Planet of the Apes/Trivia


 * Zaius was originally going to be played by Edward G Robinson, but his ill health did not mix well with the heavy makeup, and the part had to go to Maurice Evans.
 * Also, Linda Harrison played Zira in early makeup test footage, but was later cast as the human Nova.


 * Charlton Heston's voice during his famous "get your dirty paws off me" speech was made more realistic by the fact Heston was quite ill during filming of the scene.


 * The early scripts for the movie had a closer resemblence to Pierre Boulle's novel, but budget constraints forced the change to the primitive ape society of the film.
 * Pierre Boule wrote a sequel draft called 'Planet Of The Men', which can be seen at Hunter's POTA Archive website (just Google it). It involves Nova and Taylor having a son named Sirius, who eventually leads a human uprising. The apes lose their intelligence and are back to being animals by the end. The last scene has Zaius doing tricks in a cage in a circus.


 * Interestingly, there was a sort of segregation behind the scenes during filming; the chimpanzee actors ate with other chimps, gorillas with gorillas, and orangutans with orangutans.


 * Once, some of the gorilla actors rode from the makeup area to the set in a convertible with the top down, wearing their full gorilla makeup, wigging out some observers on the way.


 * The Statue Of Liberty scene was based on a scene from an earlier sci-fi story.


 * The first film's script was written by Twilight Zone's Rod Serling.