employed it very convincingly as a
stand-in for China, saving Fox both time and money.
Fox offered him Cleopatra, which was then to be made in
Britain, but he turned it down for the chance to work with
Carol Reed, a director he much admired, on Our Man in Havana
(1959). They went to Havana at an exciting time, just as
Fidel Castro was coming into power. Box asked one gangster
"right out of a B-movie" at a casino to show him how casino
and gambling operations worked. He consented - if Box would
arrange a dinner with Alec Guinness.
These films brought him to the attention of David Lean.
Lawrence of Arabia (1962) marked the start of nearly 30
years with the director, stretching to his last, uncompleted
film project, Joseph Conrad's Nostromo, (1986- 91). Lean was
a perfectionist, with a great sense of visual style and the
ability to recognise and encourage it in others. Box always
maintained, "My film school is very simple. I just tell
everybody, I was at the David Lean School." It was sometimes
a hard school, but always an exciting one, full of learning
experiences:
I learned a lot about imaging from David. Sometimes you
don't get it right until the last moment. In Lawrence, it's
considered a memorable scene, where Omar (Sharif) came out
of the desert, the mirage. Very strange atmosphere, in the
middle of nowhere . . . To concentrate on that mirage, we
had already painted the desert black, giving a composition
to take your eye to this mirage coming up, and there was
still something missing. David used to say, "Ninety per cent
prepared, know what you're doing, but leave 10 per cent for
inspiration." And I suddenly had this inspiration. Camel
tracks are only about a foot wide, in the desert, and
they're normally blackish, or brownish, depending on the
ground. But I suddenly had this idea that a white line
should go out to where Omar was to appear. At the last
minute, the camera was set up, I remember going up and
painting this strange line . . . At the end of that scene,
Peter O'Toole came up to me and gave me a huge hug. He said,
"You probably don't realise the effect that white line had
on me, playing Lawrence. It disciplined my thinking, my
lines, and I said my lines."
This is all part of designing, for me, not just sets - an
atmosphere that something's going to happen. And I think the
audience then pick it up, and they get the excitement.
You're helping the director, the cameraman, and the actors.
Lawrence's company was the first to film in Almera, later
quite a famous location. To blow up a train, they had to
construct five miles of railway, bring a locomotive and
carriages down from Madrid, and then take them 10 miles
across country to sand dunes, standing in for the deserts of
Arabia. Seville was used for Cairo, and Aqaba was a set,
completely built in Spain.
When asked, the film Box said he was most proud of was
probably A Man for All Seasons (1966), Fred Zinnemann's film
about Thomas More's clash with Henry VIII. For that film,
Box accomplished a more low-key miracle, not perceptible
except on close scrutiny: Hampton Court was entirely
re-created at Shepperton studio, and is one storey lower
than the actual palace. The film also is testimony to Box's
unerring sense of visualising the character of a scene,
notably the confrontation of Cardinal Wolsey (Orson Welles)
and More (Paul Scofield), done against a simple background,
to focus on Wolsey's overwhelming presence.
Another 1960s highlight was his work on Carol Reed's Oliver!
(1968), one of the first big musicals done in England. Box
and his crew spent 18 months building two huge sets at
Shepperton. For his visual references, Box used the same
sources John Bryan used for Lean's 1948 Oliver Twist:
Gustave Dore's 1870 book London, and a collection of
late-19th-century photographs recording parts of London that
were doomed to demolition, which provided many authentic
details.
The historical epic Nicholas and Alexandra (1971) took him
back to "Spanish Russia" again. The Great Gatsby (1974),
evoking F. Scott Fitzgerald's Jazz Age story, was shot
mostly at Pinewood, with some American locations. But Box
was still up to a challenge. Rollerball (1975) marked a real
departure, to a futuristic world of violent sport. Sport was
another lifelong interest for Box, a great lover of cricket.
The director Norman Jewison first had him invent the
fast-moving game for the film, before any sets or costumes
were designed.
A Passage to India (1984) reunited him with David Lean. Made
on a smaller budget than the earlier epics, it still offered
room for art-department invention, blending locations
hundreds of miles apart geographically into one seamlessly
edited vista for Peggy Ashcroft's arrival in Bombay, a scene
which otherwise was not possible in practical terms.
Box thrived on cinema projects, and continued working after
Lean's death. His last two films were Black Beauty (1994),
made at Pinewood, and First Knight (1995), for which he
transformed a Welsh reservoir into Camelot. On these later
projects, he was delighted to work with old friends and
employ younger hopefuls. He was especially conscious of
"handing on the baton" to a younger generation. He always
valued film as a team-work, and it warmed him to see many of
his former assistants make good on their own, like Robert W.
Laing, Terence Marsh, Tony Masters, Stuart Craig and the
costume designer Anthony Powell.
By the 1990s, Box was one of the grand old men of British
cinema. A soft- spoken man, he waxed eloquent telling
countless entertaining stories of the productions he worked
on, tales peppered with the names of Lean, Reed, the
producer Sam Spiegel, the cameraman Freddie Young. In these
tales, he was also generous in sharing the credit with
assistants and crew, invariably mentioning many minor
technicians, stressing that every one of them were important
to him.
He treasured the recognition of his work in Art Direction,
with four Oscars (Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago,
Oliver!, Nicholas and Alexandra), two Oscar nominations
(Travels with My Aunt, A Passage to India), four Bafta
awards (A Man for All Seasons, Nicholas and Alexandra, The
Great Gatsby, Rollerball) and, in 1991, a special Bafta Life
Achievement Award.
Before Box began to lose his eyesight in his last years, he
enjoyed painting, and visiting art galleries. He especially
loved Constable's quick watercolour sketches of Hampstead
Heath, and the French Impressionists at the National
Gallery:
Any French Impressionist, I will see any time. You learn a
lot about light. Every cameraman should do a course on
French Impressionism.
His other great joy was poetry:
I always take The Oxford Book of English Verse with me,
wherever I go. It makes you realise the reality of life.
Which is something he helped to create on film for all of
us.
John Allan Hyatt Box, film production designer: born London
27 January 1920; RDI 1992; OBE 1998; married 1944 Barbara
Courtenay Linton (marriage dissolved 1951), 1953 Doris Lee
(died 1992; two daughters); died Leatherhead, Surrey 7 March
2005.