August 10 - Ken Annakin

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On this day, in 1914, Kenneth Cooper Annakin was born in Beverly, East Riding of Yorkshire, England. As a young man, Ken was in training to be an income tax inspector (the British equivalent of an IRS agent who shows up at your office and starts confiscating things) in the city of Hull when he decided that maybe that wasn’t the life for him. Financed by an unexpected win at the racetrack, he immigrated to New Zealand and spent a good chunk of his twenties bouncing around the world doing whatever work he could find. The onset of World War II drew him back home to England where he joined the Royal Air Force as a mechanic. Ken was injured in the blitz of Liverpool and discharged in 1942 but he didn’t go far. He became a camera operator in the arm of the RAF that was making training films.

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It didn’t take Ken long to graduate to assistant director and then director. His first gig at the helm of a film was for the short documentary London 1942, which showcased the plucky spirit of Londoners under the hardships of war. Three years later, he directed his first feature length project, the 1945 documentary Make Fruitful the Land. As the British war machine began winding down, Ken continued to make new training films for it until the head of the company that produced his documentaries asked him for a favor. They were starting a new studio to produce fictional films, would Ken like to direct one of those? The result, Holiday Camp, was a fairly bland comedy about a Cockney family who encounters mild mayhem on vacation. Holiday was released at exactly the right time, however. It struck a chord with war weary audiences, became a decent hit and spawned three sequels, all of which were directed by Ken. His career in the cinema was now well established.

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Ken worked steadily for the next three decades. He made comedies like 1948’s Miranda, starring Glynis Johns as a mermaid, and the 1965 classic Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines. He directed thrillers like 1950’s Double Confession with Peter Lorre and 1957’s Across the Bridge with Rod Steiger. He helmed war movies like the comedy Hotel Sahara with Peter Ustinov and David Tomlinson in 1951 and was one of the five directors on the star studded classic, The Longest Day, in 1962. By the mid-Seventies, Ken’s career was starting to slow considerably and he even took a few dips in the smaller pond of television (not nearly the prestigious waters it’s considered today), directing the CBS miniseries The Pirate and a made-for-tv movie called Institute for Revenge.

Image courtesy filmsofthefifties.com

Over the course of that career, Ken did several high profile pictures for the Walt Disney Company. His first came in 1952 when Disney produced their first version of The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men. Next came The Sword and the Rose, also starring Glynis Johns (who would be a frequent star of Ken’s over the years), and Third Man on the Mountain, a thriller set in the Swiss Alps which inspired Walt to build the Matterhorn Bobsled ride in Disneyland. Ken’s biggest hit with Disney (and one of his biggest hits period) was the 1960 adventure Swiss Family Robinson, which starred  John Mills (Hayley’s father) and inspired its own walk-through attraction in two Disney theme parks, the Swiss Family Treehouse. For all these contributions to Disneyana, Ken was officially declared a Disney Legend in 2002, only the second director to receive the honor.

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In 1978, near the end of his career, Ken made a physical move to Los Angeles, where he would spend the rest of his life. He directed a handful of forgettable films during the Eighties. In 1992, his final project would go unfinished. It was a biopic of Genghis Khan starring Charlton Heston. They were filming in Kyrgyzstan when the Soviet Union fell apart and everyone had to get out of Dodge before they were finished. They never got the chance to go back. Someone bought the footage in 2010, intending to make something out of it, but that film has never materialized either.

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Ken lived his remaining years in Beverly Hills, California, occasionally giving interviews or advising young filmmakers who sought him out. In 2002, he was awarded the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire for his contributions to British cinema and also received an honorary degree from Hull University (who was apparently okay with the fact that he’d abandoned the city’s tax inspection needs so many years before). In February 2009, Ken suffered a heart attack one day followed by a stroke the next. He would linger for two more months but never recover. On April 22, 2009, the director of over 50 popular films passed away quietly at home. He was 94.

May 7 - David Tomlinson

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On this day, in 1917, David Cecil MacAlister Tomlinson was born in Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, England. David’s early life gave no indication of path he was eventually going to forge for himself. He went to boarding school at the venerable Tonbridge School in Kent, became a part of the British Army as a Grenadier Guard for 16 months and took a job his father, a respected lawyer, procured for him as a clerk in the London headquarters of Shell Oil. All very proper and aboveboard, as the English might say. It didn’t take long, however, for that Edwardian sense of propriety to start slipping.


It started with the revelation that David’s father was leading a double life, having sired another, separate family. A letter mailed to the wrong wife began unravelling the lies but when one of David’s brothers, from the upper level of a double decker bus, chanced to look into an apartment window and see their father lying in a strange bed casually reading the paper (he was supposed to be visiting his club), the duplicity had no choice but to be revealed. His father was wholly unapologetic, causing a rift between father and son that never healed. As an escape, David began acting in local amateur plays, soon discovering that he had a knack for that sort of thing. By 1940, he’d landed his first (uncredited naturally) film role in Garrison Follies. The following year brought him not one but three named roles and a starring role in the British war movie Name Rank and Number. Then World War II, as it did to so many people, fully interrupted his life, in more ways than he ever bargained for.

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David joined the Royal Air Force as a Flight Lieutenant. He was sent to Canada where he became a flight instructor, seemingly far away from the tragedies of war. While in North America, he met Mary Lindsay Hiddingh, the daughter of the vice president of the New York Like Insurance Company and already a war widow. Her first husband had been killed in action in 1941, leaving her two young sons fatherless. David and Mary hit it off, became romantically involved and married in September 1943. Two months later, he was reassigned to a position in London. Because of wartime restrictions on immigration, Mary and the boys weren’t allowed to travel with him. Apparently terrified that she would lose another husband to battle, Mary’s mental state quickly deteriorated. On December 2, 1943, she jumped from the 13^th floor of the Henry Hudson Hotel in New York City, with her two sons, killing all three of them. The blow was devastating to David. It would be another decade before he fell in love again and even years later he admitted he was still too distraught to ever visit Mary’s grave.

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Not that anyone was able to guess at David’s personal woes from his (usually) bright, cheery screen persona (I mean, there’s a reason it’s called acting, but even today, a whole lot of people can’t quite grasp that). Over the next eighteen years, he would star in 34 British films, mostly comedies with titles like Is Your Honeymoon Really Necessary? and Warning to Wantons. In 1963, David was part of the cast of the hugely successful comedy Tom Jones, playing the rare villainous role. All the sunny, yet sometimes stuffy characters David played over the years brought him to the attention of the producers at a studio in Burbank, California who were poised to give him everlasting, international fame.



A large chunk of the cast of Mary Poppins was relatively unknown in America (with the obvious exception of Dick Van Dyke). The Banks’ children, Matthew Garber and Karen Dotrice, had already appeared together in The Three Lives of Thomasina, but that was nothing compared to the fame that was coming. David, Glynis Johns and even Julie Andrews were not household names until August 27, 1964 when Mary Poppins exploded onto the big screen. David, already popular in Britain, would now be recognizable throughout most of the known world. Not only did he play the venerable George Banks, who wakes up to the fact that his children need their father to actually be present for their childhoods, but he also provides several other voices for the film, including Mary Poppins’ umbrella and a overdub for Admiral Boom’s first mate.

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David would return to the Walt Disney Studio twice more in his career, both times playing iconic characters (albeit not quite on the scale of Mr. Banks). In 1968, he played the bumbling villain, Peter Thorndyke, in The Love Bug. Three years later, in what was conceived as a reteaming with Julie Andrews (she turned down the part), he starred with Angela Lansbury in the big screen adaptation of Bedknobs and Broomsticks. This time around he plays a smooth talking con man who struggles with the fact that he may have actually taught someone real magic.

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Post Disney, David appeared in a handful of films throughout the Seventies and made a rare television appearance on an episode of Hawaii Five-O in 1976. His final film (which also happened to be Peter Sellers final film) was the unfortunate The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu in 1980. I’ve never seen it, but apparently it is just awful. Maybe David wouldn’t have retired from acting before its release if he’d known how bad it would be, but he probably still would have. He’d already done pretty much everything he’d ever wanted and was ready to concentrate on enjoying his family.



In 1953, David had married a second time, to an actress, Audrey Freeman. They had four sons together and enjoyed 47 years of relatively happy marriage. I say relatively, because one of their sons, Willie, was autistic. Being the parent of an autistic child today is no walk in the park, but it was far worse in the Sixties. In his memoir, David writes with bitter frustration about living through a time when doctors barely recognized autism as a condition, forget being able to get a diagnosis for it. He also recounted the stark lack of sympathy he and his wife got from friends and family, calling most people’s reactions to his son downright inhuman. His (bad) relationship with his father may have gotten him into acting, but he got out of it determined to have a good one with his son.



David quietly lived out the last two decades of his life, doting on his children and grandchildren, occasionally reliving his marvelous career in an interview. Then, on June 23, 2000 he suffered a massive stroke and was rushed to King Edward VII’s Hospital in Westminster. Early in the morning of June 24, he passed away without regaining consciousness. Two years later, he was posthumously declared an official Disney Legend for portraying not one but three titans of Disneyana and living forever in our hearts.

October 7 - Bedknobs and Broomsticks

On this day, in 1971, Bedknobs and Broomsticks made its world debut in London, England. Based on two books by British author Mary Norton, some have called Bedknobs little more than Mary Poppins' less talented cousin. In my opinion, that is a totally unfair assessment. As far as the talented part goes. Otherwise it absolutely is Mary's cousin.

The similarities between the two films run deep. In fact, Bedknobs had started production a decade earlier when Walt was having trouble getting the rights to Poppins. Bill Walsh and Don DaGradi co-wrote both scripts. David Tomlinson appears in both. Both movies utilize a mix of animation and live-action. The Sherman Brothers wrote songs for both. And a certain lead actress was wanted for both.

After Poppins, and Walt's death, the Bedknobs project kept getting put on the production schedule, it was a project Walt himself had started after all, and then getting taken back off the production schedule, mainly because executives felt it was too similar to the earlier film. Bill Walsh kept developing it anyways and, when he finally got the green light in 1969, offered the role of Eglantine Price to Julie Andrews. Julie hesitated. By the time she called Bill back about it, he'd already moved on, offered the role to Angela Lansbury and she'd accepted. Ron Moody, who would appear in other Disney productions, was originally to play Professor Emelius Browne, but he decided that the only way he would do the picture was if he got top billing. The studio said no and replaced him with David Tomlinson.

Filming was mostly done on sound stages at the Disney Studio in Burbank, although some scenes were shot in Dorset, England in Corfe Castle. Those beach scenes with the Nazis were actually done in Southern California. Principal filming only took 57 days. The animated parts took five months and the special effects took another five months. The initial length of the finished film was 141 minutes. Because its US debut was going to be at Radio City Music Hall, the film needed to be less than two hours long. Over twenty minutes were cut to satisfy that requirement, including 3 entire songs. My guess is that was not helpful to the film's critical reception.

Upon its release, Bedknobs and Broomsticks got mixed reviews. Critics loved the technical aspects of the film but felt it took too long to get to the end. Audiences liked the movie and made it the 12th highest grossing film of the year. It also earned 5 Oscar nominations and would win for Special Effects. Bedknobs was re-released in 1979, but for some reason with a an additional twenty minutes cut out, which almost turned it into a non-musical. In 1996, Scott MacQueen, a senior manager of Disney's library, wondered why the song "A Step in the Right Direction" was on the movie's soundtrack album but not in the picture. This led him down a rabbit hole that ended with a version of Bedknobs that was restored to 139 minutes, almost its original length, as some bits and pieces were lost to the dustbin of time.

As far as I'm concerned, Bedknobs and Broomsticks stands out as a gem from the hazy time in Disney's history between Walt passing away and the renaissance of the mid eighties. I mean how can you go wrong with Angela Lansbury fighting Nazis with a army full of empty armor? Is it Mary Poppins? Of course not. It's a different movie, silly. And clearly I'm not the only one who likes it. A stage version is reportedly in the works. It will debut in 2019 and I for one, can't wait to see how they stage that epic battle.

Also on this day, in American history: Stamp Act Congress