Michael Anderson, the British filmmaker who directed the 1956 Oscar Best Picture winner “Around the World in 80 Days,” died of heart disease in Canada on April 25, according to a spokesperson for the family. He was 98.
In a career that spanned decades, Anderson also won acclaim for the 1955 WWII film “The Dam Busters,” as well as 1976’s influential sci-fi movie “Logan’s Run,” about a dystopian future in which everyone is killed off when they reach the age of 30.
The son of an actor, Anderson landed small acting roles in his teens, and then worked as an office boy and later assistant director at London’s Elstree Studios on films like “Pygmalion” and Noel Coward’s “In Which We Serve,” the Times of London reported.
He served in the Royal Signals Corps in WWII, then returned to the British film industry. “The Dam Busters,” starring Michael Redgrave and Richard Todd as British airmen who help devise an effective system of aerial bombing, won critical raves for its accuracy — and earned an Oscar nomination for special effects.
The success of “The Dam Busters” led Anderson to Hollywood — and the epic scale of “Around the World in 80 Days,” with its star-studded cast, 110 locations and 68,000 extras. The film got middling reviews but was a giant hit, winning five Oscars. (Anderson himself lost to George Stevens for “Giant.”)
He followed that success with films like 1965’s “Operation Crossbow,” 1966’s “The Quiller Memorandum” and 1968’s “The Shoes of the Fishermen.”
In the ’70s, Anderson drifted from action thrillers into science fiction with the 1976 hit “Logan’s Run,” starring Michael York. Four years later, he directed Rock Hudson in a TV miniseries adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s “The Martian Chronicles.”