The Anderson Chronicles

Michael Anderson, who died at 98 on April 25, 2018, is a difficult filmmaker to get a handle on. He entered British cinema as an errand boy and extra. After dutifully working as an assistant director on a number of pictures throughout the 1940s, including a couple of movies directed by a young Peter Ustinov, he was a fledgling director of a handful of features before hitting pay dirt with 1955's "The Dam Busters," a crackerjack World War II action film based on an actual daring raid targeting Germany's industrial heart.

The 1943 attack, dubbed "Operation Chastise," was aimed at three dams in Germany's Ruhr valley by the Royal Air Force's 617 Squadron, armed with revolutionary bouncing bombs, invented by British scientist Barnes Wallis (portrayed in the film by Michael Redgrave). The bombs were designed to skip on top of the water to avoid defensive torpedo netting and then explode below the surface near the dams' walls. Eight Lancaster bombers were lost to German antiaircraft fire, with a crew loss of 53 out of the original 133, but two of the three dams were breached, and the mission was declared a success.

Despite debuting a decade too late, when English audiences had become jaded to war propaganda about stiff-upper-lipped bravery in combat, the movie itself, which stressed the trial and error elements of the operation, as well as the understated sardonic sense of humor shared by the comrades, was a major success, becoming the most popular British box office picture of the year. Robert Shaw, long before achieving international stardom as Quint the shark hunter in "Jaws," had a supporting role as a flight engineer (pictured above). The exciting depiction of the raid itself inspired the trench run by the X-wing fighters into the heart of the Death Star in George Lucas' "Star Wars IV - A New Hope."

The addition of a happy ending for its American release did
little to enhance "1984's" box office tally in the U.S.

Anderson followed up "The Dam Busters" in 1956 with "1984," a much anticipated but downbeat, ultimately drily disappointing adaptation of George Orwell's depiction of a future totalitarian society in the 1949 novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, featuring Edmond O'Brien as a rebellious history reviser. Despite the presence of a prestigious cast of British thespians, among them Michael Redgrave, Mervyn Johns, and Donald Pleasence, the movie provided an early example of director Anderson's lack of ability to muster a visual theme worthy of the performances.

As a trivial aside, a fledgling Saskatchewan-born actor named John Vernon voiced "Big Brother" in "1984," years before his breakout role as Dean Vernon Wormer in "National Lampoon's Animal House" (pictured above).

It should be noted that an equally depressing version of Nineteen Eighty-Four came out in the year 1984 itself, scripted and directed by Michael Radford ("Il Postino") and featuring John Hurt and, in his final screen role, Richard Burton. Perhaps the downbeat source material itself always defied a satisfactory screen treatment.

Somehow, Michael Anderson backed his way into the director's seat for the 1956 all-star, eye-popping "Around the World in 80 Days," loosely based on Jules Verne's classic 1873 novel and produced by master Broadway showman Michael Todd. Originally, Australian-born director John Farrow (who married "Tarzan's" Maureen O'Sullivan and fathered seven children, including actress Mia Farrow), who co-wrote the picture's Oscar-winning screenplay, was fired by Todd just after filming the Spanish scenes in "Around the World in 80 Days." Based on the strength of his success with "The Dam Busters" and on the personal recommendation of British playwright and raconteur Noel Coward, 35-year-old Michael Anderson was anointed as the successive director of the wide-screen spectacle.

Director Michael Anderson (left) confers with producer Michael Todd
as Frank Sinatra listens on the Barbary Coast saloon set of "Around
the World in 80 Days."

On the surface, the straightforward plot of a snobbish member of a misogynistic club in London who makes a wager that he can circumvent the globe in the prescribed 80 days doesn't go beyond the involvement of the Victorian gentleman, his recently hired valet, an errant Scotland Yard inspector, and a widowed Indian princess, but in the unbridled realm of moviemaking, the dazzling spectacle boasted over 100 international locations, including England, France, Spain, India, Thailand, Japan, and the United States, as well as 140 studio sets. The total cast numbered 68,894, including 10,000 extras for the bullfighting sequence in Chinchón, Spain, and 650 extras as Native Americans for an attack on a train. Wardrobe spent $410,000 to provide 75,000 costumes (the most in Hollywood history) and 36,000 assorted accessories and trinkets. The production utilized nearly 8000 animals, among them a sacred cow that ate flowers on cue.

Michael Todd (left) joins Cantinflas and David Niven on the set.

David Niven, at nearly 6', was every inch Phileas Fogg, the mathematically precise eccentric, a role he was seemingly born to play. The role of Fogg's manservant, Passepartout, was changed from a Frenchman to a Spaniard to accommodate the casting of Cantinflas, the most famous Mexican comedian at the time. Producer Michael Todd added an extravagant bullfighting scene not in the book to take advantage of the actor's actual experience. In English-speaking markets, Niven was touted as the star, while elsewhere Cantinflas was billed as the lead.

Although it became an iconic image in promotional posters and in
the film itself, Jules Verne's original 1873 novel had no balloon. He
did, however, include one a decade earlier in his book Five Weeks
in a Balloon.

Robert Newton typically hammed his way through his role as Inspector Fix of Scotland Yard. It was Newton's over-the-top screen interpretations of Long John Silver and Blackbeard that pretty much provided the textbook for Talk Like a Pirate Days. A chronic alcoholic, Newton had sworn off drinking during production but once filming wrapped, he was back to his old habits. He died at age 50 of alcohol-related causes seven months before "Around the World in 80 Days" was released.

As Princess Aouda of India, this was the third movie role for starlet Shirley MacLaine (pictured below), after her debut in Hitchcock's "The Trouble with Harry" and the Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis comedy "Artists and Models."

More than anything, "Around the World in 80 Days" became a motion picture event for its casting of more than 40 established movie stars in what amounted to little more than walk-ons. To name but a few, the roster included Charles Boyer, John Carradine, Marlene Dietrich, John Gielgud, Buster Keaton, Peter Lorre, George Raft, Cesar Romero, Frank Sinatra, and Red Skelton. John Wayne turned down an appearance as a U.S. Cavalry officer. (Six years later, in the all-star World War II epic "The Longest Day," John Wayne railroaded producer Darryl F. Zanuck into a $250,000 paycheck - compared to the other actors' $25,000 - for a role he was 28 years too old to play. Allegedly, Wayne received the same salary for his role as a Roman centurion at the Crucifixion who utters one line - "Truly this man was the son of God" - in the star-studded 1965 biblical saga "The Greatest Story Ever Told.")

In its review of "Around the World in 80 Days," the Hollywood Reporter noted the cameos, remarking, "Running into them, old friends to many in the audience, is one of the many delights of this production." The film established the concept of the all-star cameo picture, something that would recur from 1962's "How the West Was Won" and 1963's "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" to 1977's "A Bridge Too Far," 1991's "JFK," and 2001's "Ocean's Eleven." Bosley Crowther, the venerable critic for The New York Times, deemed the production "a mammoth and mad pictorial rendering...a sprawling conglomeration of refined English comedy, giant-screen panoramics and slam-bang Ketystone burlesque."

Nominated for eight Academy Awards, the movie garnered Oscars for Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography (Color), Best Film Editing, and Best Music. In October 1957, producer Michael Todd hosted a network televised anniversary celebration of the picture's release at Madison Square Garden, with 18,000 invited guests in attendance. On March 22, 1958, Todd's private plane crashed after suffering engine failure in icy conditions, killing Todd and the three others aboard. He was en route to New York City to accept a "Showman of the Year" award from the Friars Club, an event his wife, actress Elizabeth Taylor, wanted to attend with him but stayed behind with a cold after Todd forbade her to come.

By all appearances, Michael Anderson's nomination for Best Director of "Around the World in 80 Days" was of little consequence as his journeyman-like career as a ham-and-egger progressed seemingly as before. In the 1960s, he was attached to a handful of relatively high-profile productions, among them: "Operation Crossbow," a flashy World War II spy thriller starring George Peppard, John Mills, and Sophia Loren (her husband, Carlo Ponti, produced); "The Quiller Memorandum," an entertainingly intricate spy story about neo-Nazis in Berlin, with George Segal, Alec Guinness, Max von Sydow, Senta Berger, and George Sanders; and "The Shoes of the Fisherman," a lavish Cold War-era drama, featuring Anthony Quinn as a former Siberian political prisoner who rises from reluctant cardinal to the papal throne in a cast that included Laurence Olivier, Oskar Werner, David Janssen, and John Gielgud.

Director Michael Anderson tries to interest a bored
Sophia Loren in his vision for "Operation Crossbow."

A gem among Anderson's mid-career hodgepodge of costume jewelry was 1975's "Conduct Unbecoming" (pictured below), based on British playwright Barry England's drama about an officer in colonial India accused of rape. The New York Times called it "fascinating entertainment" thanks to "its taut construction, mounting tension and polished performances" from a stellar cast boasting Michael York, Richard Attenborough, Stacy Keach, Christopher Plummer, and Susannah York.

Also in 1975, Michael Anderson, perhaps a decade too late to cash in on the cult appeal of the campy "Batman" TV series - which was the picture's intention - collaborated with fabled fantasy film producer George Pal (of "The War of the Worlds," "The Time Machine," and "7 Faces of Dr. Lao" renown) on the long anticipated screen version of "Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze," based on the superhero popular in pulp magazines of the 1930s and '40s.

Top-lining Ron Ely, undoubtedly the blandest of media Tarzans as the star of the 1966-1968 TV series, the movie just couldn't decide whether it was a kitschy sendup of pulp-dom or an affectionate valentine. Hey, come on, in the 'early 80s this guy was the toothy emcee of a syndicated game show called "Face the Music," a bargain-basement rip-off of "Name That Tune."

Tow-headed Doc Savage (Ron Ely) stands before The Fabulous Five:
archaeologist "Johnny" Littlejohn (Eldon Quick), Gen. "Ham" Brooks
(Darrell Zwerling), Col. "Renny" Renwick (Bill Lucking, the Army
recruiter in "Stripes"), Lt. Col. "Monk" Mayfair (Michael Miller), and
Maj. "Long Tom" Roberts (Paul Gleason, best known as tyrannical
assistant principal Vernon in "The Breakfast Club").

Norma Dent, the widow of Lester Dent, who was the main author of the original Doc Savage novels, loved the movie "Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze." She admitted tearing up when Ron Ely stoically delivered the Doc Savage Code: "Let us strive every moment of our lives to make ourselves better and better to the best of our ability so that all may profit by it. Let us think of the right and lend our assistance to all who may need it, with no regard for anything but justice. Let us take what comes with a smile, without loss of courage. Let us be considerate of our country, our fellow citizens, and our associates in everything we say and do. Let us do right to all - and wrong no man." Norma Dent said, "I thought my heart would burst with pride. I saw the movie three times...I cried when I heard Ron Ely deliver the Doc Savage Code - he said it as if he meant every word of it. It was wonderful."

Aided by helpful damsel-in-distress Mona Flores (played
by Pamela Hensley, best known as Princess Ardala on the
cheesy sci-fi series "Buck Rogers in the 25th Century" and
as lawyer sidekick C.J. Parsons on "Matt Houston"),
Doc thanks her with a spirited, "Mona, you're a brick!" 

If for nothing else, "Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze" at least answered the question, "Whatever happened to Miss Stein, Governor Le Petomane's secretary from 'Blazing Saddles' (pictured below)?"  The actress, Robyn Hilton, and her décolletage, appeared in "Doc Savage" as Karen, a henchwoman of evil smuggler Captain Seas.

Miss Stein (Robyn Hilton) assists Gov. Le Petomane (Mel Brooks)
in the western saga "Blazing Saddles."

Among starlet Hilton's other credits were roles in "The Last Porno Flick," "Video Vixens," and "Malibu Express," with Sybil Danning, comedian Art Metrano, and cameos by Regis and Joy Philbin as themselves.

Appearing on "The Tonight Show" to promote "Doc Savage:
The Man of Bronze," Robyn Hilton reminds host Johnny Carson
where her eyes are.

Producer George Pal intended on launching a "Doc Savage" film franchise, followed by an eventual television series. He originally approached Steve Reeves, the American bodybuilder who was cast as Hercules in Italian-produced sword-and-sandal epics for the starring role, but a strike by Hollywood screenwriters put the film on hold, and Reeves and the original director moved on.

Producer George Pal (right) joins director Michael Anderson
on the set of "Doc Savage: Man of Bronze."

"Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze" would be Pal's final production. At 72, he died of a heart attack in 1980. He was planning an epic science fiction fantasy titled "Voyage of the Berg," about an African potentate's desire to irrigate his arid land by transporting a massive iceberg from the Arctic.

Probably Michael Anderson's most popular notion picture after "Around the World in 80 Days," though not without problems of its own, was 1976's "Logan's Run," which depicted a future dystopian society masquerading as a utopia wherein those who turn 30 must participate in a ritual called "Carousel" that either nukes them into oblivion or promises a renewal of their life-clocks. Rebels who try to escape participation in Carousel are dubbed "runners" and are hunted down by guys called "sandmen" who use guns that go "zap." One sandman assigned to go undercover to destroy Sanctuary, the supposed safe haven for runners, is portrayed by Michael York, accompanied by a leggy fugitive played by Jenny Agutter.

Logan 6 (Michael York) and Jessica 6 (Jenny Agutter) discover
the ruins of what was once Washington, D.C. in "Logan's Run."
Note the faded presidential portrait in the background.

The film features spirited performances by Richard Jordan, Peter Ustinov, and Roscoe Lee Browne as a delightfully homicidal robot named Box, with a particularly hare-brained turn by Farrah Fawcett (credited as Fawcett-Majors from her marriage at the time to actor Lee Majors) as a member of the underground with a laughably short memory span.

More so than ditzy Fawcett-Majors' screen skid mark, one performer who almost singlehandedly tripped up "Logan's Run" was Michael Anderson Jr., the director's son, who chewed the scenery as "Doc" (pictured below, with Jenny Agutter), a laser-armed cosmetology surgeon at The New You Shop who attempts to give Michael York a fatal makeover.

After giving British contemporary Hayley Mills her first screen kiss in the 1959 crime drama "Tiger Bay" (starring Hayley's pop John Mills), the younger Anderson costarred with her in the 1962 Jules Verne-inspired Disney adventure "In Search of the Castaways," featuring Maurice Chevalier, George Sanders, and Wilfrid Hyde-White.

Michael Anderson Jr. (left) sits beside Gary Raymond, as Simon
Peter, at the Last Supper, with Max von Sydow as Jesus Christ
in "The Greatest Story Ever Told."

Following a subtly ingenuous portrayal of the Disciple James the Younger in the all-star New Testament epic "The Greatest Story Ever Told," Middlesex, London-born Michael Anderson Jr. mastered an American frontier dialect for a string of roles in the 1965 Hollywood westerns "Major Dundee," a flawed gem directed by Sam Peckinpah and starring Charlton Heston, Richard Harris, Jim Hutton, James Coburn, Senta Berger, Warren Oates, and Ben Johnson; "The Sons of Katie Elder," as a sibling among unlikely brothers John Wayne, Dean Martin, and Earl Holliman; and "The Glory Guys," a fictionalized version of Custer's Last Stand scripted by Sam Peckinpah, featuring Tom Tryon, Harve Presnell, Senta Berger (again!), James Caan, Andrew Duggan, and Slim Pickens.

Somebody convince us that John Wayne, Michael Anderson Jr.,
Dean Martin, and Earl Holliman all came from the same mother
in "The Sons of Katie Elder."

Trooper Ryan (Michael Anderson Jr.) gets his breeches - and
backside - stitched up in "Major Dundee."

Erik Holland, Adam Williams, James Caan, and Michael
Anderson Jr. play green recruits in "The Glory Guys."

"Logan's Run" was Jenny Agutter's first Hollywood role, and she was delighted to be working with Michael Anderson, of whose reputation as the director of "The Dam Busters" and "Around the World in 80 Days" she was well aware. What may not have delighted Agutter so much was the skimpy wardrobe she wore, barely, as Jessica 6 (pictured below). As Roger Ebert observed in his review, "People wear the regulation futurist leotards and miniskirts."

Not that Jenny ever had any qualms about baring herself before the camera, starting with a full-frontal skinny-dip at age 16 in the Australian film "Walkabout," followed by nude scenes in "Equus," "China 9, Liberty 37" "Sweet William," and "An American Werewolf in London." In fact, she and Michael York did appear naked briefly in "Logan's Run," but the scene was cut to secure a PG rating. Truth be told, the costumes overall were originally designed to be more revealing, but that would have entailed spending more on the makeup for exposed skin.

Agutter observed how much director Michael Anderson enjoyed being surrounded by all the miniature sets and models and special effects. "'Isn't it terrific?' she quoted Anderson as saying. 'It's just like being a child with a train set!' You just felt that everything was a joy, and it was all games, but...it all went to something good, and I think that comes over in the film."

The New York Times review stated, "'Logan's Run' is less interested in logic than in gadgets and spectacle...Had more attention been paid to the screenplay, the movie might have been a stunner." Perhaps it was director Anderson's likening of the production to a child's train set that worked against the outcome. New York magazine, which dismissed the movie as "another of those tiresome world-after-the-holocaust bits," wondered "whether it fails more as science or fiction." Calling it a "vast, silly extravaganza," Roger Ebert noted, "The movie's ending is unabashed cornball utopian. But 'Logan's Run' has wit enough to work on such a level; even while we're chuckling at such an audacious use of cliché, we're having fun."

We all remember what legendary producer Dino De Laurentiis said when he unleashed his campy remake of "King Kong" in 1976, starring Jeff Bridges, Charles Grodin, and Jessica Lange in her first film role. He told Time magazine, "No one cry when Jaws die. But when the monkey die, people gonna cry." The line was famously lampooned in an impression by John Belushi on "Saturday Night Live."

Dino De Laurentiis poses with the paw of "King Kong."

Apparently, Dino couldn't shake his obsession with besting "Jaws" at the box office, as one late night in the mid-1970s, he telephoned screenwriter Luciano Vincenzoni with the instructions to "find a fish tougher and more terrible than the great white." Luciano had little interest in sea life but was directed to killer whales by his brother, who had an interest in zoology. The result was 1977's "Orca," a "Jaws" rip-off with elements of Moby-Dick's Captain Ahab tossed in, starring Richard Harris as the obsessed mariner and directed by Michael Anderson.

Looking fetching in her form-fitting wetsuit, Charlotte Rampling

plays an impassioned whale expert in "Orca," with Richard Harris.

Seeking unnatural anthropomorphic revenge for the death of its pregnant mate, the singleminded killer whale of the title dispatches Harris' shipmates Keenan Wynn, Robert Carradine, and Peter Hooten one by one, while chomping off the leg of Harris' girlfriend, played by Bo Derek in her feature film debut.

Bo Derek projects terror as the one-legged victim of the killer whale.
Four years later, superstar Bo Derek would portray Richard Harris'
daughter in the softcore jungle erotica of "Tarzan, the Ape Man."

At least Will Sampson (pictured below, with Charlotte Rampling), in the sagacious Native American role he always seemed to be cast in (this time he's an Inuit named Umiak), is spared the whale's jaws but dies anyway in an avalanche of ice blocks.

Throughout his all too brief screen career (ten films in ten years),
Will Sampson repeatedly portrayed the indigenous American
equivalent to saintly black characters from films like "The Shining,"
"The Shawshank Redemption," and "The Legend of Bagger Vance."

Reviewing "Orca" on the online magazine Slant, Eric Henderson remarked that the film "refuses to see whales in any terms other than how they relate to the stock human revenge melodrama." At least the film featured a remarkably haunting score by the incomparable Ennio Morricone.

The three-part 1980 miniseries "The Martian Chronicles" certainly started with the noblest of intentions. It was based on Ray Bradbury's sprawling 1950 saga of short stories, vignettes, and prose poems about the conflicts between the aboriginal Martians and colonists from war-torn Earth. The teleplay, based on consultations with Bradbury, was written by Richard Matheson, a masterful author of science fiction, fantasy, and horror in his own right, having penned The Shrinking Man, I Am Legend, Hell House, and What Dreams May Come.

Michael Anderson was hired to direct the impressive cast, which featured Rock Hudson, Gayle Hunnicutt, Bernie Casey, Roddy McDowall, Darren McGavin, Bernadette Peters, Joyce Van Patten, and Fritz Weaver. The NBC miniseries was originally scheduled for the fall 1979 season until it received negative publicity from Ray Bradbury himself. Bradbury ended up the sole spokesperson for the production at a press conference when he was asked what he thought of the miniseries. He replied, "Booooring!" The network quietly shelved the miniseries and didn't release it until January 1980. The event passed with little notice, leaving most Ray Bradbury fans disappointed.

Vadim Glowna, Nicholas Hammond, and director's son Michael
Anderson Jr. portray a trio of Mars voyagers duped into believing
they've touched down in a homespun town from their past.

One reviewer, Richard Schieb, blamed "the unfortunate failing of 'The Martian Chronicles'" on Michael Anderson, whose films, at least in the critic's eye, "suffer from a leaden heavy-handedness and flatly literal lack of imagination...Anderson's pace in the miniseries is slow moving and pedestrian...his plodding hand causes the respective twist ending of each story to be tipped off well in advance."

The funny thing is, Michael Anderson prided himself in directing science fiction. "I'm totally fascinated by it and whenever I'm asked to do science fiction I jump at it because it's something I really enjoy," he said. "You can use your own imagination more. It opens up visual aspects that are taboo or you don't get the opportunity to do in normal films. Where do you get the opportunity of doing a time tank? Or a holograph? Or somebody walking from the past into the future or the present? It's a fascinating spirit - something we all dream about."

During the latter part of his career, Anderson got involved in lavishly produced historical drama and literary adaptations for television. His 1991 miniseries "Young Catherine," featuring Julia Ormond as the future Catherine the Great, won Vanessa Redgrave a Supporting Actress Emmy Award for her portrayal of Catherine's aunt, Empress Elizabeth of Russia, in an international cast that included Christopher Plummer, Franco Nero, Marthe Keller, and Maximilian Schell.

The 1993 TV movie "The Sea Wolf" starred Charles Bronson as Jack London's amoral seal-hunting Captain Wolf Larsen who rescues an effete aristocrat (Christopher Reeve) and a female companion (Catherine Mary Stewart) from a ship wreck. This was at least the 10th film version of London's classic Darwinian battle-of-survival on the high seas.

"Death Wish" meets "Superman" - no, wait, it's Charles
Bronson and Christopher Reeve in "The Sea Wolf."

For Hallmark Entertainment, Michael Anderson directed the 1996 television adaptation of Rudyard Kipling's "Captains Courageous," with Robert Urich as Captain Troop, a role previously played by Lionel Barrymore and Karl Malden.

Kenny Vadas plays spoiled rich kid Harvey Cheyne Jr. to
Robert Urich's Captain Troop in "Captains Courageous."

Almost back-to-back with "Captains Courageous," Anderson directed the 1997 made-for-television Hallmark production "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea," bringing the director back to the world of Jules Verne four decades after "Around the World in 80 Days." Ben Cross, a British stage and screen actor best known for his portrayals of early Olympics sprinter Harold Abrahams in 1981's "Chariots of Fire" and as Spock's Vulcan father Sarek in the 2009 big-screen reboot of "Star Trek," top-lined the cast as the megalomaniacal Captain Nemo, with Richard Crenna as Professor Arronax. For contemporary audiences, Arronax was assigned a daughter (Julia Cox), initially disguised as a cabin boy, who plays into a concocted romantic triangle between Nemo and the character of whaling harpooner Ned Land, portrayed by Canadian actor Paul Gross, who starred in the comedic crime series "Due South" in the mid-1990s.

Battle of the network Nemos: (Top) Ben Cross is eyed skeptically
by Julia Cox in director Michael Anderson's version of "20,000
Leagues Under the Sea"; (below) Michael Caine poses aboard the
Nautilus with Mia Sara and Patrick Dempsey in the ABC version.

Coincidentally, a mere two months after the Hallmark telecast, ABC-TV aired a two-part miniseries version of "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea," which cast Michael Caine as a brooding Captain Nemo with inexplicable cyborg-like metallic gloves and "Grey's Anatomy"s neurosurgeon Patrick Dempsey as a "McDreamy" version of Professor Arronax. Toss is in the presence of a not-in-the-novel daughter of Nemo, played by Mia Sara (best known as Tom Cruise's Princess Lili in "Legend"), and the politically correct inclusion of an African-American seaman, portrayed by Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje (Killer Croc is "Suicide Squad"), and what you end up with is a dreadfully dull, water-logged fantasy that even the bored actors seemed to slog through.

The last film Michael Anderson directed, in 1999, was, curiously, "The New Adventures of Pinocchio," a Luxembourg-German-British co-production that was the sequel to the 1996 family film "The Adventures of Pinocchio," which itself was an American-British-French-Czech-German venture. Both movies featured Martin Landau as the kindly woodcarver Geppetto and German actor Udo Kier as the villain. Jonathan Taylor Thomas, from the popular sitcom "Home Improvement," provided the voice for the animatronic puppet in the first movie (pictured below).

Pinocchio was portrayed in the sequel as a live boy by Gabriel Thomson, a young English actor who has since left acting for schooling to become a human rights lawyer. Sorely missing from the original cast were Genevieve Bujold, Bebe Neuwirth, and Rob Schneider.

The tables are turned in "The New Adventures of Pinocchio"
as Gepetto the woodcarver is transformed into a wooden puppet.

Perhaps as a lamentable coda to the life and career of Michael Anderson, "The New Adventures of Pinocchio," unlike its predecessor, bypassed theaters and went direct to video.


Afterthought

 In March of 1941, 21-year-old Michael Anderson, and his wife, along with David Lean (future director of "The Bridge on the River Kwai," "Lawrence of Arabia," and "Doctor Zhivago") and his wife, found themselves huddled together under a staircase during a German bombing raid of London during World War II. After the "all-clear" siren sounded, the two couples considered dining at the famed Cafe de Paris in the city's West End. However, Anderson's wife wasn't feeling well. That night, the nightclub was bombed, killing most everyone inside.