TV Tidbits Shows We Love:

Planet of the Apes
Aired: 1974

Stars: James Naughton, Roddy McDowall (a veteran of the films), and Ron Harper (left to right in pic)

Premise: Two American astronauts slip through a time warp and wind up where several men have gone before: on a planet ruled by talking apes.

Five successful films preceded the TV series: Planet of the Apes (1968), Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970), Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971), Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972), and Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973). Roddy McDowall played two different chimpanzees in the movies (Cornelius and his son, Ceasar) and another (Galen) on the TV series. POTA series regular Mark Lenard (gorilla General Urko), guest-starred on Spock's dad on Star Trek.

Roddy McDowall's extensive career included more than 100 guest appearances on TV shows, including The Carol Burnett Show, Murder She Wrote, Love American Style, and Batman. (He played Batman's enemy The Bookworm.)

Roddy McDowall's makeup process began at 5 a.m. He told a reporter for the New York Daily News that he didn't mind being hidden behind the ape mask: "I always liked playing character parts. My ego isn't in that area. But the makeup is uncomfortable."

"For a performer, it's total agony when the makeup is put on incorrectly," he continued. "If the nose is off-center at all, you can't talk properly and ears put on badly can be very painful."

The masks were applied in pieces, so the actors could manipulate the various parts with their face muscles.Roddy said, "I can wriggle my ears, move my scalp and twitch my scalp."

The Christian Science Monitor's TV critic singled out Roddy McDowall among the actors playing simians in a September 1974 review of the show. "Sometimes you will find yourself rooting for the apes, especially Roddy who must be taking special lessons at the anthropods' studio, since he is the only ape who manages to twitch his nose. This show is really fun and games."

TV Guide called POTA "outlandish monkey business" in its 1974 fall preview issue.

POTA episodes were shot at the 20th Century Fox-owned Century Ranch in the Santa Monica Mountains, where the movie Dr. Doolittle was filmed. Roddy McDowall had worked there 33 years earlier, when he appeared in the film How Green Was My Valley.

Roddy McDowall's 46th birthday was celebrated on the POTA set. Crew members implored him to blow harder when he had trouble extinguishing the candles on his cake. "Listen, I don't want to blow my face off," he said, according to TV Guide. The crew presented him with a silver wine bucket and a pair of matching wine goblets.

Beverly Garland played a mean monkey named Wanda in the episode "The Interrogation." Among her many TV appearances, Beverly played My Three Sons' stepmother.

Jame Naughton's brother, David Naughton, guest-starred as an ape in the episode "The Surgeon." David danced to fame in the "I'm a Pepper" TV ad campaign for Dr. Pepper. He also starred in the film An American Werewolf in London and the sitcom My Sister Sam.

The wooden spaceship prop used in the first two Apes films was also used in the pilot episode of the TV series.

Sondra Locke, star of the movies Every Which Way But Loose and Any Which Way You Can, which featured a fairly intelligent trained organatang, guest-starred on a POTA episode. She avoided the extensive makeup some gueststars had to endure, since she played a human.

Shortly after POTA was cancelled, Ron Harper joined the cast of another time-warped sci-fi TV series. He played Uncle Jack on The Land of the Lost a Saturday morning kids' show about a family stranded in the distant past, bedeviled by dinosaurs.

Ron Harper starred as Garrison on the 1967 TV drama Garrison's Gorillas. In this case, the "gorillas" were human special agents.

At the end of the first Apes film (released in 1968) it was revelaed that the action was taking place near what was once New York City, when Taylor (Charlton Heston) discovered the ruins of the Statue of Liberty. The POTA TV series, however, took place in the remains of California.

After POTA, James Naughton had a recurring role as Michael Bower, Angela's ex-husband, on the Judith Light/Tony Danza sitcom Who's the Boss.

A December 7, 1974, TV Guide article listed the daily pay rate for POTA extras who had to wear ape makeup: $148 plus overtime.

Some POTA episodes were edited into five TV movies: Back to the Planet of the Apes; Forgotten City of the Planet of the Apes; Treachery and Greed on the Planet of the Apes; Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of the Planet of the Apes; and Farewell to the Planet of the Apes.

In 1975, a Saturday morning cartoon called Return to the Planet of the Apes told the tale of more U.S. astronauts standed on a world ruled by talking monkeys.