Film buff Chris Denton got a double surprise when he met his childhood hero, international film director Ken Annakin, at the Bradford Film Festival.

The 57-year-old, from Station Road, Burley-in-Wharfedale, wrote to the festival's organisers after he heard Mr Annakin was going to be their guest of honour at the weekend.

He told them he wanted to meet Mr Annakin because, as a teenager, his mother Marcelle had been friendly with the director when she lived in Ilkley.

But nothing could have prepared him for the surprise he got when they met at Bradford's Museum of Photography, Film and Television.

Mr Annakin, 85, who has directed 49 films including The Battle of the Bulge and Monte Carlo Or Bust, revealed he and Marcelle had been childhood sweethearts all those years ago.

The revelation came as a pleasant surprise for Mr Denton who has always idolised the director, who came from Hull but now lives in Hollywood's Beverly Hills.

Mr Denton said: "I remember from the early 1950s my mother would always get a postcard and a letter from Ken at Christmas, telling her where he was filming and how he was doing.

"I've always been a film buff and it was the highlight of Christmas to have this card from a famous film director read out as we sat around the dinner table.

"I knew he and my mother had been friends but I never knew or imagined that they were childhood sweethearts. I only found out when I met Ken all these years later.

"I assume my mother, who passed away in 1989, never told us because she was married to my father Walter by that time and it had all happened before they met. I find it utterly charming as my mother was a lovely person and it's a nice way to remember her."

Mr Annakin, who began his career with the film Holiday Camp in 1946 starring a 15-year-old Diana Dors, said he used to visit his aunt who lived in the same street as Marcelle's parents during the summer holidays.

He said: "Marcelle lived about eight doors away. We courted from our late teens until our early twenties. I was very fond of her and still kept in touch even when we both got married.

"I still remember seeing Marcelle bringing the pram down the stairs of her parents' house in Middleton Road and showing me Chris as a small baby.

"I never thought that I'd come up to Bradford and have a meeting like this with Marcelle's son more than 50 years later. It's tied up a part of my life that I've never forgotten."

After their meeting the pair, who have pledged to keep in touch, watched Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines, which Mr Annakin also wrote and directed, in the museum's Pictureville cinema.

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