Celebrity Biographies
Ken annakin
British filmmaker Ken Annakin has died at the age of 94 at his residence in Beverly Hills (California), on Wednesday, May 22. His daughter, Deborah Peters, has stated that she has died of natural causes. To remember him, he leaves movies highly appreciated by moviegoers, of various genres, although he stood out especially in war movies with The Longest Day and The Battle of the Bulge . He filmed fifty films in half a century of career.
Kenneth Cooper Annakin was born in Beverley, Yorkshire (Great Britain), on August 10, 1914. He was an only child, and became a troubled teenager who left school early, and his parents, with whom he did not get along very well , to travel to various countries, where he survived with various occupations. Back in England, he worked as an insurance and car salesman until he joined the Air Force. In the army he discovered his vocation as a filmmaker, when he was prematurely turned into a cameraman to shoot documentaries that were used to train new pilots.
In 1946, Ken Annakin made his directorial debut with the unknown West Riding. Although his first great success was Miranda , updating the tale of The Little Mermaid , in a comedy key. He was soon sought after in Hollywood by the Walt Disney production company , which recruited him for several of its live-action adventure productions for the whole family, such as Third Man on the Mountain and The Robinsons of the South Seas , one of the greatest hits. of the company in this area. This film gave him a lot of prestige in the industry, which explains why he was hired for the big blockbuster The Longest Day , in which he was in charge of the sequences that took place in Great Britain (Andrew Marton shot the American part and Bernhard Wicki the German part). This meticulous 178-minute reconstruction of the Normandy landings is said to have one of the most impressive casts ever assembled, including Sean Connery , Richard Burton , Mel Ferrer , Henry Fonda , Sal Mineo , Robert Mitchum , Robert Ryan , and even John Wayne . Annakin also filmed another key moment of World War II in The Battle of the Bulge, one of the pinnacles of the war genre, again with Henry Fonda and Robert Ryan, and also inordinately long.
Ken Annakin will be especially remembered as the author of the film Those Nuts in Their Crazy Gadgets , for which he earned his only Oscar nomination in the category of original screenplay. He described the early years of aviation in a comedy key, through the story of an airplane competition sponsored by the wealthy publisher of a British newspaper. Retired since the 1980s, Annakin’s last work was Genghis Khan , a biography of the Mongolian emperor, with Pat Morita and Charlton Heston .
In 2002 Queen Elizabeth awarded him the title of Officer of the Order of the British Empire, for his artistic merits. A great friend of George Lucas , there is a rumor that the director of Star Wars was inspired by his last name for the name of his character Anakin Skywalker. Ken Annakin is survived by his wife Pauline Carter, to whom he was married for 49 years.