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25 Facts About Ken Hughes

1.

Kenneth Graham Hughes was an English film director and screenwriter.

2.

Ken Hughes worked on over 30 feature films between 1952 and 1981, including the 1968 musical fantasy film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, based on the Ian Fleming novel of the same name.

3.

Ken Hughes was an Emmy Award winner and a three-time BAFTA Award nominee.

4.

Ken Hughes won an amateur film contest at age 14 and worked as a projectionist.

5.

Ken Hughes eventually returned to the BBC where he made documentaries.

6.

Ken Hughes did a short feature, The Drayton Case, which became the first of Anglo-Amalgamated's Scotland Yard film series, and several of the later installments including The Dark Stairway and Murder Anonymous.

7.

Ken Hughes made The Brain Machine, Little Red Monkey, and Confession.

8.

Ken Hughes was one of several writers on The Flying Eye and Portrait of Alison.

9.

Ken Hughes received notice for Joe MacBeth a modernised re-telling of Macbeth set among American gangsters of the 1930s, but shot at Shepperton Studios in Surrey.

10.

Ken Hughes shared an Emmy Award in 1959 for writing the television play Eddie which starred Mickey Rooney.

11.

Ken Hughes made some films for Columbia: Wicked as They Come, and The Long Haul.

12.

Ken Hughes wrote High Flight made by Warwick Films, producers Albert Broccoli and Irving Allen, who released through Columbia.

13.

Ken Hughes wrote and directed The Small World of Sammy Lee, based on Ken Hughes's television play Sammy which had been broadcast by the BBC in 1958.

14.

Ken Hughes directed episodes of the TV series Espionage.

15.

Ken Hughes replaced Bryan Forbes, who in turn had replaced Henry Hathaway as director of Of Human Bondage, starring Laurence Harvey and Kim Novak.

16.

Ken Hughes wrote episodes for the TV series An Enemy of the State.

17.

Ken Hughes was one of several directors who worked on the James Bond spoof Casino Royale.

18.

Ken Hughes co-wrote and directed Chitty Chitty Bang Bang for producer Broccoli.

19.

Ken Hughes directed The Internecine Project for British Lion and Alfie Darling, a sequel to Alfie ; they both flopped.

20.

Ken Hughes wrote and directed episodes of Oil Strike North.

21.

Ken Hughes attributed his financial situation to paying maintenance to two wives and an inability to reduce expenses.

22.

The marriage was dissolved in 1976, and Ken Hughes remarried his first wife in 1982.

23.

Ken Hughes had been living in a nursing home in Panorama City in Los Angeles.

24.

Ken Hughes made movies that were dull, dire, disappointing and in one case, beyond belief.

25.

Ken Hughes clearly worked best when attached to a feisty little production company with strong Hollywood links.