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Ken Annakin

In the early 1950s, the Disney Studio set about making a series of films in Great Britain. The first, of course, was Walt’s first exclusively live-action film, "Treasure Island." When that was completed, he set about work on a second British film, "The Story of Robin Hood." This was a particularly daring choice, given the inevitable comparisons with the earlier version of that story starring Errol Flynn. To undertake this daunting task, Walt hired director Ken Annakin.

Thus began a long-lasting relationship. Walt liked Ken’s work so much that he hired him to direct several more films, including "The Sword and the Rose," "Third Man on the Mountain," and particularly "Swiss Family Robinson" [See the Video].

Ken is a candid, charming, and witty man, and it seemed only fitting in this, the fiftieth anniversary year of the release of "Robin Hood," to share some excerpts of a conversation with him.

 

Q. Were there any concerns for you about indirectly competing with the great Errol Flynn version of "Robin Hood"?

A. No, because in the planning of our picture they were very, very determined that ours should be very, very true. We went up to Sherwood Forest; we went up to Nottingham and the script was written as accurately as it could be there, from all the records. And so I thought we were probably making a truer picture than had been made before. Now we didn't have Errol Flynn but all the things that we had in the picture were very British and very true. Walt was making his picture, his version.

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Q. Though Walt had clearly sketched out the story line, he wasn’t actually in England for the filming, was he?

A. He didn't stay very long on "Robin." He trusted Perce Pearce as the producer. He came to trust me as the director and I must say, I have never had Walt looking over my shoulder at anything. He visited the set maybe half a dozen times, stayed probably two or three hours maybe while we were shooting. And I remember that he used to go off to a place very near Denham where we were shooting, he used to go off to Beaconsfield and spend hours with a guy who had the best model railway, I think, in the world.

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Q. But his influence on the picture was still enormous, wasn’t it?

A. I realized quite quickly, especially on "Sword and the Rose," that Walt's decisions were pretty wonderful. He was a genius in making scenes, or in helping you to make scenes. He had the audience, an overall family audience, in mind and he knew what he was making for them. That was Walt's greatest genius.
.

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Q. What was it like, working in Technicolor?

A. In those days the lighting was very complicated. I mean, you had to have much more light. I mean up on the gantries, I should think we had 60 brutes, which is really quite something. And the, Guy's lighting was brilliant. He's the only cameraman who really ever worked with a key light that the whole, if you were shooting in a forest in the studio, that key light had to be where the sun was, with very little addition. And he would take probably an hour or so to get that key light absolutely right.

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Q. You came into "Robin Hood" after Walt had already worked out the story. But what was your involvement in "The Sword and the Rose"?

A. I was deeply involved in the sketching of every sequence. This is something I learned a great deal about from Walt. You would do your sketches and he would come round and check them. And then you were not, you were not as a director forced into keeping exactly to that. But you were forced to keep exactly to the spirit of that. And if you started diverting, you would get a question from him, why are you doing this way? I can remember once I started [cutting from] a sequence and Walt said, "Well, why didn't you shoot exactly to what we'd agreed?" And I said, "Well, I was told we were going over budget and I was trying to save a little." He said, "Have I ever queried the budget? Have I ever asked you to cut? Let's keep to what we agreed."

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Q. Tell us about the use of storyboards for plotting films with Walt.

A. The story was written on storyboards and then the writer added the dialogue to the storyboards. I'd never experienced that elsewhere. But it meant that you made that picture visually and Walt certainly had a great feeling that pictures were a visual medium and that you really made your point visually.

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Q. Tell us about that process for "Swiss Family Robinson."

A. In "Swiss Family" we diverted completely from the book. Walt just said, "The book is fine, it tells of a family who are shipwrecked, who leave Europe and who are shipwrecked on an island and they land on the island. And they could have anything they want there. Let's just all think of what you would like if you were with your family there and you would like to have adventures."

And Walt would come in in the morning and say, "I just had an idea last night. Why don't we have this and this, why don't we have them going to, finding an elephant or finding a tiger?" And you would say, "Well, what country is this?" He says, "Well it doesn't matter, we can always say there was a land bridge." And so that's why we were able to mix a few different animals in that picture.


Ken Annakin and James MacArthur
Ken Annakin directs James MacArthur (Fritz)
in the 1960 picture "Swiss Family Robinson"

 

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Q. What if you disagreed with Walt’s thoughts?

A. You found that if Walt really had a strong idea, and you opposed it, then you might be in a certain amount of trouble. He would then really stick to his idea. But if you played around it and threw in other suggestions, then he was very, very malleable to those suggestions. But eventually it had to go through this brain and fit his idea of a picture.

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Q. Can you remember a time when you didn’t want to go down Walt’s path?

A. Well, I can certainly tell you one. In "Swiss Family" he wanted the tiger and he wanted the tiger to be quite active. In fact he wanted, when the dogs attack, he insisted that the dogs actually hit the tiger, touched him. And I just said, "Well Walt, I've been shooting in South Africa and I had a lion. And a tiger is much less trainable than a lion, and we always had a guy with a gun there, that if we'd had trouble, it would have been shot."

And Walt suddenly said, "Ken's afraid of a tiger." And that thing went through the whole time. Every time we came to the tiger, he said, "Well of course, we know Ken's afraid of the tiger, but do you think you can possibly shoot it this way?" And that became a gag all the way through. But because I had suggested that there were difficulties in shooting, Walt would say, would say, "Well I can always find somebody else to shoot the tiger in this way."

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