Trivia

During breaks in filming, actors made up as different ape species tended to hang out together, gorillas with gorillas, orangutans with orangutans, chimps with chimps. It wasn't required, it just naturally happened.

Although Charlton Heston's character is listed in the credits as "George Taylor", the name "George" is never seen or heard in the film. He is referred to only as "Taylor".

When adjusted for inflation, the movie holds the world record for the highest make-up budget (then £345,542), which represented about 17% of the total budget (£2 million).

John Chambers' outstanding makeup technique pioneered in the film was based upon one technique he had used during World War II to give disfigured veterans a normal appearance. Chambers spent many hours watching the apes at Los Angeles Zoo, studying their facial expressions. Several other productions were delayed due to the fact that many of Hollywood's top make up artists were working on this film. Leftover makeup supplies were later used on actor Michael Conrad, playing an ape-like alien in Lost in Space: Fugitives in Space. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gave Chambers a special award for makeup (which was not an Oscar category until 1981) for this achievement, in the second time that a make-up artist received an Academy Award. [William Tuttle was the first, with 7 Faces of Dr. Lao (1964)]. Chambers' award was presented by Walter Matthau and a chimpanzee in a tuxedo.

One of the biggest stumbling blocks preventing 20th Century Fox from committing to the project was their fear over how the ape faces would appear on screen. Eventually they stumped up $5,000 for a test scene to be shot with Charlton Heston playing alongside the made-up Edward G. Robinson as Dr. Zaius and James Brolin as a character called Mr. Cornelius. The studio was very excited about the results of this test but still delayed green lighting the film for a further six months. It was only after Fantastic Voyage became a hit and showed the viability of science fiction as a genre that "Planet of the Apes" was given the go-ahead, but without Robinson, as he suffered from a weak heart and didn't think he could endure the day-to-day rigors of performing in the ape make-up.

The fourth astronaut Stewart was originally written as a man.

Two 9-foot statues of the Lawgiver were made. The original used in the 1st, 2nd and 5th film ended up in Arthur P. Jacobs' backyard as the sole prop he kept from the movie. The other was given to Sammy Davis Jr. by Jacobs and was kept by him for many years. Arthur P. Jacobs kept the original Lawgiver statue in his backyard until his early and untimely death at age 51. His surviving spouse, Natalie Trundy Jacobs, kept the statue in her backyard even as she moved residences. Several movie stars and celebrities can be found in photo archives standing next to the Lawgiver statue including Charlton Heston, Edward G. Robinson, Kim Hunter, Andy Warhol, and a then expecting Natalie Wood. In December of 1998, Natalie Trundy Jacobs sold the original Lawgiver statue through an online auction hosted by The Time Machine, an web based memorabilia store retailing in photos and celebrity autographs. The winning bidder of the auction was an avid Planet of the Apes Collector, Ed Gogin of Orange County, California, who outbid 20th Century Fox (TCF). TCF wanted the Lawgiver statue for their archives and marketing purposes. In December of 2010, the avid Planet of the Apes Collector, Ed Gogin, was featured in "Hollywood Treasure", (episode #110 titled "Joe's Judgement Day") which is a SyFy Channel original TV series about movie memorabilia collectors and their collections. In the episode Ed Gogin displays the Lawgiver statue as well as original Ape costumes and props from the movie. The copy of the Lawgiver statue once owned by Sammy Davis, Jr., was sold at his IRS estate auction for the celebrity singer's unpaid back taxes to a Hollywood actor and friend of Roddy McDowall. This Lawgiver statue was featured in the 1998 AMC documentary, Behind the Planet of the Apes, as part of AMC's 30 Year Anniversary campaign "Apes Go Classic".

The apes' village is modeled on the work of legendary Spanish architect Antonio Gaudi and the Göreme Valley in Cappadocia, Turkey.

The water pool where the astronauts enjoy a swim was built on the Fox Ranch by producer Arthur P. Jacobs for his adaptation of Doctor Dolittle.

The apes don't make their first appearance until 30 minutes into the film.

Charlton Heston (Taylor) and Linda Harrison (Nova) are the only actors to appear in both this film and the remake, Planet of the Apes.

Roddy McDowall, an experienced actor, recommended to his companions in makeup that they should frequently add tics, blinks and assorted facial gestures to add a sense of realism and keep the makeup from appearing "mask-like". McDowall reportedly became a merry prankster with the makeup, driving home with his make-up on, and shocking some of the other drivers on the freeway.

Early scenes in the movie where the spaceship crash-lands in the lake were filmed at Lake Powell, which is formed by a dam on the Colorado River on the Utah-Arizona border.

Linda Harrison, who plays Nova, was having an affair with producer Richard D. Zanuck at the time of production. In the year of the film's release, Zanuck divorced his first wife and married Harrison. The couple were married for 9 years and had 2 children.

Michael Wilson was brought in to do a rewrite of Rod Serling's screenplay. Wilson's contribution is most evident in the kangaroo courtroom scene, Wilson being an embittered victim of the blacklisting McCarthy witchhunts of the 50s.

Director Franklin J. Schaffner deliberately used odd, skewed angles and hand-held cameras to create a disorientating effect, much like what Charlton Heston's character experiences in this brave new world.

Producer Arthur P. Jacobs enlisted several journalists to play background apes. This was a clever way of ensuring that they would write about the film.

Shortly after the astronauts have crash landed Taylor is asked where he thinks they are, having no idea he sarcastically responds, "We're some 320 light years from Earth on an unnamed planet in orbit around a star in the constellation of Orion." In the original novel the story takes place on a planet in orbit around the star Betelgeuse, which is in the constellation of Orion.

The spaceship is inscribed with the acronym ANSA rather than NASA. The meaning of this in-joke is uncertain. The ship itself has been named by fans as the USS Icarus, after Greek mythology's ill-fated flight pioneer.

Linda Harrison (Nova) was pregnant with producer Richard D. Zanuck's child and was starting to show towards the end of the shoot which required careful posing on her part to conceal it.

During the hunt scene an unclothed Charlton Heston had to run through the poison oak undergrowth of Fox's Century Ranch.

The sound effect of the rocket ship hurtling through the atmosphere of the ape planet and then landing in the lake is the exact same sound effect used for the Batmobile in motion from the TV show "Batman" also produced by 20th Century Fox.

The first director to spot the potential in Pierre Boulle's novel was Blake Edwards. He brought on board leading sci-fi writer Rod Serling who produced nearly 40 drafts of the screenplay. While Serling was able to get to grips with the structure, he gave full credit to Michael G. Wilson for the final screenplay.

Kim Hunter reportedly found the facial ape prosthetics so claustrophobic that she took a Valium each morning while being made up as Zira.

The final scene with Taylor coming across the Statue of Liberty was suggested by Rod Serling. According to rumor, Pierre Boulle was greatly upset by this ending, but later warmed to it, preferring this new ending over the very different ending he had written. The skeletal remains of the torch appear as "set decoration" in the final episode of Lost in Space: Junkyard of Space.

The filming location of the classic final scene has been erroneously thought to be Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, but is in fact Malibu, California. For die-hard fans who want to visit the true location, it is a secluded cove on the far eastern end of Westward Beach, between Zuma Beach and Point Dume. Ignore the wide curving beach by the car park and clamber over the rocks to the east until you get to the quiet, often deserted, little beach surrounded by cliffs. (The Statue of Liberty was an optical effect skillfully achieved with a matte painting blended into a still existing rock structure.)

Some viewers claim that the windows of the Icarus, when viewed from inside at the beginning, resemble the eyes of the Statue of Liberty.