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Novel[]
- "La Planète des singes" translates as "The Planet of the Simians". Simians is a catch all term for both monkeys and apes.
Film[]
- 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 The Planet of the Apes wiki. 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 iconic Statue Of Liberty scene at the end of the first movie was based on a scene from an earlier sci-fi story.
- The first film's script was written by Twilight Zone's Rod Serling.
- The first Planet of the Apes franchise was Fox Studio's main Sci-Fi franchise before Star Wars.