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Potterton Gerald
March 8, 1931, London, United Kingdom
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Gerald Potterton started his distinguished career in the early 1950s, working as an assistant animator for the UK-based cartoon production house Halas and Batchelor. He emigrated in 1954, one of several Britons who came to Canada to join the NFB. Potterton arrived at a time when NFB animation was beginning to earn worldwide attention, and two of his early animated shorts-My Financial Career (1962) and Christmas Cracker (1963)-were nominated for Academy Awards®.
Potterton proved to be adept in a range of genres, directing live-action feature films and TV programs and pioneering animation production in various formats. He has collaborated with such luminaries as Harold Pinter, on Pinter People (1969), and Buster Keaton, on the award-winning The Railrodder (1965).
Following his work on George Dunning's animated feature Yellow Submarine (1968), featuring music by the Beatles, he established his own company Potterton Productions, which went on to produce both animated and live-action films. These include Potterton's own films, as well as Larry Kent's Fleur Bleue (1971), Mike Mills's The Happy Prince (1974), The Little Mermaid (1975) and The Christmas Messenger (1975). The company also produced live-action and animated sequences for Sesame Street and The Electric Company.
Potterton Productions folded in 1974 and he returned to freelance work in both the UK and North America. He worked as both sequence and associate director on Richard Williams's Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure (1977), and was hired by producer Ivan Reitman to direct Heavy Metal (1981), an animated feature that's become a cult favourite. The ambitious production put Potterton in the role of directing more than one thousand animators and technicians from seventeen countries. Potterton continued working until the early 1990s.
References:
Canadian Film Encyclopedia
http://filmreferencelibrary.ca/index.asp?layid=46&csid1=1768&navid=46
Films Directed by Gerald Potterton, Books LLC, 2010
» See also
Gerald Potterton on Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Potterton
Gerald Potterton at IMDB.com
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0693376/#Director
Selected filmography:
Hors d'oeuvre, 1960 (co-director with Arthur Lipsett, Derek Lamb, Kaj Pindal et al.)
My Financial Career, 1962
Christmas Cracker, 1963 (co-director with Grant Munro, Jeff Hale)
The Ride, 1963
Buster Keaton Rides Again, 1965
The Railrodder, a.k.a. The Railroader, 1965
Cool McCool series, 1966
The Quiet Racket, 1966
Pinter People, 1969
Tiki Tiki, 1971 (co-director with Rolan Bykov and Jack Stokes)
The Rainbow Boys, a.k.a. The Rainbow Gang, 1973
Canada Vignettes: Winter - Dressing Up, 1979
Canada Vignettes: Winter - Starting the Car, 1979
Heavy Metal, 1981
The Awful Fate of Melpomenus Jones, 1983
George and the Christmas Star, 1985
The Emerald City of Oz, 1987
The Marvelous Land of Oz, 1987
Ozma of Oz, 1987
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, 1987
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz series, 1987
The Smoggies series, 1988
The Real Story of Happy Birthday to You, 1992
