Ken Annakin

Ken Annakin
Born	Kenneth Cooper Annakin 10 August 1914 Beverley, Yorkshire, UK
Died	22 April 2009 (aged 94) Beverly Hills, California, USA
Occupation	Film director
Years active	1941 - 1992

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

Biography

Annakin grew up in Beverley, Yorkshire where he attended the local school. He began his career in feature films following an early experience making documentaries. His first filmwork was 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 these highly successful films starring Jack Warner, Kathleen Harrison, Petula Clark and Diana Dors (amongst others)are seen as the genesis of the British soap opera. 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), Third Man on the Mountain (1959), 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).

Annakin's last completed film was The New Adventures of Pippi Longstocking (1988), Genghis Khan (1992) was not completed. He died on 22 April 2009, the same day as Jack Cardiff, who had been his cinematographer on the 1979 film The Fifth Musketeer.

Despite claims that George Lucas took the name for Anakin Skywalker in Star Wars from his friend and fellow film director, Lucas denied this via his publicist following Annakin's death in 2009.

Filmography

• London 1942 (1943)
• Make Fruitful the Land (1945)
• We of the West Riding (1946)
• English Criminal Justice (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)
• Genghis Khan (1992) (unreleased)

External links

• Ken Annakin at the Internet Movie Database
• Ken Annakin biography at BFI Screenonline
• AP Obituary in the Los Angeles Times
• Obituary in The Times
• Obituary in The Guardian
• Obituary in The Independent
• Obituary in The Daily Telegraph