Born 100 years ago today, the intriguing international film director Michael Anderson (1920-2018). I say “international” because though born and raised in Britain, and having worked there the most, he also had American roots and worked in Hollywood as well, and he also made films in Canada, New Zealand and elsewhere. He’s not to be confused with Little Person actor Michael J. Anderson of Twin Peaks.
This Michael Anderson’s ouvre is almost as outre as the others. His best known movies were in the science fiction and horror genres, or close to them, and included the original screen version of Orwell’s 1984 (1956), the multiple Oscar winning Around the World in 80 Days (1956), the Hitchcockian The Naked Edge (1961), Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze (1975), Logan’s Run (1976), Orca (1977), Nessie (1977, not completed), Dominique (1979), the tv mini-series The Martian Chronicles (1980), Murder By Phone (1982), Millennium (1989), and a tv movie version of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1997). He also took over direction of The Wreck of the Mary Deare (1959), from Hitchcock, although that film, while spooky, defies genre. The only reason he seldom is considered one of the auteurs of the genre is that he worked so often outside of it. His best known of these other films is the melodrama All the Fine Young Cannibals (1960) with Natalie Wood and Robert Wagner. His other films include spy thrillers, comedies, and even a couple of erotic films. After 43 films in the director’s chair, culminating with the The New Adventures of Pinocchio starring Martin Landau, he retired in 1999.
The director’s great-aunt was the 19th century American stage actress Mary Anderson (1859-1940), who eventually settled in the U.K. Both of Michael’s parents were actors, and he himself went into the family business. You can see him as an actor in Noel Coward’s 1942 propaganda film In Which We Serve. Anderson himself served in the war, returning to work in the British film industry as an assistant director, serving a kind of apprenticeship with Peter Ustinov. The men co-wrote and co-directed Private Angelo (1949), and that was how Anderson pivoted to directing.
His son Michael Anderson Jr (b. 1943) is an actor, who has appeared in such films as The Sons of Katie Elder (1965), The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), and Logan’s Run (1976). His stepdaughter Laurie Holden (b. 1969) was a regular on The X Files, The Walking Dead, and The Americans, and has been in films like The Majestic (2001), Silent Hill (2006), The Mist (2007) and Dumb and Dumber To (2014).
Michael Anderson was 98 years old at the time of his death.
(Travalanche) 
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