Gerry Anderson
Gerald Alexander Anderson was an English television and film producer, director, writer and occasional voice artist, who is known for his futuristic television programmes, especially his 1960s productions filmed with "Supermarionation".
Anderson's first television production was the 1957 Roberta Leigh children's series The Adventures of Twizzle. Torchy the Battery Boy, and Four Feather Falls followed. Supercar and Fireball XL5 came next, both series breaking into the U.S. television market in the early 1960s. In the mid-1960s Anderson produced his most successful series, Thunderbirds. Other television productions of the period included Stingray, Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons and Joe 90.
Anderson also wrote and produced several feature films, including Doppelgänger. Following a shift towards live-action productions in the 1970s, he had a long and successful association with media impresario Lew Grade and Grade's company ITC, continuing until the second series of Space: 1999.
After a lull in which a number of new series failed to materialise, Anderson began a new phase in his career in the early 1980s, when nostalgia for his earlier Supermarionation series, prompted by Saturday morning re-runs in Britain and Australia, led to new commissions. Later projects included a 2005 CG remake of Captain Scarlet titled New Captain Scarlet. Anderson died in 2012.
Early life
Gerald Alexander Abrahams was born in the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and Obstetric Hospital in Bloomsbury, London, and spent the early years of his life in Kilburn, and Neasden, London. He was educated at Kingsgate Infants School in Kilburn and Braintcroft Junior and Senior schools in Neasden, prior to winning a scholarship to Willesden County Grammar School. His parents were Deborah and Joseph Abrahams.At the start of the Second World War, Gerry Anderson's elder brother, Lionel, volunteered for service in the Royal Air Force ; he was stationed in the United States for advanced training. Lionel often wrote letters to his family, and in one letter described a US Army Air Forces air base called Thunderbird Field, the name of which stayed in his younger brother's memory. Lionel was killed in action on 27 April 1944 when his de Havilland Mosquito was shot down over the Netherlands.
On 16 October 1952, Anderson married Betty Wrightman. They had two daughters.
In 1960, Anderson married Sylvia, with whom they had a son, Dr. Gerry Anderson Jr., before divorcing in 1981.
Television, film and military career
Anderson began his career in photography, earning a traineeship with the British Colonial Film Unit after the war. He developed an interest in film editing and moved on to Gainsborough Pictures, where he gained further experience. In 1947, he was conscripted for national service with the RAF, and was based at RAF Manston, an airfield near Margate. He served part of his time in air-traffic control.Two incidents in his final year with the RAF had a profound effect on Anderson. The first occurred during an aircraft display on 18 September 1948 commemorating the Battle of Britain, when a Mosquito aircraft crashed on a road crowded with occupied cars; reports on the death toll ranged between twelve and 20 people. On another occasion, a Spitfire was coming in to land. It was only about above the ground before the runway controller alerted the pilot to the fact the plane's undercarriage hadn't lowered. The pilot opened up the throttle and climbed away. As this was a moment Anderson always remembered, he found it all too easy to write about aircraft when he devised stories for Thunderbirds. After completing his military service, he returned to Gainsborough, where he worked until the studio was closed in 1950. He then worked freelance on a series of feature films.
In the mid-1950s, Anderson joined the independent television production company Polytechnic Studios as a director, where he met cameraman Arthur Provis. After Polytechnic collapsed, Anderson, Provis, Reg Hill and John Read formed Pentagon Films in 1955. Pentagon was wound up soon after and Anderson and Provis formed a new company, AP Films, for Anderson-Provis Films, with Hill and Read as their partners. Anderson continued his freelance directing work to obtain funds to maintain the fledgling company.
AP Films' first television venture was produced for Granada Television. Created by Roberta Leigh, The Adventures of Twizzle was a series for young children about a doll with the ability to 'twizzle' his arms and legs to greater lengths. It was Anderson's first work with puppets, and the start of his long and successful collaborations with puppeteer Christine Glanville, special effects technician Derek Meddings and composer/arranger Barry Gray. It was Anderson's desire to move into live-action television.
The Adventures of Twizzle was followed by another low-budget puppet series with Leigh, Torchy the Battery Boy. Although the APF puppet productions made the Andersons world-famous, Anderson was always unhappy about working with puppets. He used them primarily to get attention from and a good reputation with TV networks, hoping to have them serve as a stepping stone to his goal of making live-action film and TV drama.
Supermarionation
During the production of The Adventures of Twizzle, Anderson started an affair with secretary Sylvia Thamm. Following his divorce from his first wife, Anderson married Thamm in November 1960.AP Films' third series was the children's western fantasy-adventure series Four Feather Falls. Provis left the partnership, but the company retained the name AP Films for several more years. Four Feather Falls was the first Anderson series to use an early version of the so-called Supermarionation process, though this term had yet to be used.
Despite APF's success with Four Feather Falls, Granada did not commission another series from them, so Anderson took up the offer to direct a film for Anglo-Amalgamated Studios. Crossroads to Crime was a low-budget B-grade crime thriller, and although Anderson hoped that its success might enable him to move into mainstream film-making, it failed at the box office.
By this time, APF was in financial trouble and the company was struggling to find a buyer for their new puppet series. They were rescued by a fortuitous meeting with Lew Grade, the Associated Television boss who offered to buy the show. This began a long friendship and a very successful professional association between the two men.
The new series, Supercar, was developed by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson and Reg Hill based on a story written by Sylvia Anderson and marked several important advances for APF. Sylvia took on a larger role and became a partner in the company. The series was also the official debut of Supermarionation, the electronic system that made the marionettes more lifelike and convincing on screen. The system used the audio signal from pre-recorded tapes of the actors' voices to trigger solenoids installed in the heads of the puppets, making their lips move in synchronisation with the voices of the actors, and actresses.
File:NMM Supermarionation puppets 2106.jpg|thumb|right|A selection of Gerry Anderson marionettes seen at the National Media Museum, Bradford.
One of Anderson's most successful ventures was inaugurated during the production of Supercar. The establishment of AP Films Ltd, a separate company set up to handle the licensing of merchandising rights for APF properties, was headed by Keith Shackleton, a longtime friend of Anderson's from their National Service days.
The next series by APF was the futuristic space adventure Fireball XL5. At the time it was the company's biggest success, garnering the honour of being the only Anderson series sold to an American TV network, NBC. Around this time, Anderson also saw his Supermarionation style attract imitators—most notably Space Patrol which used similar techniques and was made by several former employees and associates of Anderson, including Arthur Provis and Roberta Leigh.
After the completion of Fireball XL5, Lew Grade offered to buy AP Films. Although Anderson was initially reluctant, the deal eventually went ahead, with Grade becoming the managing director, and the Andersons, Hill, and Read becoming directors of the company.
Shortly after the buy-out, APF began production on a new marionette series, Stingray, the first Supermarionation-based British TV series to be filmed in colour. For the new production APF moved to new studios in Slough. The new and bigger facilities allowed them to make major improvements in special effects, notably in the underwater sequences, as well as advances in marionette technology, with the use of a variety of interchangeable heads for each character to convey different expressions.
''Thunderbirds''
APF's next project for ATV was inspired by a mining disaster that occurred in West Germany in October 1963. This real-life drama inspired Anderson to create a new programme format about a rescue organisation, which eventually became his most famous and popular series, Thunderbirds. The dramatic title was inspired by the letter Anderson's older brother Lionel had written to his family during World War II.Grade was very enthusiastic about the concept and agreed to back a series of 25-minute episodes, so the Andersons scripted a pilot episode, "Trapped in the Sky", and began production. Anderson initially wanted actress Fenella Fielding to perform the voice of Lady Penelope, but Sylvia convinced her husband that she herself ought to play the role. Thunderbirds also marked the start of a long professional association with actor Shane Rimmer, who voiced Scott Tracy.
Production on Thunderbirds had been under way for several months when Grade saw the completed 25-minute version of "Trapped in the Sky". He was so excited by the result that he insisted that the episodes be extended to fifty minutes. With a substantial increase in budget, the production was restructured to expand episodes already filmed or in pre-production, and create new 50-minute scripts for the remainder. Grade and others were so convinced that Thunderbirds would be a success that a feature-film version of the series was proposed even before the pilot episode went to air. At this approximate time, APF was renamed Century 21 Productions.
After APF was renamed Century 21 Productions, it enjoyed its greatest success with Thunderbirds, and the series made the Andersons world famous. However, it was cancelled midway through the second series because Grade was unable to sell the show to an American network. Despite being wildly popular in the UK and abroad, Grade felt that without an American buyer, a full second series would fail to recoup its cost. It would later find moderate success in the United States through syndication.
During the production of Thunderbirds the Andersons' marriage began to come under increasing strain, and the company also had a setback when the feature film Thunderbirds Are GO surprisingly flopped. In later interviews, Anderson said that he considered divorce, but this was halted when Sylvia announced that she was pregnant. Their son, Gerry Anderson Jr., was born in July 1967.
By that time, production had started on a new series, Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, which saw the advent of more realistic marionette characters which, thanks to improvements in electronics which allowed miniaturisation of the lip-sync mechanisms, could now be built closer to normal human proportions.
Century 21's second feature film, Thunderbird 6, was also unsuccessful, and the problems were compounded by their next Supermarionation series, Joe 90. This series returned to more 'kid-friendly' territory, depicting the adventures of a young boy who is also a secret agent and whose scientist father uses a supercomputer called 'BIG RAT' which can 'program' Joe with special knowledge and abilities for his missions. Its relatively poor reception made it the last of the classic Anderson marionette shows.