Gerry Anderson was born on 14 April 1929. He died the day after Christmas of Alzheimer’s disease at the age of 83.
He, along with his wife Sylvia, created a number of iconic television shows based on marionette puppetry. Thunderbirds is by far the best known.
Many of my childhood friends loved this show! I wasn’t a big fan. I’m not sure why. I am amazes when I watch them now. They created such a finely crafted show! And it is loads of fun.
What I now most like about Sylvia and Gerry Anderson is Space: 1999. See thorough discussion of the show. They used their abilities with small-scale special effects to combine with an excellent cast to create quite an enjoyable series.
Space: 1999 starred Martin Landau (Rounders) and Barbara Bain plus a bunch of other notables including Barry Morse (Asylum) in the first season.
But what I most love about the show is how scientifically illiterate it is. If you’ve been reading me for a while, you know that one thing I hate is listening to lame science-sounding justifications for bizarre plots. No one cares! It’s great when it’s plausibly done like in The Andromeda Strain. But otherwise, skip it! I glory in the ridiculousness of Space: 1999.
Other April 14th Aniversaries
Filmmakers:
- John Gielgud (1904-2000)
- Henry Freulich (1906-1985)
- Valerie Hobson (1917-1998)
- Joseph Ruskin (1924-2013)
- Rod Steiger (1925-2002)
- Liz Renay (1926-2007)
- Gloria Jean (1926-2018)
- Bradford Dillman (1930-2018)
- Arlene Martel (1936-2014)
- Julie Christie (1940-)
- Lothaire Bluteau (1957-)
- Peter Capaldi (1958-)
- Robert Carlyle (1961-)
- Tom Dey (1965-)
- Anthony Michael Hall (1968-)
- Adrien Brody (1973-)
- Rob McElhenney (1977-)
- Sarah Michelle Gellar (1977-)
- Abigail Breslin (1996-)
Films:
- Laugh, Clown, Laugh (1928)
- Terror Aboard (1933)
- Beauty and the Beast (1934)
- It’s a Bikini World (1967)
- Edge of Sanity (1989)
- American Psycho (2000)
- Scary Movie 4 (2006)
- Fear the Forest (2009)
Gerry Anderson image cropped from one on GerryAnderson.com under Fair Use.