Catacombs Reference Library
Space 1999 - SERIES ONE

The Producers

Husband and wife Martin Landau and Barbara Bain are the stars of "Space 1999".

And husband-and-wife Gerry and Sylvia Anderson are the Producers.

Just as the series is a return to teaming for the Landaus, so does it mark the professional reunion of the Andersons after working independently on other productions.

Films for television brought the Andersons together, and films for television have made them famous. Their private life romance is matched only by the romance of their success. They began with an old mansion by the side of the river Thames, converting the ballroom into a studio. Then they built their own studio from a completely barren factory in the Slough Trading Estate. Today, they make their pictures in the biggest and most modern of movie studios, choosing the famous Pinewood Studios for "Space 1999".

Born at Hampstead, London, Gerry Anderson worked for a time in a photographic portrait studio, then as a film cutting-room assistant. After R.A.F. services, he returned to films, working in the editing departments on such productions as "So Long at the Fair", "Appointment in London", "Clouded Yellow", and "Prize of Gold". He turned to television filming and became a director. Two of the "Martin Kane" productions bore his imprint.

He was later to mastermind a whole "Disney-like" setting in England with over 200 people employed on a unique production technique named by him as SUPERMARIONATION, and with an editing and directing background of some fifteen years he formed a company called A.P.Films.

Gradually the idea of making puppet films took shape. He felt that great technical advances were possible in this field.

One of his partners was Sylvia, also a Londoner, who started her career at London University studying sociology, although her main interests and activities had always been writing and acting. She ran the school and college magazines and was president of the dramatic society. But there was to be a gap of several years before she was to pursue these interests professionally.

After a period of social work in England and in the States, she met arid married an American golf professional and for four years made the States her home. However, the marriage ended in divorce and Sylvia returned to England with her baby daughter and then had to pick up the threads of her life.

Social work was not a very practical proposition and she then began to pursue her real love - the theatre. She was offered a place in Rep. but now with a baby to support the money was too poor and she took on instead the job of Girl Friday with a small film company of which Gerry Anderson was the leading light.

It proved to be the beginning of a long and successful personal and professional career. Sylvia did everything from making the tea to help write the scripts; play many of the leading voices and direct the dialogue. She was soon promoted to Company Director and later became Mrs. Gerry Anderson.

Another partner was Reg Hill - an Art Director and Technical Illustrator who was to work closely with him for many years. Also a Londoner, the combination of practical engineering knowledge and artistic creativity, was to help launch the successful "Disney" type venture, running into several hundred T.V. films.

From modest beginnings, the new company branched into the large-scale production of the most advanced puppet series to date, "Supercar". It was an immediate hit, watched not only by children but adults as well, paving the way to further successful series and all the time developing techniques which gave the puppets almost human realism. "Fireball XL-5" and "Stingray" were followed by the most outstanding success of them all, "Thunderbirds", which also became a feature film and did much to make Sylvia Anderson known to viewers, not only because she was the voice of the programme's elegant Lady Penelope but bore an undoubted resemblance to the studio-created heroine.

There were further "Supermarionation" series - "Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons", "Joe 90" and "The Secret Service" - but this chapter was drawing to a close. The Andersons had already produced one feature film, "Doppelganger". Gerry and Sylvia Anderson went into live action T.V. production with "U.F.O." continuing their imaginative futuristic essays into science-fiction with human actors, and Gerry Anderson then produced the Robert Vaughn-Nyree Dawn Porter series, "The Protectors" with Reg Hill as his co-producer, continuing the association which had dated right: from the beginning of the "Supermarionation" days.

Sylvia Anderson, who took time off to write and make T.V. appearances, is therefore once again in production harness with her husband on "Space 1999 ".