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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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Harold French was an English director and actor of stage and screen. As an actor most of his roles occurred between 1912 and 1936. He did not garner as much attention as an actor as he would as a director. From 1940 to 1955 he had a several solid box-office successes. This successful period was... clouded by the 1941 death of his wife Phyllis in a bombing raid. Although he did some TV work after 1955 he appears to have retired from directing or acting after 1963. He died in 1997, aged 100.
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