In Remembrance: John Box

     John Box, the four time Academy Award winning art director and production designer for such films as Doctor Zhivago and Lawrence Of Arabia has passed away March 7, 2005 in Leatherhead, Surrey, England. He was 85.

     Born January 27, 1920 in London, England, Box grew up in Ceylon, now known as Sri Lanka, where his father worked as an engineer. He interrupted his studies in architecture at the University of London to serve in the British Army, commanding a tank regiment in France during World War II. Following the war, he completed his degree and then found work as a draftsman for London Films at Denham Studios. In addition to being inspired by David Lean’s 1946 production of Great Expectations, Box had opted for film work over traditional architecture as few buildings were being built in cash strapped, post war England.

     Box’s first screen credit was as a draughtsman on the 1952 Oscar Wilde adaptation The Importance Of Being Earnest (1952). The following year he received his first full-fledged art director credit for The Million Pound Note, starring Gregory Peck.

The simplistic, but visually stunning result of John Box's production design work in Lawrence Of Arabia.

     Box first worked with director David Lean on the 1962 epic Lawrence Of Arabia. For the scene in which actor Omar Sharif emerges from a mirage towards Peter O’Toole’s T. E. Lawrence, Box had the sand painted black and then had a white line painted out to where Sharif would enter. Not only did that help to create one of the many stunning visuals in the film, but Box would later state that O’Toole told him how much it helped him to focus in the scene. Box’s work on Lawrence Of Arabia would earn him his first Academy Award.

     Box reteamed with Lean three years later for Doctor Zhivago, earning his second Academy Award in the process. This time, Box was called upon to transform the Spanish countryside into snow covered Russian using white plastic sheets and marble dust. The pair worked together again on 1984’s A Passage To India.

     Box was also nominated for Oscars for his work on Travels With My Aunt (1972) and A Passage To India (1984) and won for Oliver! (1968) and Nicholas And Alexander (1971). Throughout his career he was also nominated six times for the British Film Academy Awards, winning for A Man For All Seasons (1966), The Great Gatsby (1974) and Rollerball (1975). He received a special British Film Academy Award in 1991 for special contribution to filmmaking. In 1999, he received a Film Critic’s Circle Award for lifetime achievement.

     Other films Box contributed to include Zarak (1956), No Time To Die (1958), Our Man In Havana (1959), The World Of Susie Wong (1960), Just Like A Woman (1992) and Black Beauty (1994). For 1958‘s The Inn Of The Sixth Happiness, he designed and built a walled Chinese city in Wales after Chinese officials refused to allow the production into the country.

     Box’s final film was 1995’s First Knight, in which he oversaw the construction of King Arthur’s Camelot in a Welsh reservoir.