I recently saw Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and Don Knotts in The Ghost and Mr. Chicken - allegedly a favorite film of Jim Carey. I was compelled to connect the two.
I do love talking monkey movies, but CG Apes don’t have the same pizzazz as seeing acting legends Kim Hunter and Maurice Evans, along with Roddy McDowall, all buried under make-up artist John Chambers’ prosthetic pieces.
After all, Kim Hunter was one of the great Method actors and one of the first members accepted by the newly created Actors Studio. In his wonderfully researched book, The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act, Isaac Butler makes a case that, along with Marlon Brando, she is too little recognized as one of the great actors of the 50s. She was in the original stage and film productions of Streetcar Named Desire with Brando. She won the Academy Award for her role as Stella. She had been blacklisted but, in addition to film and theater, had a huge television resumé. She also appeared in three Ape movies.
Maurice Evans, for goodness' sake, was a great classical actor. According to Wicki, he appeared in more American television productions of Shakespeare than any other actor. Roddy McDowall, born in England, was a child actor with a prolific career. He was also an author, photographer, and TV personality and had been in a relationship with Montgomery Clift in the early 1950s.
All three were at the service of the fine, beefy, jaw-clenching performance of Charlton Heston in a loincloth. I could never quite reconcile these monkey mask roles cast with legendary actors. But actors gotta eat, and you never know what might be a hit.
The CG-driven multi-million-dollar Ape movies of today are a world away from the go-for-broke kitsch value of the earlier Planet of the Apes franchise.
Sidenote: Rick Baker, (American Werewolf in London, Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes, Harry and the Hendersons), was a pre-CG ape specialist. Hos first film as an artist was a diving helmet on an ape suit for the movie Robot Monster
.
Moving onto Don Knotts: One of my childhood heroes. My affection for the comic brilliance of Knotts began with The Men on the Street routine from the old Steve Allen Show that broadcast on Sunday nights. It was Knotts, along with Tom Poston and Louis Nye; they laid me flat with laughter as a kid. Then there was also his nervous “weatherman” schtick. These guys taught me a lot about comedy as iconic comic character types as defined by the TV medium. These guys, I’m sure, influenced many later comics and shows like Saturday Night Live and SCTV.
That persona was a part of his iconic Barney Fife character on Andy Griffith, a dozen cheesy film comedies, and a famous stint on Three’s Company, which I’ve never seen. Maybe I didn’t want to taint the purity of his earlier personas from my impressionable childhood years. More likely, I didn’t watch enough TV from those years of ‘77 to ‘84.
His movies are always a pleasure, guilty or otherwise. I especially like that he was quite the lady's man and married some beautiful woman (you know what they say - big ears, big shoes). His daughter Karen, an actress and comedian, had a long-time stage show called “Tied in Knotts” that riffed on her father’s life. (the picture below is Don and Loralee Knotts)
Which gets me to my point:
To show how much time can be wasted on any given morning on Facebook:
Here are Six Degrees of Connection - a variation on the old ‘Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon’ game
Starting with Dawn of the Apes, I connect Six Degrees through Don Knotts to Kevin Bacon.
Then, it was Six Degrees from Bacon and back to Don Knotts.
Along the way are some movie picks that I dare you to see!
1. Rise of the Planet of the Apes with Kerri Russell
2. Russell with Andy Griffith (Waitress)
3. Griffith with Don Knotts (Barnie Fife)
4. Knotts with Jane Kaczmarek (Pleasantville)
5. Kaczmarek with Frankie Muniz (Malcolm in the Middle)
6. Muiz with Kevin Bacon (My Dog Skip)
1. Bacon with Campbell Scott (Loverboy)
2. Scott with Troy Donahue (Sexpot)
3. Donahue and Robert Stack (Tarnished Angels)
4. Stack with Nigel Bruce (Bwana Devil)
5. Nigel Bruce with David Niven (The Charge of the Light Brigade)
6. David Niven with DON KNOTTS in No Deposit, No Return)
Don Knotts was my brothers and me’s favorite from Andy Griffith along with “At last. At last. It’s Ernest T. Bass.
All we need now is a blizzard! I have seen some but not all and would be fun to trace along the degrees. Apes always huge plus.