born violette muriel baker in tolworth, surrey, in 1905, after her attempts at acting and dancing proved fruitless, she accepted work as a continuity girl for british international pictures. in 1935, she met and married journalist sydney box, with whom she collaborated on nearly forty plays with mainly female roles for amateur theatre groups. their production company, verity films, first released short wartime propaganda films, including "the english inn" (1941), her first directing effort, after which it branched into fiction. the couple achieved their greatest joint success with "the seventh veil" (1945) for which they gained the academy award for best writing, original screenplay in the following year.