Gerry Anderson was born in Hampstead, London on Sunday 14th April 1929. In a course in architecture at his local polytechnic, Anderson studied in plastering but always dreamed of putting his skills to producing moulding to film sets, when he discovered he was allergic to the plaster lime. Developing dermatitis, which took the skin off his arms up to his elbows, he had to quickly rethink his career. Anderson applied for a job at the Colonial Film Unit where he discovered he had talent in editing - at a branch of the Ministry of Information. He was able to find work at Gainsborough Pictures, one of the country's leading independent film-makers.
Anderson made it in the film industry as an assistant editor for the 1946 film Caravan. This was then followed by more works like Jassy, Snowbound, The Clouded Yellow, South At Algiers and A Prize Of Gold. By this point, Anderson had made it to Pinewood studios, but once leaving he left to Polytechnic Films, an independent television production company where he directed the unbroadcasted documentary You've Never Seen This (1955). Once the company folded in 1957, he co-founded commercials with Polytechnic cameraman Arthur Provis, along with designers Reg Hill, John Read and secretary Sylvia Thamm. The new company would be named AP Films after the name of the two co-founders and was based at Maidenhead in Islet Park. Little work would come their way, and only after six months, the business was close to liquidation.
However, AP Films was saved when Associated Rediffusion executive Suzanne Warneer and children's author Roberta Leigh approached the company to produce a new television series for the newly formed Independent TeleVision (ITV). Anderson and Provis immediately accepted the contract and hoped they could make the best television series they could, hoping they could eventually move into live-action at some point. 52 episodes of the puppet series The Adventures Of Twizzle were filmed between August 1957 and January 1958. First broadcast in November 1957, Twizzle told the adventures of a boy doll who could "twizzle" his legs to extend much higher and escapes from a toy shop to escape being sold to a naughty girl, where he explores the world and has adventures with other toys and animals. Sadly, only one episode survives in existence today.
With a popular response, a second series was quickly commissioned called Torchy the Battery Boy, in a series about a battery-powered living doll who travels in a rocket to Topsy Turvy land, a place where all the toys have run away from their cruel child owners who don't look after them properly. Eventually, Anderson and Provis would branch out and produce their own shows whilst Leigh would continue on shows like Space Patrol and many one-off pilots like Paul Starr and The Solarnauts, but after little success would go on to write fiction books. Four Feather Falls was a fantasy Western series which stared Rex Tucker as the lead role voiced by Nicholas Parsons. Each series from this point would go on and develop its own puppetry techniques as the team would begin to experiment with the puppets and effects. Here, the team would begin using electronics to match the movement of the puppet's mouth. When a pilot episode of Four Feather Falls was made at Islet Park, the series was sold to Granada Television to make a further 38 episodes of the series at the Slough Trading Estate.
In the meantime, Anderson took the company in a new direction with an opportunity with Anglo Amalgamated to quickly produce a live-action film, Crossroads To Crime (1960). The film was budgeted at £16,500, which even for 1960 is hardly anything. This small figure obviously had some effect on the performance of the film, even among those who worked on it have described it to be somewhat terrible.
More plans were forged ahead with Supercar, the first time Anderson would venture into science-fiction. Just around this time, Anderson had his first meeting with Lew Grade; the UK managing director of ITC (Incorporated Television Company), this would be one of Anderson's best and most important friendship's throughout his entire life. When he promoted his pitch for Supercar, Grade then agreed to place an order for 26 x 25 minute episodes, and for APF to halve the budget of £3000 per episode. But Gerry Anderson had only been able to cut costs down by a third of the budget, and so each episode would be budgeted at £2000 each. Supercar told the stories of the crew of a powerful vehicle and the adventures of its owners; Mike Mercury, Dr. Beaker, Professor Popkiss, Jimmy, Mitch and prevent it from falling into the hands of evil men like Masterspy and Zarrin. Production on the series commenced in September 1960.
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The Secret Service: The Vault
Non-FictionThe Secret Service was a 1960s British children's TV series created by Gerry Anderson and the team of Century 21 studios in Slough, from the makers of Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet and Space: 1999. This was the final of his television series to feat...
