Gerry Anderson

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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 (1959–60). 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 (ATV) 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, (1960–61) 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.

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 (Merchandising) Ltd, a separate company set up to handle the licensing of merchandising rights for APF properties, was headed by Keith Shackleton (not the wildlife artist and TV presenter of the same name), a longtime friend of Anderson's from their National Service days.

The next series by APF was the futuristic space adventure Fireball XL5 (1962). 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 (US title: Planet 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 (1964), 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.

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 (1965–1966). 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 (the same length as Stingray), 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 (1967), 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 (and penultimate) Supermarionation series, Joe 90 (1968). 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.

Anderson's next project took the special effects expertise built up over previous TV projects and combined it with live action. Century 21's third feature film, Doppelgänger (1969) (released internationally as Journey to the Far Side of the Sun) was a dark, Twilight Zone-style sci-fi project about an astronaut who travels to a newly discovered planet on the opposite side of the sun, which proves to be an exact mirror-image of Earth, starring American actor Roy Thinnes. Although it was not a major commercial success, Doppelgänger was nominated for an Academy Award for its special effects.

Century 21's return to television was the abortive series The Secret Service, which this time mixed live action with Supermarionation. The series was inspired by Anderson's love of British comedian Stanley Unwin, who was known for his nonsense language, 'Unwinese', which he created and used on radio, in film and most famously on the 1968 Small Faces LP Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake. Despite Anderson's track record and Unwin's popularity, the series was cancelled before its first screening; Lew Grade considered that it would be incomprehensible to American audiences, and thus unsellable.

In 1969 the Andersons began production of a new TV series, UFO, Century 21's first full live-action television series. This sci-fi action-adventure series starred American-born actor Ed Bishop (who had also provided the voice of Captain Blue in Captain Scarlet & The Mysterons) as Commander Edward Straker, head of the secret defence organisation SHADO, set up to counter an alien invasion. UFO was more adult in tone than any of Anderson's puppet series, and mixed Century 21's signature futuristic action-adventure and special effects with serious dramatic elements. UFO was the last series made under the Century 21 Productions banner.

During production of UFO, Anderson was approached directly by Harry Saltzman (at the time co-producer of the James Bond film series with Albert "Cubby" Broccoli), and was invited to write and produce the next film in the series, which was to be Moonraker.[14] Collaborating with Tony Barwick to provide the characterisation, whilst he himself focused on the action sequences, Anderson wrote and delivered a treatment to Saltzman. Nothing ultimately came of it, and Broccoli and Saltzman proceeded to make Diamonds Are Forever (1971) and Live and Let Die (1973) and, after co-producing 1974's Bond film, The Man with the Golden Gun, the Saltzman-Broccoli partnership dissolved. Offered £20,000 for the treatment, Anderson refused, fearing that if he accepted he would not be at the helm when it was made; the next Bond film to be made was 1977's The Spy Who Loved Me. (This film used only the title of the actual Ian Fleming novel.) Anderson started legal proceedings against Broccoli for plagiarism of story elements but withdrew the action shortly after, nervous of the legal might lined up against him. He relinquished the treatment, and received £3,000 in compensation. A film version of Moonraker was eventually produced in 1979, but did not involve any of Anderson's material.

By the time UFO concluded, the relationship between the Andersons had deteriorated. Although produced under the aegis of a new company, Group Three Productions (the three being both of the Andersons and Reg Hill), Anderson decided not to work with his wife on his next project, the ITC action series The Protectors. It was one of Anderson's few non-original projects. Lew Grade himself was heavily involved in the programme, and cast both the lead actors, Robert Vaughn and Nyree Dawn Porter. The production was difficult for Anderson, who clashed with the famously difficult Vaughn.[15] There were also many logistical problems arising from the Europe-wide filming of the show, but it was very successful in both the UK and America and its theme song "Avenues and Alleyways" became a hit record in the UK for singer Tony Christie. It was also the first live-action series produced by Anderson to survive to a second season.

Following The Protectors, Anderson worked on several new projects, none of which he was able to take into production. A proposed second series of UFO was not undertaken, and a return to marionettes in the television pilot for a series called The Investigator failed to find a buyer. Elements of the abandoned second series of UFO were eventually turned into what became the most expensive television series ever made at that time, Space: 1999.

Another futuristic science-fiction adventure, it was based on the premise that a huge thermonuclear explosion on the Moon's surface (caused by the storage of nuclear waste there) projected the Moon out of orbit and into interplanetary space. The series starred the American husband-and-wife actors Martin Landau and Barbara Bain, who had gained international fame in the TV series Mission: Impossible. They were cast at the insistence of Grade, and against Sylvia Anderson's strenuous objections.

The Andersons' marriage broke down during the first series of Space: 1999 in 1975; Gerry announced his intention to separate on the evening of the wrap party.[16][17] Sylvia severed her ties with Group Three, and, to alleviate his financial plight, Anderson sold his share of the profits from the APF/Century 21 shows and their holiday home in Portugal to Lew Grade.

Between making the two series of Space: 1999, Anderson produced a one-off television special, The Day After Tomorrow (also known as Into Infinity), about two spacefaring families en route to Alpha Centauri, for an NBC series of programmes illustrating current scientific theory for popular consumption. While making this project, Anderson met Mary Robins (b. 1949), a secretary working at the studios; they began a relationship and were married on 11 April 1981.[18]

Space: 1999 was successful enough that a second (and final) series went into production in 1976 with American producer Fred Freiberger brought in to replace Sylvia Anderson. Freiberger was known for producing the final season of the original Star Trek. Under Freiberger the series underwent a number of cast and cosmetic changes. Space: 1999 marked the end of Anderson's association with ATV.

By the late 1970s, Anderson's life and career were at a low point: he was in financial difficulty, found it hard to get work, and he experienced family difficulties.

By December 1980, Gerry and Sylvia's marriage was officially over, and they divorced.[18] In 1981, episodes of many of Anderson's Supermarionation series were edited together as films, aired as Super Space Theatre. A number of similarly reedited feature-length productions were also syndicated and released on home video, such as Destination: Moonbase Alpha, a reedited version of a two-part Space: 1999 storyline. Some of these films were marketed in the US as part of a series of action-adventure videos featuring specially shot introductions by actress Sybil Danning.

In the early 1980s, Anderson formed a new partnership, Anderson Burr Pictures Ltd, with businessman Christopher Burr. The new company's first production was based on an unrealised concept devised by Anderson in the late 1970s for a Japanese cartoon series. Terrahawks marked Anderson's return to working with puppets, but rather than marionettes this series used a new system dubbed 'Supermacromation' which used highly sophisticated glove puppets—an approach inspired by the advances in this form of marionation made by Jim Henson and his colleagues.

It featured another reuse of the Captain Scarlet/UFO formula of a secret organisation defending against aliens. Terrahawks ran successfully from 1983 to 1986 in the UK but fell short of a four-year American syndication deal by one season when the show was cancelled. Terrahawks retains a cult following to this day. Anderson had claimed on record that he would rather forget the show.

Anderson hoped to continue his renewed success with a series called Space Police, a new show mixing live action and puppets. The Space Police name had already been registered by another company, so Anderson's programme eventually emerged in 1995 as Space Precinct. A pilot film had previously been made with Shane Rimmer, but it took almost ten years to get the concept to the screen. In the meantime, Anderson and Burr produced the cult stop-motion animated series Dick Spanner, which enjoyed many showings on the British Channel 4 in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It was the final project completed by Anderson Burr. Anderson then joined the Moving Picture Company as a commercials director, and provided special effects direction for the musical comedy Return to the Forbidden Planet.

The cult appeal of Thunderbirds and the other Supermarionation series grew steadily over the years and was celebrated by comedy and stage productions such as the hit two-man stage revue Thunderbirds FAB. In the early 1990s, ITC began releasing home video versions of the Supermarionation shows, and the profile of the shows was further enhanced by productions such as the Dire Straits music video for their single "Calling Elvis", which was made as an affectionate Thunderbirds pastiche (with Anderson co-producing), and by Lady Penelope and Parker appearing in a series of UK advertisements for Swinton Insurance.

In 1991 Gerry asked journalist and author Simon Archer to write his biography, following an interview by the latter for a series of articles for Century 21 magazine. In September that year in the UK, BBC2 began a repeat showing of Thunderbirds, which rivalled the success of its original run a generation before. This was also surprisingly the series' network television premiere, having never been shown nationally by ITV. It became so popular in Britain that toy manufacturers Matchbox were unable to keep up with the demand for the Tracy Island playset, leading children's show Blue Peter to broadcast a segment showing children how to construct their own for a second time, the first being during the original run. The fan base for the Anderson shows was now worldwide and growing steadily, and Anderson found himself in demand for personal and media appearances.

In response to this greater demand Anderson performed a successful one-man show in 1992, which Archer had written and constructed. Entitled An Evening with Gerry Anderson, it took the form of an illustrated lecture in which he talked about his career, and his most popular shows. He also made numerous media and personal appearances to tie in with revivals and video cassette releases of Stingray, Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet and Joe 90.

Anderson was interviewed for the BBC's 1993 Doctor Who documentary, Thirty Years in the TARDIS. He joked that, despite his career of making children's programming, the "real tragedy of my life" was that his own son Jamie (appearing with him) was a Doctor Who fanatic.

By 1993 Archer published the trivia book Gerry Anderson's FAB Facts.[19] Archer was killed in a car crash on London's orbital M25 motorway on his way to the publishers to collect one of the first print run to present to Anderson, and the book later had to be withdrawn from sale and thousands of copies destroyed as a result of a copyright dispute with ITC America.[20]

The renewed interest enabled Anderson to return to television production, but several projects including GFI (an animated update of Thunderbirds) did not make it into production. Finally, in 1994, Anderson was able to get Space Precinct into production. It was followed by Lavender Castle, a children's sci-fi fantasy series combining stop-motion animation and computer-generated imagery.

In the meantime, the biography, which had been set aside since Archer's death, had been picked up again and was completed by Stan Nicholls from Archer's original notes and manuscript, finally being published in 1996 shortly before Lavender Castle went into production.

Around this time Anderson was reunited with his elder son, Gerry Jr., Anderson reportedly experienced powerful feelings of animosity toward his ex-wife Sylvia at the idea she had been responsible for his enforced estrangement from his son.[21]

By December 1999, Anderson was working on plans for a computer-animated sequel to Captain Scarlet, and he showed early test reels at a few fan conventions. These reels had the visual design and characters looking very much as they had in the original show, although the vehicle designs had been somewhat modernised. Several years after the initial tests the project evolved into the remake New Captain Scarlet, by which time the entire appearance had been significantly updated.

Anderson was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire in the 2001 Birthday Honours for services to Animation.[22]

Along with his business partner John Needham, Anderson created another new series entitled Firestorm, financed by Japanese investors and featured anime style animation. Other planned shows with other Japanese backers, including Eternity failed to come to fruition. Firestorm was sold throughout south-east Asia. Anderson and Needham parted company in 2003.

Anderson was originally approached to be involved in a live-action feature film adaptation of Thunderbirds as far back as 1996,[23] but he was actually turned away by the producers of the 2004 film Thunderbirds, which was directed by Jonathan Frakes, after first being invited to meet with them.[24] He distanced himself overtly from the project, later turning down an offer of $750,000 simply to write an endorsement of the film shortly before its release; Sylvia Anderson served as a consultant on the project and received a "special thanks" credit in the film. The film received poor critical reviews and was unsuccessful at the US box-office. Anderson disliked the film, describing it as "the biggest load of crap I have ever seen in my life".[25]

New Captain Scarlet finally premiered in the UK in February 2005. The show cost £23,000,000 to produce and was the most expensive children's programme ever to be made in the UK (until Ragdoll's In the Night Garden came out 2 years later).[26] Many companies invested in producing toys and merchandise. Broadcaster ITV incorporated episodes into Ministry of Mayhem, an existing children's show, and showed it in two halves, separated by games and adverts. Disappointing merchandising sales followed. The accompanying comic lasted only six editions before being scrapped by its publishers. Anderson's displeasure at ITV's handling of the show was widely reported.[26] The series was subsequently released on DVD.

2005 also saw the 40th Anniversary of Thunderbirds, and a wide range of merchandise was produced to celebrate the event. In 2006, ITV re-ran the entire series on its fledgling CITV channel, a digital service available on cable, satellite and the Freeview service. ITV4, another digital channel, also ran repeats of UFO and Space: 1999 up until the end of 2009.

In March 2011, Anderson was working with Daniel Pickering and Annix Studios on a new project named Christmas Miracle, a children's CGI animated feature. In June 2012 it was reported that Anderson had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease.[27]

On 25 March 2013, in an announcement on the official Gerry Anderson website, Anderson's younger son Jamie announced that a number of projects that Anderson had been unable to finish during his lifetime were being developed by his company Anderson Entertainment and would be financed primarily through Kickstarter crowdfunding.[36] On 27 July 2013 the name of the first Gerry Anderson legacy project was announced on the official Gerry Anderson website[37] as a trilogy of novels entitled Gemini Force One. The first novel, Black Orchid, was published in 2014. In 2019 a pilot episode for a new puppet-based science fiction series based upon concepts developed by Anderson, Firestorm, was released on YouTube by Anderson Entertainment. It uses a combination of hand- and electronically controlled puppets and green screen effects in an updated form of Supermarionation dubbed "Ultramarionation". Production of a full-length series was scheduled to begin in 2019.[38]

• Calling Elvis for Dire Straits (1991)

• Blue Skies Ahead (1960–61)

An info-commercial style advertising campaign for Blue Car European coach tours show during 1960–1961 in fifteen minute segments on British television.