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John G. West: Before talking about a specific picture, I just wanted to ask a general question of what it was like to work with Disney?

Ken Annakin: Apart from working with [film producer Darryl] Zanuck, that was one of the great filmmaking times of my life.69 He taught me attitudes to filmmaking. He taught me the skill of making big pictures through the techniques that he believed in, which was storyboarding everything. I personally feel that he was a genius. A genius in entertainment.

First of all, he was a tremendous organizer because there wasn’t one thing that went on in that studio that he didn’t know about. There wasn’t one project that didn’t have his input. In fact, whatever input you had, you only got it by if it had gone through Walt. His was a gut reaction to everything. He was born and brought up in the Midwest, and he remained somebody who understood what the ordinary people wanted and liked and agreed with. He was a great believer in family. He believed in the family very strongly and followed that out in his own life. He had a good family, as I think Roy would tell you.

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