April 3, 1968: "Planet of the Apes" Premieres

April 3, 1968: The film Planet of the Apes premieres, based on the 1963 novel La Planète des singes by Pierre Boulle, who had also written Bridge over the River Kwai. Rod Serling of Twilight Zone fame and Oscar-winning screenwriter Michael Wilson wrote the screenplay, and Franklin J. Schaffner, later to win the Oscar for Best Director for Patton, directed.

This was also the day that 2001: A Space Odyssey premiered. I have a separate entry for that.

Charlton Heston plays Colonel George Taylor, the only survivor of an Earth ship that crash-lands on a planet where intelligent apes are the dominant civilization, and humans are their slaves. He is captured, and utters the 1st of 2 legendary lines from the film: "Take your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape!" The Hays Code had recently fallen, allowing the line to be used in a mainstream film.

As with so many of Serling's stories, there's a twist ending. Linda Harrison plays Nova, a young human female, whom Taylor frees along with himself. They manage to make their way to an island, where they see the remains of the Statue of Liberty. As it turned out, Taylor was on Earth all along: He and his crew were in suspended animation, and had traveled for 2,000 years but hadn't aged.

Upon seeing the damaged Lady Liberty, Taylor yells, to men long dead, "You maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to Hell!" Again, no more Hays Code.

I'm a bit surprised that the film did so well, because Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated the next day, depressing film turnout for the next few days. It led to 4 sequels and a short-lived TV series.

Tim Burton remade the original in 2001 -- or, rather, as he said, he "re-imagined" it -- with Mark Wahlberg as astronaut Leo Davidson, and Estella Warren as Daena, the Nova equivalent. In one of his last films, Heston was cast against type, as an elderly ape. As he dies, he refers to the origin of the apes' dominance, and says, "Damn them. Damn them. Damn them all to hell!" And Linda Harrison also cameoed, as a woman in a cart.

The ending has baffled people, as Taylor lands in Washington, D.C., and sees the Lincoln Memorial, with Abraham Lincoln having a chimpanzee's face: An "Ape Lincoln." The people who were baffled by this clearly never read the original novel: When the human astronauts returned to Earth, they found Paris intact, including the Eiffel Tower, but populated by apes.

A rebooted series began in 2011, and has now led to 3 films, with a 4th planned.

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April 3, 1968 was a Wednesday. British actress Charlotte Coleman, known for playing Scarlett in Four Weddings and a Funeral, was born.

Baseball season began a week later. Football was out of season. The NBA Playoffs were between rounds. And the NHL was between the end of its regular season and the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

There was an ABA Playoff game: The New Orleans Buccaneers beat the Denver Rockets, 102-97 at the Loyola Field House, at Loyola University in New Orleans. The Bucs went on to lose the ABA Finals to the Pittsburgh Pipers, moved to Memphis in 1970, and folded in 1975. The Rockets changed their name to the Denver Nuggets in 1974, and joined the NBA in 1976.