Kenneth Cooper "Ken" Annakin, OBE was a prolific English film director, who directed 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), which Walt Disney's nephew, Roy E. Disney, considered "one of the greatest family adventure films of all time and a favorite for generations of moviegoers."
Early life and career[]
Annakin was born in and grew up in Beverley, East Riding of Yorkshire. After leaving school he became a trainee income tax inspector and later decided to emigrate to New Zealand and travel around the world in a variety of jobs. Injured in the Liverpool Blitz, Annakin joined the RAF Film Unit, where he worked as a camera operator on propaganda films for the Ministry of Information and the British Council. We Serve (1942), a recruiting film for women, was directed by Carol Reed, who made Annakin his assistant director; Annakin subsequently directed several training films for Verity Films, a group led by Sydney Box, who was soon to become head of Gainsborough Pictures.
Films that Annakin directed included London, It Began on the Clyde, Here Come the Huggetts, Landfall, Double Confession, Hotel Sahara, The Seekers, The Longest Day, Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines, Battle of the Bulge, The Long Duel, The Call of the Wild, and The New Adventures of Pippi Longstocking.
Annakin was made a Disney Legend in March of 2002 and was also awarded an OBE the same year for services to the film industry and received an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from Hull University.
Trivia[]
- Claims were made that George Lucas took the name for Anakin Skywalker in Star Wars from his friend and fellow film director, however, Lucas' publicist denied this following Annakin's death in 2009.
