They disapproved of the Gainsborough melodramas which had been the studio's major successes for several years, and switched production to a broader range of more "realistic" films with mixed results.
According to Sue Harper and Vincent Porter: Box was a skilled entrepreneur who was able to raise regular loans from the NFFC and to encourage others’ talents.
According to his assistant David Deutsch, he provided, more effectively than anyone he had ever known, ‘the right environment for creative people to work, welcoming, encouraging and subtly influencing’.
Box’s position as an outsider—a socialist of sorts, a realist by instinct, and a feminist by default—meant that he became increasingly excluded from the meritocracy.
He lacked a strong visual sense, but this was supplied by Muriel Box, whose lively inventiveness was accompanied by an uncompromising sexual radicalism, which pleased her but not the distributors or the audiences.