[citation needed] At the start of the Second World War, Gerry Anderson's elder brother, Lionel, volunteered for service in the Royal Air Force (RAF); he was stationed in the United States for advanced training.

Created by Roberta Leigh, The Adventures of Twizzle (1957–1958) was a series for young children about a doll with the ability to 'twizzle' his arms and legs to greater lengths.

The new and bigger facilities allowed them to make major improvements in special effects, notably in the underwater sequences, as well as advances in marionette technology, with the use of a variety of interchangeable heads for each character to convey different expressions.

This real-life drama inspired Anderson to create a new programme format about a rescue organisation, which eventually became his most famous and popular series, Thunderbirds (1965–1966).

The dramatic title was inspired by the letter Anderson's older brother Lionel had written to his family during World War II.

Anderson initially wanted actress Fenella Fielding to perform the voice of Lady Penelope, but Sylvia convinced her husband that she herself ought to play the role.

Despite being wildly popular in the UK and abroad, Grade felt that without an American buyer, a full second series would fail to recoup its cost.

By that time, production had started on a new series, Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons (1967), which saw the advent of more realistic marionette characters which, thanks to improvements in electronics which allowed miniaturisation of the lip-sync mechanisms, could now be built closer to normal human proportions.

This series returned to more 'kid-friendly' territory, depicting the adventures of a young boy who is also a secret agent and whose scientist father uses a supercomputer called 'BIG RAT' which can 'program' Joe with special knowledge and abilities for his missions.

The series was inspired by Anderson's love of British comedian Stanley Unwin, who was known for his nonsense language, 'Unwinese', which he created and used on radio, in film and most famously on the 1968 Small Faces LP Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake.

Despite Anderson's track record and Unwin's popularity, the series was cancelled before its first screening; Lew Grade considered that it would be incomprehensible to American audiences, and thus unsellable.

UFO was more adult in tone than any of Anderson's puppet series, and mixed Century 21's signature futuristic action-adventure and special effects with serious dramatic elements.

[14] Collaborating with Tony Barwick to provide the characterisation, whilst he himself focused on the action sequences, Anderson wrote and delivered a treatment to Saltzman.

Nothing ultimately came of it, and Broccoli and Saltzman proceeded to make Diamonds Are Forever (1971) and Live and Let Die (1973) and, after co-producing 1974's Bond film, The Man with the Golden Gun, the Saltzman-Broccoli partnership dissolved.

[citation needed] The Andersons' marriage broke down during the first series of Space: 1999 in 1975; Gerry announced his intention to separate on the evening of the wrap party.

[16][17] Sylvia severed her ties with Group Three, and, to alleviate his financial plight, Anderson sold his share of the profits from the APF/Century 21 shows and their holiday home in Portugal to Lew Grade.

Terrahawks marked Anderson's return to working with puppets, but rather than marionettes this series used a new system dubbed 'Supermacromation' which used highly sophisticated glove puppets—an approach inspired by the advances in this form of marionation made by Jim Henson and his colleagues.

Terrahawks ran successfully from 1983 to 1986 in the UK but fell short of a four-year American syndication deal by one season when the show was cancelled.

Anderson hoped to continue his renewed success with a series called Space Police, a new show mixing live action and puppets.

In the meantime, Anderson and Burr produced the cult stop-motion animated series Dick Spanner, which enjoyed many showings on the British Channel 4 in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Anderson then joined the Moving Picture Company as a commercials director, and provided special effects direction for the musical comedy Return to the Forbidden Planet.

In the early 1990s, ITC began releasing home video versions of the Supermarionation shows, and the profile of the shows was further enhanced by productions such as the Dire Straits music video for their single "Calling Elvis", which was made as an affectionate Thunderbirds pastiche (with Anderson co-producing), and by Lady Penelope and Parker appearing in a series of UK advertisements for Swinton Insurance.

He also made numerous media and personal appearances to tie in with revivals and video cassette releases of Stingray, Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet and Joe 90.

He joked that, despite his career of making children's programming, the "real tragedy of my life" was that his own son Jamie (appearing with him) was a Doctor Who fanatic.

[19] Archer was killed in a car crash on London's orbital M25 motorway on his way to the publishers to collect one of the first print run to present to Anderson, and the book later had to be withdrawn from sale and thousands of copies destroyed as a result of a copyright dispute with ITC America.

Several years after the initial tests the project evolved into the remake New Captain Scarlet, by which time the entire appearance had been significantly updated.

In March 2011, Anderson was working with Daniel Pickering and Annix Studios on a new project named Christmas Miracle, a children's CGI animated feature.

[31] Tributes from across the world of television and radio poured in, among them TV presenter Jonathan Ross, DJ Chris Evans, comedian Eddie Izzard and actors Brian Blessed and John Barrowman.

His son Jamie went on to say that his father expressed his desire to let fans of the shows attend his funeral, alongside friends, family and cast members.

[38] An info-commercial style advertising campaign for Blue Car European coach tours show during 1960–1961 in fifteen minute segments on British television.