In November 1949, the London Evening News announced that producer Sydney Box had just heard the surprising news that a low-budget film he’d produced five years before was breaking box office records over in New York.
29, Acacia Avenue (1945) had been retitled The Facts of Love for American audiences, and the critics greeted it as “screamingly funny” and “a gay little package of nonsense”, adding: “Once again the English have proved themselves masters of revealing idiosyncrasies with humour and good sense.”
Sydney Box was singled out as the talent behind it: “Box, who with his wife Muriel also wrote the screenplay, once again proves himself as sound a showman as he is a sensitive recorder of British strengths and weaknesses.” The Facts of Love ran for over a year on Times Square, recouping its budget in that one cinema alone…