Gerry Anderson: A Life Uncharted (2022) poster

Gerry Anderson: A Life Uncharted (2022)

Rating:


UK. 2022.

Crew

Director – Benjamin Field, Producers – Jamie Anderson & Benjamin Field, Photography – Ash Connaughton, Music – Crispin Merrell, Deep Fake Created by Christian Darkin. Production Company – Format Factory/Anderson Entertainment.

With

Jamie Anderson, Joy Anderson, Mary Anderson, Nicholas Briggs, Linda Daley, Sean Feast, David Graham, Maria Mcdonagh, Mark Sherwood, John Taylor, Jean Taylor, Mark Woollard


This is a documentary about producer Gerry Anderson (1929-2012) who gained a cult following for his puppet tv shows – something he called Supermarionation. Anderson’s Supermarionation tv shows consisted of Torchy the Battery Boy (1957), The Adventures of Twizzle (1958), Four Feather Falls (1960), Supercar (1961-2), Fireball XL5 (1961-2), Stingray (1963-4), Thunderbirds (1965-6), Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons (1967), Joe 90 (1968) and the part-live action, part-puppet The Secret Service (1969). In later years, Anderson abandoned puppet-making for live-action with the sf film Doppelganger/Journey to the Far Side of the Sun (1969), the detective series The Protectors (1971-2) and the popular science-fiction series’ UFO (1970-2) and Space: 1999 (1975-7). In later years, he made a return to puppetry with the tv shows Terrahawks (1983-6), Dick Spanner P.I. (1986), Space Precinct (1994-6) and Lavender Castle (1999).

There had been an earlier Gerry Anderson documentary Filmed in Supermarionation (2014), which covered the making of Anderson’s puppet shows. By contrast, Gerry Anderson: A Life Uncharted only touches on his tv shows and films in minimal ways – the majority of these are only mentioned in passing (if at all), although some clips are used to punctuate points throughout. The documentary is fronted by Anderson’s younger son Jamie who goes on a journey – sometimes physically visiting locations while driving a Rolls Royce (a key vehicle if you’ve watched Thunderbirds) and delving into his father’s past about which he knew little during Gerry’s lifetime. Also in that Gerry Anderson: A Life Uncharted was released eight years after Filmed in Supermarionation, it is worth noting that most of the people interviewed in that film, who were well into their seventies and eighties at the time, have now passed away.

The documentary is put together from audio interviews that Gerry Anderson made to biographers in the early 2000s. To this extent, the filmmakers have used Deep Fake technologies to digitally alter video footage of Gerry to give the impression of him being filmed as he says the words. These scenes appear against the mock-up of a radio and in deliberately grainy black-and-white (presumably so as to hide the visual trickery), although later we also get actual video interview footage of Gerry as well.

Gerry Anderson Interviewed in Gerry Anderson A Life Uncharted (2022)
Gerry Anderson Interviewed

The documentary brings out a good deal about Gerry’s childhood. How his family was dirt poor and the marriage between his mother and father not at all a happy one – indeed, was one where Gerry’s mother actively sought to poison his feelings towards his father. We also learn that the family was Jewish and that their surname was originally Abrahams. Gerry recalls incidents from his childhood where children at school surrounded him in a circle taunting “Jew boy.” Gerry’s mother – who Gerry’s third wife happily calls ‘an anti-Semite’ – pressured his father to change the name to Anderson by deed poll.

The documentary does a deep dive into Gerry Anderson’s life. As an historian of film, I am very impressed with the lengths they have gone to in terms of research and the materials they have managed to dig up. These include everything from family photographs; the notes for Gerry’s dying father left at the hospital so that he could watch the premiere of Thunderbirds; correspondence to Gerry and the family from his brother; the very newspaper ad that Sylvia Anderson replied to sign on as a typist when she first joined the Anderson creative team.

The documentary brings out how Gerry’s older brother Lionel was an idol to him, before his death during World War II while serving in the RAF in 1944. People draw connections between these influences and other aspects of Gerry’s creative endeavours – how almost every hero in Gerry’s shows is a pilot; or the connection between Gerry’s most famous show and the one Hollywood film that Lionel appears in as an extra, which was called Thunder Birds (1942). Or of the recurrence of strong, paternalistic father figures throughout the shows and complete lack of any mother figures, a clear influence of Gerry’s hatred of the way his mother isolated him from his father.

Sylvia Anderson in Gerry Anderson A: Life Uncharted (2022)
Two views of Sylvia Anderson – young vs old

The film has a lot of dislike for Sylvia Anderson. By that I mean A LOT. The first inkling of this comes from Roberta Leigh, the children’s author who hired Gerry for his first two puppet shows The Adventures of Twizzle and Torchy the Battery Boy, who talks about Sylvia as being pushy and obsessed with fame. At another point, Leigh talks about how she was fascinated because Sylvia had been divorced twice (before meeting Gerry) – “I didn’t even know anybody who had been divorced once.” There are a good many other negative things said about Sylvia – that she was publicity hungry, that she pushed herself forward during photo sessions and acclaimed Gerry’s accomplishments as hers. Gerry talks about how she would manipulate him and turn cold to get what she wanted, while others observe how Gerry became far too eager to please her after the failure of his first marriage, which she used to her advantage.

The documentary follows the relationship of Gerry and Sylvia in depth – of how he divorced his first wife and took up with her before they married in 1960. Gerry tells the story of how she was originally hired as a typist. There are interviews with his two daughters from the first marriage – Joy Anderson tells the appealing story of how she and her father were separated for many years until she attended the signing of one of his books and his jaw dropped when she walked up and asked “Can you sign it ‘To Joy, Love Dad’.”

In particular, the film goes into Sylvia’s claims about having co-created the various series. It is explained how Gerry did poorly in school and so preferred to dictate his scripts and was a one-finger typist. After she typed the scripts up for him, Gerry insisted that Sylvia share a co-writing/co-creator credit. It was one where she was more than happy to take the recognition and there is discussion of interviews she gave where she stated she was a co-creator. Certainly, Sylvia has told a very different story in her account but the film is not interested in examining her side – at most, David Graham mentions one or two examples of her input in terms of more character development and the costuming.

Gerry Anderson and Jamie Anderson in the grounds of Pinewood Studios in Gerry Anderson: A Life Uncharted (2022)
(l to r) Gerry Anderson and youngest son Jamie Anderson in the grounds of Pinewood Studios thanks to Deep Fake technology

Perhaps the nastiest story about Sylvia that comes out in the course of the documentary is the custody battle over their son Gerry Jr. The two had divorced in either 1980 or 1981 (the internet gives differing dates). This ended in a long and protracted legal struggle in which she used everything in her arsenal to win the case, including turning up to court dressed drab to give the impression of being poor (she was noted for her couture). It becomes apparent that one of the reasons that Gerry’s work went into a decline after the 1970s was the fact that the protracted legal battles had reduced him to poverty. Gerry’s subsequent wife Mary and others tell how he had been so poor that Mary was the sole provider of income at one point and of bailiffs arriving at the door to repossess items.

There is the story of how Gerry did eventually win custody access to Gerry Jr and was waiting to meet him only to receive a note saying he didn’t want to see him ever again. In later years, when Gerry and Gerry Jr reconciled, Jamie recounts that the first thing Gerry Jr said was that he did not write the note. The greatest success Gerry had during this time was the tv series Terrahawks. There is brief archival footage of a very aged Sylvia and I was thinking as I watched this how much her wizened features resemble Zelda, the lead villain in Terrahawks – and lo and behold, it is not long before people are drawing comparison and telling how Gerry placed all his bad feelings about the divorce into the character of Zelda.

The final sections of the documentary concern Gerry’s eventual diagnosis with dementia and subsequent death in 2012. This is where Jamie comes into his own – the film is really his story. Both he and Mary recount how they began to observe the signs and Gerry’s refusal to cede there was a problem before his eventually accepting the diagnosis. From there, Gerry went on to do a charity walk for dementia in 2012, which brought much public attention to the issue. The film concludes with his funeral and then Jamie walking through the grounds of Pinewood Studio, Gerry’s home base for much of his career, where the Deep Fakers appealingly give us a glimpse of the ghost of Gerry walking behind.


Trailer here


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