Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines

Ken Annakin directed four motion pictures for Disney, including the live-action classic “Swiss Family Robinson” in 1960. A director of epic proportions, Ken lent his vision and precision to realizing “Swiss Family Robinson,” which was considered one of Disney’s most lavish films at the time, costing more than $4 million to create.

Shot on location on the Caribbean island of Tobago over a 22-week period, a menagerie of exotic animals, as well as actors, were cast in the movie, including elephants, ostriches, tigers, and more. In his recently published autobiography “So You Wanna Be a Director?,” Ken recalled Walt Disney suggesting a scene with a tiger. Ken hesitated, however, based on a previous experience directing a tiger and suggested a lion instead.

“Oh-ho,” Walt said. “At last we’ve found something Ken’s afraid of. If you’re scared to film the tiger, I’ll come out with a sixteen millimeter camera and shoot it myself!”

The tiger stayed in the picture.

Born in Beverley, England, on August 10, 1914, Ken was a restless young man, who, at 22, took off for Australia and New Zealand for three years. His adventurous nature carried through his professional career, as well, directing movies on location from Africa to India, Scandinavia to China.

Ken began his career in England during World War II, working on army training and documentary films as a camera assistant at the Ministry of Information. In 1947, he made his directorial debut with the comedy “Holiday Camp,” followed by the popular “Miranda,” starring Glynis Johns, and the Somerset Maugham films “Quartet” in 1948 and “Trio” in 1950.

While at Pinewood Studios in England, he was approached by Disney producer Perce Pearce to direct “The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men” in 1952, followed by “The Sword and the Rose” in 1953.

A year after the box office success of “Swiss Family Robinson,” Ken directed Disney’s “Third Man on the Mountain” on location in the Swiss Alps, which featured impressive vertigo-inducing mountain-climbing footage.

Disney proved a fruitful training ground for the young filmmaker, who later recalled, “Working with Walt was a great experience in learning discipline because when you worked with him, you were making his picture under his conditions. He was very organized; every picture was storyboarded before filming.”

Ken used storyboards, a production technique he learned from Disney, to visually develop subsequent big-scale pictures, including “The Longest Day” in 1962, “Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines” in 1964, “The Battle of the Bulge” in 1965, among others.

In 1999, The Walt Disney Studios, in conjunction with the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, Los Angeles, hosted “A Tribute to Ken Annakin,” featuring excerpts from 12 of his 49 motion pictures.

Ken Annakin died on April 22, 2009, in Beverly Hills, California. —Disney Legends