Because of the enormity of a string of box office successes created by five “Planet of the Apes” motion pictures, and because three of these features ran away with enormous Nielsen ratings when aired on television, 20th Century-Fox now is producing the “Planet of the Apes” series which airs in the 8:00 to 9:00 p.m. time-slot on Fridays during the 1974-75 season over CBS-TV.   The network held such faith in this project, it was never considered that a pilot film would be necessary.   The first star of the action-drama series is Roddy McDowall, a veteran of four “Apes” movies. He plays the part of Galen, a chimpanzee who befriends two human astronauts who have slipped through a time warp while on a routine space mission. When they return to Earth, the spacemen discover they are living 2000 years in the future and the planet is being ruled by simians.   The other stars are the astronauts themselves. Ron Harper, the tall blond man who was a regular on the “87th Precinct,” “Wendy and Me” and “Garrison's Gorillas” series, teams up with James Naughton. Husky, dark-haired Naughton garnered three major awards his first year on the Broadway stage playing Edmund in Eugene O’Neill’s “A Long Day’s Journey Into Night.”   Co-starring with McDowall, Harper and Naughton are Booth Colman and Mark Lenard. Colman plays the head of the orangutans who have emerged as the ruling class of the “Planet.” They shape and control all branches of government, serving as judges, ministers and administrators. Colman has a most impressive Broadway stage career behind him. He is best remembered for his roles as Wirz, the Civil War prison commandant in “The Andersonville Trial” and as attorney Clarence Darrow in “Inherit the Wind.” He has appeared with such stage luminaries as Noel Coward, Gertrude Lawrence, Fredric March and Basil Rathbone.   Mark Lenard plays Urko, the gorilla, who is the head of his kind who are the enforcers—policemen, soldiers and hunters. Whenever severe measures have to be taken against enemies of the State, gorillas carry out the desired action. “In the theatre,” says Lenard, “I’ve played everything from ‘Oedipus’ to ‘Three Men on a Horse.’” Among the many TV appearances he’s made, Lenard is best remembered as a co-star in the “Here Come the Brides” series.   The principal drive of the one-hour series is that of the apes pursuing the two astronauts, Alan Virdon (Ron Harper) and Pete Burke (James Naughton).   The reason for this constant pursuit is that Virdon and Burke, returning to earth, discover they have passed through this time warp and the earth is no longer as they knew it… It has become the PLANET OF THE APES!   The warp has pushed them up in time nearly 2000 years. Humans are now the inferior inhabitants of the inner zone (the center of the ape world) and their jobs are those of minor clerks, servants, laborers and slaves. An occasional human is elevated to the rank of an overseer, but they are subject to the ape civilization and exist at its whim.   Unlike the original “Apes” motion pictures, some of the humans in the series have powers of speech and the intellectual capacity of apes. The change was made to allow more plot flexibility and to provide the possibility of roles for guest stars.   However, if the two astronauts are not captured, the apes know they (Virdon and Burke) might inform the presently inferior humans that they, themselves, once ruled the earth. With this information, the humans might again rise to power; therefore, the astronauts must be captured.   The most amazing off-camera feature is the daily creation of “appliances” to the heads and faces of the apes. Dan Striepeke, one of the creators of the “Apes” appliances, has a crew of a dozen makeup artists working under him. Their art practice is energy-draining in that it takes three full hours to apply the features. This means that if Roddy McDowall is to be on the stage, ready to work in his appliance at 8:30 a.m., he must arise at 4:00 a.m. and report to the makeup department by 5:00 a.m. McDowall “psychs” himself during this arduous task (which is just as tiring to the actor as it is to the makeup artist) by listening to classical music during these three hours.   At midday, actors wearing makeup appliances cannot eat solid foods, but must partake of liquids by means of straws. During days when the heat rises to 110 degrees on location at the studios Century Ranch in the Conejo Valley, some actors can lose as much as ten pounds in a single day.   Executive producer Herbert Hirschman, active in television since 1948, has directed and produced countless shows in every category of the medium. He has also received many coveted awards for the excellence of his “behind the camera“ artistic endeavors.   Stan Hough, who was the head of the production department at 20th Century-Fox, is the producer of “Planet of the Apes”. His function as a producer has swiftly risen. He first produced the feature film “Emperor of the North”, starring Lee Marvin and Ernest Borgnine. After hitting top Nielsen ratings with his 90-minute motion picture for television, “Mrs. Sundance”, he was assigned the producership of “Planet of the Apes”.   The “Planet of the Apes” product merchandising is mind-boggling. It was expected that the sales of posters, toys, masks, kits, jigsaw puzzles and the like would gross in excess of $50 million, as well as publicising and promoting the series.   #   June, 1974