The Long Duel

Kenneth Cooper Annakin OBE was an English film director. Annakin grew up in Beverley, Yorkshire where he attended the local school. He began his career in feature films following an early experience making documentaries. His first filmwork was in 1947 with the Rank Organisation. The following year... he moved to Gainsborough Pictures to direct three films about the Huggetts, a working class family living in suburban England these highly successful films starring Jack Warner, Kathleen Harrison, Petula Clark and Diana Dors are seen as the genesis of the British soap opera. Annakin became known for a series of Walt Disney adventures including The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men , The Sword and the Rose , Third Man on the Mountain , and Swiss Family Robinson . He was later associated with another American producer, Darryl F. Zanuck, when he was hired to direct the British segments in The Longest Day . As head of the 20th Century-Fox Studio, Zanuck endorsed Annakin's most ambitious project Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines .
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