Screenplay writer who became Britain's foremost female director during
the 1950s. She began as a script-girl working for British Instructional
Films from 1927. It was 1935 before her first screenplay was accepted;
Alibi Inn (1935). During the war she worked for documentary company Verity Films. From then, however, she rapidly became one of Britain's
most prolific writers, turning out dozens of one-act plays with her
husband Sydney (married 1935, divorced 1969),
brother of producer Betty Box.
In 1945 Muriel again turned her attention to the cinema and Sydney
was her producer and often co-writer. They won an Academy Award (Best
Original Screenplay) for The
Seventh Veil (1945), and Muriel turned director in 1952. Although
her films never touched great heights, most of them are solidly crafted
entertainment within the demands of the times. The best examples of
her work, always polished and often lifting ordinary subjects above
the average, are Street Corner (1953), a study of British women police;
The Beachcomber
(1954), with Robert Newton; Simon
and Laura (1955), a lively, satirical look at television and its most
perfect couple (in private life they fight like cat and dog); and Rattle
of a Simple Man (1964), an underrated and winning version of a stage
play about the encounter between a naive northerner and a London prostitute.
