Obituary: Gerry Anderson, writer, director and producer of TV puppet shows Born: 14 April, 1929, in London. Died: 26 December, 2012, in Oxfordshire, aged 83. GERRY Anderson entertained several generations of British children with his unique science-fiction adventures, acted out by casts of puppets who had a lot more character than many human actors. Thunderbirds, Supercar, Stingray, Fireball XL5 and Captain Scarlet were highlights of the television week for younger viewers in the 1960s. Marionettes became ever-more sophisticated in the ensuing years, but those early puppet characters, with their oversized heads and jerky movements, never lost their charm. Repeats of Thunderbirds in the early 1990s led to unprecedented thirst for the toy spaceships and shops could not cope with demand for International Rescue's Tracy Island base. Blue Peter responded to the crisis by advising viewers (and their dads) on how to make their own. The continuing popularity of Thunderbirds led to a new feature film in 2004, replacing the puppets with real, live actors. Sylvia Anderson, Gerry's former wife and co-creator of Thunderbirds, worked on the film and thought it was "wonderful." Gerry Anderson was not directly involved and not quite so keen on the end-result, describing it as "the biggest load of crap I have ever seen in my entire life." It flopped at the box office. The film missed the point - much of the charm lay in the puppets themselves, although Anderson got involved in puppet shows by accident and saw them as a stepping stone to directing conventional TV dramas and feature films. He did go on to live-action projects, including UFO, The Protectors, with Robert Vaughn, and Space: 1999, and they retain a loyal following. He was also briefly involved with James Bond. But it is for his classic puppet shows that he will be best, and most fondly, remembered. The New Statesman said he was "probably the nearest Britain has ever come to producing a children's myth maker on the level of Walt Disney." His family came from central Europe and he was born Gerald Alexander Abrahams in London in 1929. His parents changed their surname when he was a boy. He worked at the Colonial Film Unit and Gainsborough Pictures , where he was an assistant editor on The Wicked Lady. After national service in the Royal Air Force, he had a second spell at Gainsborough and then joined an independent television company called Polytechnic Studios. He set up AP Films with former colleagues from Polytechnic, including Sylvia Thamm, a secretary who would become not only the second Mrs Anderson in 1960, but also co-creator of the classic shows. In 1957, Anderson got the chance to produce and direct a new TV show called The Adventures of Twizzle, written by Roberta Leigh. It was about a toy boy (in the old sense of the phrase), with expanding arms and legs. Anderson hated the idea of working with puppets, but needed the money. He worked on a second series with Leigh called Torchy the Battery Boy, but felt he could write something better himself. He also began to think about how he could improve the puppets. In 1960, he produced and directed two projects. Crossroads to Crime was a live-action drama that made little impact in cinemas. Four Feather Falls was a new puppet show, which was his original creation and immediately captured the imagination of the nation's younger viewers. It was a western featuring a sheriff called Tex Tucker, voiced by Nicholas Parsons, but it contained fantastic elements that Anderson would develop in later series. It was soon followed by Supercar, the first of the classic sci-fi series. Anderson and his team took puppetry to new levels of realism, with a technique he christened "Supermarionation," a contraction of "super marionette animation." It employed very thin metal wires, which not only controlled the puppets, but also carried signals that synchronised lip movements with dialogue. The reason the puppets had such big heads was that they contained mechanisms needed for the movements. Larger puppets would have been harder to control. Advances in electronics meant that by the time of Captain Scarlet, heads were in proper proportion to bodies, though Anderson himself admitted "the puppets lost their lovability." The puppets" jerky movements remained problematic, but Anderson hit upon the perfect solution by sticking them in vehicles for much of the time. His futuristic vehicles took on a life of their own - their importance underlined by the fact they were actually the title characters in four classic series. But he and Sylvia Anderson also created some great living characters too, including the Tracys - who were named after US astronauts, but ran International Rescue as a family business, Brains and the posh English agent Lady Penelope. Sylvia Anderson gets the credit for developing the personalities of many of the characters. She also provided voices for some, including Lady Penelope in Thunderbirds. The marriage ended acrimoniously, however. As well as pushing back the frontiers of puppet technology, Anderson was also a pioneer in the field of merchandising in the early 1960s. He produced a huge range of toys, comics, annuals, bubblegum and confectionery cards, model kits and other items, many of which are now very valuable. His shows sold internationally, although he had only limited success in the US. The feature films Thunderbirds are Go and Thunderbird 6 did disappointing business. And after Captain Scarlet, many regarded Joe 90 as puerile. During the 1970s, he was approached by producer, Harry Saltzman to adapt the James Bond novel Moonraker. His active involvement in the series ended when Saltzman split with partner Cubby Broccoli, though Anderson claimed Broccoli did subsequently use some of his plot ideas in The Spy Who Loved Me. One of his more successful later shows was the sci-fi show Terrahawks in the 1980s. It used fairly realistic glove-and-rod puppets as heroes and ugly, caricatured puppets as villains, the latter clearly influenced by Jim Henson. More recently, he produced a new computer animation version of Captain Scarlet. He is survived by his third wife Mary and by four children from the three marriages.