Film Director Ken Annakin

[Guest]

Film director Ken Annakin died wednesday aged 94.
He was best known for directing the 1965 film 'Battle of the bulge' amongst others, including 'Swiss family Robinson'.

[kimmer927]

I wondered if anyone was going to post this. It came in on my Death Beeper. Should have known it would be you, because you are so good at this!

Good going Vlad!

[Guest]

Thanks Kimmer
Sadly there are very few old Brit directors left.

[kimmer927]

What's up with not training young ones...plus you have Madonna's ex to look forward to!

[cleanskull]

I remember seeing both those films at the drive-in. 94 is a good run.

[Guest]

I remember seeing both thyose films at the drive-in. 94 is a good run.

I would have loved to have gone to a drive-in. We don't have/never had them here, but they sound fun. Especially if an old Creature Feature was showing.

[cleanskull]

We still have a few in Oklahoma. The Winchester drive-in shows triple features on the weekends.

They were great for making out when you were young.

[Long Gone Day]

I loved the drive-ins. Two had reopened in the area I was in in New York and my sister and I used to take the kids, all of us in our jammies with lawn chairs and snacks (and mosquito repellent).

[Guest]

Ken Annakin, OBE (10 August 1914 – 22 April 2009) was an English film director.

His career in feature films followed early experience making documentaries, he made his fiction film debut in 1947 with the Rank Organisation. The following year he moved to Gainsborough Pictures to direct three films about the Huggetts, a working class family living in suburban England. Annakin became known for a series of Walt Disney adventures including The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men (1952), The Sword and the Rose (1953) and Swiss Family Robinson (1960).

He was later associated with another American producer, Darryl F. Zanuck, when he was hired to direct the British segments in The Longest Day (1962). As head of the 20th Century-Fox Studio, Zanuck endorsed Annakin's most ambitious project Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (1965). Annakin also directed the big-scale war film Battle of the Bulge (also 1965) for the Warner Brothers studio.

However, some of Annakin's better received films are smaller-scale comedies and dramas, including his episodes in Quartet (1948) and Trio (1950), based on Somerset Maugham's stories, Hotel Sahara (1951), Across the Bridge (1957), Crooks Anonymous (1962), The Fast Lady (1963) and The Informers (1963).

His last completed film was The New Adventures of Pippi Longstocking (1988), Ghenghis Khan (1992) was not completed.

Annakin was a friend of George Lucas, and was Lucas's inspiration for the naming of the character Anakin Skywalker in Star Wars. He died on 22 April 2009, the same day as Jack Cardiff, who had been his cinematographer on the 1979 film The Fifth Musketeer.

Filmography

West Riding (1946)
It Began on the Clyde (1946)
Fenlands (1946)
Holiday Camp (1947)
Miranda (1948)
Broken Journey (1948)
Quartet (1948)
Here Come the Huggetts (1948)
Vote for Huggett (1949)
The Huggetts Abroad (1949)
Landfall (1949)
Double Confession (1950)
Hotel Sahara (1951)
The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men (1952)
The Planter's Wife (1952)
The Sword and the Rose (1953)
You Know What Sailors Are (1954)
The Seekers (1954)
Value for Money (1955)
Loser Takes All (1956)
Three Men in a Boat (1956)
Across the Bridge (1957) Nor the Moon by Night (1958)
Third Man on the Mountain (1959)
Swiss Family Robinson (1960)
Very Important Person (1961)
The Hellions (1961)
The Fast Lady (1962)
The Longest Day (1962)
Crooks Anonymous (1962)
The Informers (1963)
Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (1965)
Battle of the Bulge (1965)
The Long Duel (1967)
The Biggest Bundle of Them All (1968)
Monte Carlo or Bust! (1969)
The Call of the Wild (1972)
Paper Tiger (1975)
The Fifth Musketeer (1979)
Cheaper to Keep Her (1981)
The Pirate Movie (1982)
The New Adventures of Pippi Longstocking (1988)
Gengis Khan (1992)
Genghis Khan: The Story of a Lifetime (2002)

[milke492]

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