His career spanned half a century, beginning in the early 1940s and ending in 1992, and in the 1960s he was noticed by critics with large-scale adventure epic and comedies films, like Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines, Battle of the Bulge, The Biggest Bundle of Them All and Monte Carlo or Bust!.
Holiday Camp featured the Huggetts, a working-class family living in suburban England headed by Jack Warner and Kathleen Harrison.
They were spun off into their own vehicle directed by Annakin, Here Come the Huggetts (1948) with Petula Clark, Jane Hylton, and Susan Shaw as their young daughters, Amy Veness as their grandmother and Diana Dors as their cousin.
Annakin then received an offer from Walt Disney to make The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men (1952) with Richard Todd.
Annakin was offered the chance to direct a third historical film with Richard Todd, Rob Roy, but John Davis refused to let him out of his contract with Rank.
He arranged for Rank to buy the rights to a Pearl Buck novel The Hidden Flower but then decided not to make it as he felt interracial romance was out of date.
[6] He was going to direct The Singer Not the Song with Marlon Brando and Peter Finch but pulled out when they were unable to raise finance and John Davis insisted Dirk Bogarde be cast.
Annakin did some British comedies with Leslie Phillips, Stanley Baxter and a young Julie Christie: The Fast Lady (1962) and Crooks Anonymous (1962).
[9] Annakin was hired by Darryl F. Zanuck to direct the British and (uncredited) French and American interior segments in The Longest Day (1962), which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture, eventually losing out to Lawrence of Arabia.
At the time it was Annakin's most ambitious project, and Zanuck, the head of the 20th Century-Fox Studio, endorsed the British period comedy film.
In this project, Annakin co-wrote, produced and directed an international ensemble cast, including Stuart Whitman, Sarah Miles, Robert Morley, Terry-Thomas, James Fox, Red Skelton, Benny Hill, Jean-Pierre Cassel, Gert Fröbe and Alberto Sordi.
The story, revolving around the craze of early aviation c. 1910, is about a pompous newspaper magnate (Morley) who is convinced, by his daughter (Miles) and fiancée (Fox), to organize an air race from London to Paris.
[10][11][12] It was treated as a major production, one of only three full-length 70 mm Todd-AO Fox releases in 1965, with an intermission and musical interlude part of the original screenings.
[13] Because of the Todd-AO process, the film was an exclusive roadshow feature, initially shown in deluxe Cinerama venues, where customers needed reserved seats purchased ahead of time.
Annakin continued to travel widely with his films: The Call of the Wild (1972) was shot in Finland, with Charlton Heston; Paper Tiger (1975), with David Niven in Malaysia.
If Annakin tells of his exasperation over trying to coax performances out of producers' girlfriends, the bad behaviour – and sometimes the drug problems – of certain stars and the vagaries of international film financing, he's providing tales that are as cautionary today as when he lived them".
He was awarded an OBE the same year for service to the film industry and received an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from Hull University.