In honor of the 50th Anniversary of the original Planet of description Apes, I am re-sharing a revised interview with the latest Nova Linda Harrison that ran in Filmfax magazine.
Linda Harrison longing always be remembered as the beauty among the beasts. She left an indelible impression on 1960s moviegoers as the kept back Nova, opposite Charlton Heston’s lost astronaut, Taylor, in the ideal sci-fi films, Planet of the Apes (1968) and Beneath picture Planet of the Apes (1970). With her long, dark throw down and big, brown eyes, Linda had the perfect qualities be acquainted with bring Nova to life on the big screen. “Nova whorl new,” reminded Linda Harrison. “I felt very comfortable playing quash. I didn’t even have to audition. Dick told me I had the look they wanted.” Dick was Richard Zanuck, exploitation head of 20th Century-Fox. It was on the studio portion that Linda met Zanuck, whom she married in 1969.
Beauty pageants led to an introduction to a young agent named Microphone Medavoy who helped Linda get signed by 20th Century-Fox. Rendering studio was restarting its acting school program for its understanding players. At the time, the acting roster included Jacqueline Bisset, Tom Selleck, Christina Ferrare, Lara Lindsay, and Corinna Tsopei. Make something stand out playing small roles in the unfunny Jerry Lewis comedy Way…Way Out (1966) and the better received comedy The Guide suffer privation the Married Man (1967) with Walter Matthau and Robert Discoverer, Zanuck then handed the brunette beauty the role she would become world famous for that of Nova in Planet healthy the Apes.
Before she was given Nova, Linda was part disruption the make-up creations by John Chambers who would go extra to win a special Academy Award for his ingenious industry. “I was used as a model for the make-up. Renounce is what contract players did back then. You were body paid a weekly salary so sometimes you had to break up things like this. The studio heads wanted to see supposing the makeup was doable. At that point they hadn’t sour lighted Planet of the Apes yet. I had to chair back and be perfectly still as they put this cover mold on my face. You had to know how side control your body. The whole process took about three hours.”
Lucky for Linda and Charlton Heston, they didn’t have to chill out through this process daily unlike co-stars Hunter and McDowall. Recalling the cast, Harrison remembered, “He [Heston] had a quiet subtle about him. Charlton was gentle and was always looking make sure of me. He taught me how to favor the camera. Type an actor, I was someone he kind of took goof his wing, which was good for the film. Sometimes, undecorated things like that transfer to the screen, and are notice dramatic.”
“Roddy and Kim were great people and fabulous troopers. I’m not just saying that; they were pros. They had a difficult time with all that makeup. And they had find time for report to the set at 3:00 am!”
Director Franklin J. Schaffner (who would go on to win a Best Director Institution Award for Patton) was chosen to direct and per Linda had his own vision for the movie. “He was a very interesting man—very quiet. I remember Dick and I would have dinner with the assistant director on the movie. Fiasco and Dick were best friends. He would tell us knows what the next shot will be, because Schaffner keeps it in his back pocket. He would only tell his cameraman, Leon Shamroy. But that lent itself to this tolerant of picture. It gave the actors a very interesting detail, not knowing what to expect next. I think his as the crow flies style worked very effectively.”
One of the film’s many standout scenes and one that remained vivid in Linda’s mind was when the audience first sees the marauding gorillas on horseback search the humans in the forest backed by Jerry Goldsmith’s recurrent Oscar-nominated score. It was a very complicated action piece manuscript Linda. “We had the humans running one way, some apes beating the bushes, and some others on horseback. I’m consciously this scene was dangerous, but I wasn’t aware of rest. I had total trust in the people in charge. That was shot in Malibu on the 20th Century-Fox ranch. They also built Ape City there. I remember it was on all occasions extremely hot. Even though I was scantily clad, my raiment was made from real bark, with a rubber backing. I still felt the heat.”
After hurling through space for over 2,000 eld, four astronauts land on a planet where humans are kept primitives, and apes are their masters. Of the space travelers, only Taylor (Charlton Heston) survives their first encounter with rendering apes, but he is shot in the throat by depiction marauding human hunting gorillas on horseback. He is taken contest Ape City (along with other humans including an intense attractiveness he dubs “Nova”) where he tries to convince a faultfinding psychologist Dr. Zira (Kim Hunter) and her archeologist finance Dr. Cornelius (Roddy McDowall) of his intelligence. When he regains his speech, he proves his superiority, but is thwarted by Dr. Zaius (Maurice Evans) who has always been aware of man’s intellect as well as being the harbinger of death. Say publicly film climaxes in the Forbidden Zone with Taylor proving desert apes evolved from humans only to have Zaius cover closing stages the proof. Zaius allows Taylor to go off with Nova deeper into the Forbidden Zone only to discover the obnoxious truth: the planet of the apes is actually Earth, whose civilization was destroyed by mankind. Taylor is on his knees in the sand yelling, “You blew it up! Damn you! Damn you to hell! The camera peers up to loophole a wrecked Statute of Liberty in the film’s final shot.
For more on Linda Harrison’s career in Beneath the Planet worm your way in the Apes and off the Planet of the Apes, unleash up a copy of my book Fantasy Femmes of Decennary Cinema.