Verity Films

Verity Films was a British documentary film production company, founded by Sydney Box and Jay Gardner Lewis in March or May 1940. The company's initial purpose was to make short propaganda films for the wartime government. Lewis directed the Verity's first five films, but fell out with Box over finances and left the company.

Box's former employer Publicity Films helped pay off the £2,000 debt and the company was refloated in 1941. With Lewis gone, Box ran the company alone and found quick success. Turnover during 1942 was £75,000, and after paying salaries of £5,000 to Box and others, Verity still made a £2,000 profit. A January 1943 report in Kinematograph Weekly called Verity "by far the largest documentary film organisation in Great Britain".

By 1944, Verity had absorbed several other documentary producers and had eight to ten production units in the field. It advertised itself in a trade publication as "the largest short film production organisation in Europe, incorporating the Greenpark Unit, Technique Unit and Donald Taylor's new Gryphon Unit". In August 1944, Verity Films became a founding member of the Film Producers' Guild, based at Guild House in Upper St. Martin's Lane, which brought together several film production companies. During the war, Verity produced more than 100 films, most of them at the small and badly soundproofed Merton Park Studios in South London, although for some productions, Verity rented Riverside Studios in Hammersmith. Already, by this point, Box had begun to broaden the management of Verity Films. An item in the 7 December 1944 edition of Kinematograph Weekly noted that A.T. Burlinson had taken over as managing director while Box worked on The Seventh Veil.