Ken Adam was born in 1921 in Berlin to an upper-middle-class secular Jewish family, the third child of Lilli and Fritz Ken Adam, a former Prussian cavalry officer who had served with the Zieten Hussars.
25 Facts About Ken Adam
2.
Ken Adam had been established in 1863 by Saul Adam.
3.
The rest of the Ken Adam family stayed in Germany as Ken Adam's father felt that the Nazis were only a temporary aberration and they would wait it out.
4.
Reich was eventually released and Fritz Ken Adam was released and put under house arrest for three days.
5.
Ken Adam's father struggled with his change in status and starting over in a new country.
6.
Ken Adam's father started an import-export business selling gloves but his health deteriorated and he died in 1936 when he was 56 years old.
7.
Ken Adam left the boarding school in Edinburgh to rejoin his parents in London and continued his education at St Paul's School in London.
8.
At his mother's boarding house Ken Adam became increasingly interested in cinema after coming into contact with a number of artists among the Jewish refugees who were boarding there.
9.
Ken Adam was introduced to Vincent Korda, a Hungarian art director, when he was working on Knight Without Armour at Denham Film Studios.
10.
When World War II began, Ken Adam was working on designs for air-raid shelters and illustrated books on air-raid protection and gas masks.
11.
Flight Lieutenant Ken Adam joined No 609 Squadron at RAF Lympne on 1 October 1943.
12.
Ken Adam was nicknamed "Heinie the tank-buster" by his comrades for his daring exploits.
13.
Together with his brother Denis, Ken Adam was one of three German-born pilots to serve in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War, the third being Peter Stevens.
14.
Ken Adam entered the film industry as a draughtsman on This Was a Woman at Riverside Studios in Hammersmith.
15.
Ken Adam did not work in the second James Bond film, From Russia with Love, because he was working on Stanley Kubrick's Dr Strangelove.
16.
Ken Adam turned down the opportunity to work on Kubrick's next project, 2001: A Space Odyssey, after he found out that Kubrick had been working with NASA for a year on space exploration, and that it would put him at a disadvantage in developing his art.
17.
Ken Adam was a visual consultant on the film version of Pennies from Heaven, adapted from Dennis Potter's television serial.
18.
Ken Adam returned to work with Kubrick on Barry Lyndon, for which he won his first Oscar.
19.
Ken Adam designed the famous car for the film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, which was produced by the same team as the James Bond film series.
20.
Ken Adam was a jury member at the 1980 Cannes Film Festival and the 49th Berlin International Film Festival.
21.
Ken Adam died on 10 March 2016 at his home in London, following a short illness.
22.
Ken Adam met his wife Maria-Letizia Moauro while filming The Crimson Pirate on location on the Italian island of Ischia and they married on 16 August 1952.
23.
In September 2012, Ken Adam handed over his entire body of work to the Deutsche Kinemathek.
24.
The Ken Adam Building, a large lot at Pinewood Studios's Buckingham location, bears Adam's name and houses multiple theatres and businesses as well as the Kodak Film Lab and an office of the trade union Bectu.
25.
Ken Adam was appointed a Royal Designer for Industry in 2009.