John Box

John Allan Hyatt Box OBE, (27 January 1920 – 7 March 2005) was a British film production designer and art director. During his career he won the Academy Award for Best Art Direction on four occasions and won the equivalent BAFTA three times, a record for both awards. Throughout his career he gained a reputation for recreating exotic locations in rather more mundane surroundings, he once created a walled Chinese city in Snowdonia.

Box was born in London, and attended Highgate School from 1934–38; due to his father's job as a civil engineer, he spent much of his childhood in Sri Lanka, then the British colony of Ceylon. After studying architecture at North London Polytechnic he served in the Royal Armoured Corps during World War II.

After the war Box served his apprenticeship an assistant to the art director Carmen Dillon, herself an Oscar winner. During this period he worked with her on Anthony Asquith's adaptation of The Browning Version (1951) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1952).

Box’s first films as an art director were low budget affairs, the first being the science fiction B-movie The Gamma People (1956). His first big break came when director Mark Robson asked him to work on the period film The Inn of the Sixth Happiness (1957), which starred Ingrid Bergman. After this Box worked on Carol Reed's adaptation of Graham Greene’s novel Our Man in Havana (1959) and Richard Quine’s The World of Suzie Wong (1960).

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