Ken Annakin

Ken Annakin was an English film director whose career spanned over five decades, from the early 1940s to the early 1990s. Born on 10 August 1914 in Beverley, East Riding of Yorkshire, he began his professional life as a trainee income‑tax inspector before travelling the world and eventually joining the Royal Air Force Film Unit during World War II. There he worked as a camera operator on propaganda pieces and assisted the legendary Carol Reed, experiences that launched his post‑war work in documentary filmmaking. By 1947 Annakin had directed his first feature, the popular Holiday Camp, for Gainsborough Pictures, a film that introduced the Huggett family series and cemented his reputation as a reliable studio director. Throughout the 1950s he moved between British studios and Walt Disney, directing such varied pictures as The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men, The Planter’s Wife, and the beloved family adventure Swiss Family Robinson (1960), which Disney called one of the greatest family films of all time. The 1960s brought Annakin his most ambitious successes. He co‑wrote, produced and directed the expansive comedy Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (1965), an international ensemble piece that earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay and grossed over $31 million worldwide. The same year he helmed the sprawling war epic Battle of the Bulge. Although later projects such as Monte Carlo or Bust! never matched that level of acclaim, Annakin continued to work across continents, shooting The Call of the Wild in Finland, Paper Tiger in Malaysia, and later directing TV movies and the quirky The New Adventures of Pippi Longstocking (1988). Honoured as a Disney Legend in 2002 and appointed OBE the same year, Annakin left an indelible mark on both British and American cinema before his death on 22 April 2009 in Beverly Hills.