LIFTING THE LID: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF FILM PRODUCER BETTY BOX, OBE
by Betty Box
The Book Guild, £16.95, pp. 296
When they were making Carry On - Don't Lose Your Head, the one about the French Revolution, the wonder is that the cast didn't grab their chance to shove Peter Rogers, their producer, under the guillotine. The gulf between how he and his wife Betty Box lived - Aston Martins, Rolls Royces ('I had two at a time. A saloon and a convertible'), floor-length mink coats and chauffeur-driven trips to the Royal Ballet ('the barman became a personal friend and would always have champagne and a tray of smoked salmon sandwiches ready during the interval') - and how the actors lived (Kenneth Williams and Charles Hawtrey, for example, eating out of tins in shabby bedsits) - is as laughably wide as that which divided the court of Louis XVI from the horny-handed peasantry. Or another example would be the difference between the Ceausescus and the rest of Romania.
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