Trivia: Born Janet Cole, American actress Kim Hunter trained at the Actors Studio. At age 17, she debuted onscreen in The Seventh Victim (1943) before appearing in several subpar films. Her popularity was renewed with her appearance in the British fantasy A Matter of Life and Death (1946), and, in 1947, she created the role of Stella Kowalski on Broadway in Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire, reprising the role in the 1951 film version, for which she won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar. But her career was dealt a terrible blow when her name appeared without cause in Red Channels, a Red-scare pamphlet during the McCarthy Era, and she was blacklisted. Several years later, she was called as the star witness in a court case instigated by another Red Channels victim, and her testimony discredited the publication and made it possible for dozens of other performers to reclaim their careers. She returned to films sporadically after this, and also did much work on stage and television; among her roles was appearing as a female ape in three Planet of the Apes films. She also wrote Loose in the Kitchen, a combination autobiography-cookbook. Hunter was married to writer Robert Emmett from 1951 until her death in 2002.

Trivia: Steely jawed, hard bodied, terse in speech, Charlton Heston was an American man's man, an epic unto himself. While he played modern men, he was at his best when portraying larger-than-life figures from world history, preferably with his shirt off. He was born John Charles Carter on October 4, 1924 and originally trained in the classics in Northwestern University's drama program, gaining early experience playing the lead in a 1941 filmed school production of Peer Gynt. He also performed on the radio, and then went on to serve in the Air Force for three years during WWII. Afterwards, he went to work as a model in New York, where he met his wife, fellow model Lydia Clarke, to whom he remained married until his death. Later the two operated a theater in Asheville, North Carolina where Heston honed his acting skills. He made his Broadway debut in Katharine Cornell's 1947 production of Anthony and Cleopatra and subsequently went on to be a staple of the highly-regarded New York-based Studio One live television anthology where he played such classic characters as Heathcliff, Julius Caesar and Petruchio. The show made Heston a star. He made his Hollywood film debut in William Dieterle's film noir Dark City playing opposite Lizabeth Scott. Even though she was more established in Hollywood, it was Heston who received top billing. He went on to appear as a white man raised in Indian culture in The Savage (1952) and then as a snob who snubs a country girl in King Vidor's Ruby Gentry (1952). His big break came when Cecil B. DeMille cast him as the bitter circus manager Brad Braden in The Greatest Show on Earth (1952). In subsequent films, Heston began developing his persona of an unflinching hero with a piercing blue-eyed stare and unbending, self-righteous Middle American ethics. Heston's heroes could be violent and cruel, but only when absolutely necessary. He began a long stint of playing historical characters with his portrayal of Buffalo Bill in Pony Express and then Andrew Jackson in The President's Lady (both 1953). Heston's star burned at its brightest when DeMille cast him as the stern Moses in the lavish The Ten Commandments (1956). From there, Heston went on to headline numerous spectaculars which provided him the opportunity to play every one from John the Baptist to Michelangelo to El Cid to General "Chinese" Gordon. In 1959, Heston won an Academy Award for the title role in William Wyler's Ben Hur. By the mid-1960s, the reign of the epic film passed and Heston began appearing in westerns (Will Penny) and epic war dramas (Midway). He also did sci-fi films, the most famous of which were the campy satire Planet of the Apes (1968), The Omega Man (1970) and the cult favorite Soylent Green (1973). The '70s brought Heston into a new kind of epic, the disaster film, and he appeared in three, notably Airport 1975. From the late '80s though the '90s, Heston has returned to television, appearing in series, miniseries and made-for TV movies. He also appeared in such films as Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet (1996) and 1998's Armageddon (as the narrator).Outside of his film work, Heston served six terms as the president of the Screen Actors Guild and also chaired the American Film Institute. Active in such charities as The Will Rogers Institute, he was awarded the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at the 1977 Oscar ceremony. Known as a conservative Republican and proud member of the National Rifle Association, Heston worked closely with his long-time colleague and friend President Ronald Reagan as the leader of the president's task force on arts and the humanities. He made two of his final film appearances in the disastrous Warren Beatty-Diane Keaton sex farce Town and Country (2001) (in a parodistic role, as a shotgun wielding arsonist who burns Beatty's cabin to the ground) and as himself in Michael Moore's documentary Bowling For Columbine (2002) (in which he stormed out of an interview after Moore pummeled him with gun-related questions). Heston died in the spring of 2008 at age 84; although the cause of death was officially undisclosed, he had revealed several years prior that he was suffering from Alzheimer's Disease.

Trivia: Internationally acclaimed British stage star Maurice Evans is celebrated for his lyrical speaking voice and his great performances in the classics. The son of an amateur playwright, he sang professionally as a boy and later acted in his father's adaptations of Thomas Hardy's novels. In 1926 he made his professional stage debut, and first appeared on the London stage the following year. While establishing his reputation he supported himself by running a cleaning and dyeing establishment. In 1929 his triumphant performance in Journey's End allowed him to become a full-time actor. He appeared in a handful of British films from 1930-35, but otherwise remained exclusively a stage actor. He joined the Old Vic company in 1934, then moved to the U.S. in 1935, when he began a long and illustrious career on Broadway; he was most revered for his work in plays by Shakespeare and Shaw. In 1941 he became a U.S. citizen. During World War II he was put in charge of the Army Entertainment Section, Central Pacific Theater; with the rank of major, he toured Pacific military bases in a streamlined version of Hamlet. He returned to the screen in 1951 in Kind Lady opposite Ethel Barrymore, but again went on to make only a few films over the next two decades, none of which matched the stature of his stage productions. His best-known role was as the ape Dr. Zaius in Planet of the Apes (1968) and Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970). He also did much work on TV, most memorably on the sitcom Bewitched, in which he played Elizabeth Montgomery's warlock father.

Trivia: During the late '60s and early '70s, Linda Harrison bade fair to be one of the screen's reigning beauty queens; as one of the three young starlets in the series Bracken's World and as the mute woman Nova in the first two Planet of the Apes movies, Harrison was a very attractive and visible young actress. Indeed, had she come along a few years later, when the ancillary market for television- and movie-related posters was more developed, she might've been a rival to the likes of Farrah Fawcett-Majors or Jaclyn Smith. Harrison was born in Berlin, MD, and took an early interest in dance and acrobatics. She won a series of local beauty contests which led to a short stint as a photo model in New York. While in California for a beauty competition, she was spotted by an agent who arranged a screen test for her at 20th Century Fox. She was signed up and immediately put into a small role in the pilot episode of a series called Men Against Evil, which evolved into the police show Felony Squad, with Howard Duff and her future Bracken's World co-star Dennis Cole. She also turned up as a cheerleader in an episode of Batman. It was in the Jerry Lewis comedy Way...Way Out that Harrison made her big-screen debut and she followed this with an appearance in the low-budget comedy The Fat Spy, then turned up in a somewhat more prestigious vehicle, A Guide for the Married Man. It was around that time that she first met Richard Zanuck, a production executive (and the son of legendary mogul Darryl F. Zanuck), who offered her the role of Nova in the film Planet of the Apes. That movie took a long time to get off the ground and before she ever appeared as Nova, Harrison served as a stand-in in the role of Dr. Zira (the part ultimately played by Kim Hunter) in the screen tests and extensive make-up tests through which the project evolved, even participating in a test for Edward G. Robinson in the role of Dr. Zaius (Robinson was forced to withdraw from the project because of a heart condition that prevented him from working under the heavy make-up and in the high altitude location where much of the film was to be made). Although the character of Nova was mute, Harrison made a serious impression on audiences with her long dark hair and big brown eyes, which did most of her acting for her in the absence of any spoken dialogue for her character. The film was a huge hit, earning huge grosses across more than one year of release around the world and eventually yielded a seque. In the interim, Harrison was cast as Paulette, the young aspiring actress in the Fox-produced network series Bracken's World. It was here that she not only reminded television audiences, weekly, of her stunning appearance but proved that she could act, playing a character who was juggling romantic entanglements, studio pressures, and the nagging of her mother (Jeanne Cooper) over her career. In 1970, during the run of Bracken's World, Harrison reprised her role as Nova in Beneath the Planet of the Apes, where her character was, if anything, featured even more prominently -- indeed, it is the death of Nova that leads the Charlton Heston character to the grim notion that the whole world-turned-upside-down should be destroyed. Harrison disappeared from movies for a time, after Beneath the Planet of the Apes and the cancellation of her television series, when she married Richard Zanuck. During the mid-'70s, however, she tried to re-emerge in her profession, which engendered some frustrating moments; she had, and then lost, the role of Roy Scheider's wife in Jaws, when Universal Pictures insisted that it go to Lorraine Gary, the wife of studio chief Sidney Sheinberg. As a consolation prize, she played a part in Airport 1975, working under the pseudonym of Augusta Summerland. She later divorced Zanuck and left the business altogether for a time, to work on raising her family and pursuing her personal spiritual goals. The two remained sufficiently close to each other, however, so that when Harrison resumed studying acting in the 1980s, Zanuck offered her a role in his production of Cocoon, which she reprised in the sequel. She appeared in the movie Wild Bill and participated onscreen in the documentary Behind the Planet of the Apes.

Trivia: Muscular utility actor Paul Richards first appeared onscreen in 1951's Fixed Bayonets. He spent the rest of the decade playing roles of all sizes in action films and Westerns. His TV guest star credits include the first episode of Gunsmoke, in which he shocked millions of viewers by gunning down Matt Dillon before the middle commercial. A more benign Paul Richards starred as personable psychiatrist Dr. McKinley "Mac" Thompson in the 1963 TV medical series The Breaking Point.

Trivia: While attending San Diego's St. Augustine High School, Victor Buono appeared in three plays a year - including the title role in Hamlet! After planning to attend medical school, Buono was rechannelled into an acting career, spending the summer of his 18th year at the municipal Globe Theatre in San Diego, then studying drama at Villanova University. He made his first network TV appearance at age 21, playing bearded poet "Bongo Benny" in an episode of 77 Sunset Strip; this led to 45 TV guest spots over the next three years, during which Buono would later claim he always played "Standard Bad Man 49-B. Buonogenerally played characters much older than himself, his expressive facial features and excess weight helping him pull off the deception. Robert Aldrich cast Buono as the third-rate songwriter who leeches off of faded child star Bette Davis in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane (1962). Davis' was opposed to the casting, insisting that Buono was "grotesque," but after filming finished the actress went up to Buono and apologized for her earlier attitude; even more gratifying to Buono was his Oscar nomination for Baby Jane. Buono's greatest period of TV activity were the years between 1964 and 1970, when he was much in demand to play villains of various nationalities and ethnic origins on the many secret-agent programs of the period. As bad as Buono's bad guys were, he always played them with a rogueish twinkle in the eye just to let the audience know it was all in fun. His best remembered roles during the late 1960s were Count Manzeppi on the adventure series Wild Wild West, and King Tut on the weekly campfest Batman. Also during this period Buono began going the talk-show route, regaling audiences with his self-deprecating poetry, most of it centered on his avoirdupois ("I think that I shall never see / My feet"). These appearances led to nightclub and lecture dates, a popular comedy record album, and a slim volume of poems, It Could Be Verse. In the 1970s and 1980s, Buono's screen characters began to veer away from outright villainy; now he was most often seen as pompous intellectuals or shifty con men. That he could also play straight, and with compassion, was proven by Buono's appearance as President Taft in the TV miniseries Backstairs at the White House, wherein he delivered a poignant tribute to the late Mrs. Taft. Victor Buono was 43 when he died suddenly at his ranch home in Apple Valley, California.

Trivia: "As familiar as a favorite leather easy chair" is how one magazine writer described the craggy, weather-beaten face of ineluctable character actor James Gregory. Indeed, it is hard to imagine any time in the past six decades that Gregory hasn't been seen on stage, on TV or on the big screen. There were those occasional periods during the 1930s and 1940s when he was working on Wall Street rather than acting, and there were those uniformed stints in the Marines and the Naval Reserve. Otherwise, Gregory remained a persistent showbiz presence from the time he first performed with a Pennsylvania-based travelling troupe in 1936. Three years later, he was on Broadway in Key Largo; he went on to appear in such stage hits as Dream Girl, All My Sons, Death of a Salesman and The Desperate Hours. In films from 1948, Gregory was repeatedly cast as crusty no-nonsense types: detectives, military officers, prosecuting attorneys and outlaw leaders. With his bravura performance as demagogic, dead-headed senator Johnny Iselin in The Manchurian Candidate (1962), Gregory launched a second career of sorts, cornering the market in portraying braggadocio blowhards. One of his best characterizations in this vein was as the hard-shelled Inspector Luger in the TV sitcom Barney Miller. He played Luger for six seasons (1975-78, 1979-81), with time out for his own short-lived starring series, Detective School (1978). He also played Prohibition-era detective Barney Ruditsky on The Lawless Years (1959-61) and T. R. Scott in The Paul Lynde Show (1972), not to mention nearly 1000 guest appearances on other series. James Gregory has sometimes exhibited his sentimental streak by singing in his spare time: he has for many years been a member of the SPEBQSA, which as any fan of The Music Man can tell you is the Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barbershop Quartet Singing in America.

Trivia: American actor Jeff Corey forsook a job as sewing-machine salesman for the less stable world of New York theatre in the 1930s. The 26-year-old Corey was regarded as a valuable character-actor commodity when he arrived in Hollywood in 1940. Perhaps the best of his many early unbilled appearances was in the Kay Kyser film You'll Find Out (40), in which Corey, playing a game-show contestant (conveniently named Jeff Corey), was required to sing a song while stuffing his mouth full of crackers. The actor was busiest during the "film noir" mid-to-late 1940s, playing several weasely villain roles; it is hard to forget the image of Corey, in the role of a slimy stoolie in Burt Lancaster's Brute Force, being tied to the front of a truck and pushed directly into a hail of police bullets. Corey's film career ended abruptly in 1952 when he was unfairly blacklisted for his left-leaning political beliefs. To keep food on the table, Corey became an acting coach, eventually running one of the top training schools in the business (among his more famous pupils was Jack Nicholson). He was permitted to return to films in the 1960s, essaying such roles as a wild-eyed wino in Lady in a Cage (64), the louse who kills Kim Darby's father in True Grit (68), and a sympathetic sheriff in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (68). In addition to his film work, Jeff Corey has acted in and directed numerous TV series; he was seen as a regular on the 1985 Robert Blake series Hell Town and the 1986 Earl Hamner Jr. production Morningstar/Eveningstar. The following decade found Corey appearing in such films as Sinatra (1992), Beethoven's 2nd (1993) and the action thriller Surviving the Game (1994). Shortly after suffering a fall at his Malibu home in August of 2002, Corey died in Santa Monica due to complications resulting from the accident. He was 88.

Trivia: American actress Natalie Trundy was lauded with critical appreciation for her very first film role as a mixed-up teenager in The Careless Years (1957). Her subsequent film roles were acceptable if not as impressive, though she worked often thanks to the influence of her producer-husband Arthur Jacobs. Given plenty of screen time as Jimmy Stewart's daughter Susan in Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation (1962), Trundy proved that her performance in Careless Years wasn't a fluke and that she seemed to have a stellar career ahead of her. But in 1962, she suffered a broken back in an auto accident, and was out of commission for several years. She made her comeback in Planet of the Apes (1969), produced by her husband, and appeared (with no undue physical strain imposed upon her) in all four Apes sequels. After the death of Arthur Jacobs in 1973, Natalie Trundy retired again, and later married an executive of the Gucci company.

Trivia: Awarded a scholarship to a prestigious New York drama school at 17, Thomas Gomez first stepped on the Broadway stage as a cadet in Walter Hampden's Cyrano de Bergerac. He joined Alfred Lunt's company in the 1930s, playing character parts of varying sizes. He also made a pioneering television appearance in a 1940 broadcast of a long-forgotten playlet called "A Game of Chess". After garnering good reviews for his performance in the 1942 play Flowers of Virtue, Gomez was signed to play a megalomanic Nazi spy in his first film, Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon (1942). By virtue of his weight, his raspy voice and his baleful appearance, Gomez was often cast as heavies, though he evinced a preference for characters with "some rascality, warmth and dimension." Of Spanish heritage, Gomez refused to play Latin characters unless they could be presented "with sympathy, or at least with humanity." In 1947, Gomez was Oscar-nominated for just such a role in Ride the Pink Horse. Amidst his dramatic roles, Gomez proved a worthy foil to such comedians as Bob Hope and Abbott and Costello. Thomas Gomez' extensive television work included the part of a most courtly devil in the 1959 Twilight Zone episode "Escape Clause," Soviet functionary Malenkov in the like-vintage Playhouse 90 drama "The Plot to Kill Stalin," and a Minnesota Fats-type pool player in a well-circulated 1965 Mister Ed installment; he also played Pasquale in the 1953 TV revival of radio's Life With Luigi.

Trivia: Twice in his career, once in the late '30s and again at the end of the 1940s, it seemed as though Tod Andrews was poised for a major career, first in movies and later on Broadway. Somehow, however, he never realized the promise that was shown at those two points in his life. There is much that is mysterious about the early career of this actor who, at one time, bid fair to become another Henry Fonda; beyond the two different names that he worked under in movies, there were multiple years of birth reported, anywhere from 1914 to 1920, different places of birth, and original names ranging from John Buchanan to Ted Anderson. He was definitely raised in California, and initially took up acting (along with journalism) at Washington State College to overcome a neurotic shyness. He later joined the Pasadena Playhouse, specializing in male ingenue roles, and was seen there in the play Masque of Kings by author Maxwell Anderson, who encouraged him to continue in his acting career. He made it to New York and it was in a production of My Sister Eileen, in the role of one of the "six future admirals" from Brazil, that he was spotted by Jack L. Warner, the head of Warner Bros., and offered a screen test. He passed it, was duly signed up, and first began working in movies under the name Michael Ames. He played uncredited parts in such big-budget features as Dive Bomber and They Died With Their Boots On, and got his first screen credit in a small role in the feature International Squadron, which seemed to bode well for his future. His subsequent vehicles, however, were mostly in the B-movie category, including the Warner Bros. crime drama I Was Framed (which seemed like a warmed-over rewrite of the John Garfield vehicle Dust Be My Destiny) and Truck Busters, a cheap remake of a James Cagney vehicle that was more than a decade old. He was cast as Don Ameche's son in the big-budget 20th Century Fox fantasy-comedy Heaven Can Wait but then turned up in a pair of ultra-cheap horror thrillers, Voodoo Man and Return of the Ape Man, playing the callow male heroes in both. By this time, he was using both his Tod Andrews and Michael Ames personae, depending upon the prominence of the production, but after 1944 Michael Ames disappeared entirely. Dispirited by his first experience of Hollywood, Andrews headed for New York, where he was fortunate enough to join the Margo Jones Company, through which, in 1948, he was cast as the lead in the new Tennessee Williams play Summer and Smoke. His career on Broadway seemed headed in directions that Hollywood never afforded him; having outgrown his youthful callowness, he retained a touch of vulnerability and sensitivity that projected well on the stage. Andrews was seen during the run of the Williams play by producer/director Joshua Logan, who made note of the actor's qualities. He returned to Hollywood briefly in 1950 to play a lead role in Ida Lupino's drama Outrage and then Broadway beckoned again, with one of the best parts of the period -- Henry Fonda was set to leave the title role in the stage production of Mr. Roberts. The director, Joshua Logan, remembered Andrews, who inherited the role for the remainder of its Broadway run and the national tour that followed. Six good years followed, in which the actor enjoyed his good fortune on the stage and was never out of work. He also returned to Hollywood once more, for work in the excellent wartime drama Between Heaven and Hell for Fox. And then something bizarre happened in his career -- what it was may never be known, because all of the principals involved are gone -- Andrews, established Broadway and theatrical star, subject of columnists and feature writers, suddenly turned up the following year in the cheap Allied Artists B-horror film From Hell It Came, playing the hero-scientist battling a killer tree stump on a radioactive South Pacific island. He did well enough in the part, but this was not the sort of film -- the whole production budget was smaller than the outlay on film stock alone for Between Heaven and Hell -- that was going to enhance the professional standing of anyone with an actual career. Andrews next turned up on television, playing Colonel John Singleton Mosby in the syndicated adventure series The Gray Ghost, before returning to the theater. He seemed to be doing well enough until 1961, when, days before the opening of a new play appropriately entitled A Whiff of Melancholy, he attempted suicide. He later said that it was a result of stress over the role. He resumed his career after a convalescence and next turned up in movies in 1965, as Captain Tuthill in Otto Preminger's World War II action blockbuster In Harm's Way. He later made a small but impressive appearance as a defense attorney in Ted Post's Hang 'Em High and had an excellent scene in Post's Beneath the Planet of the Apes, as James Franciscus's stricken commanding officer. Andrews' final screen appearances were as the President of the United States in the political thriller The President's Plane Is Missing (1973), and as a doctor in the chiller The Baby, released a year later.

Trivia: Angular Anglo-Latino actor Gregory Sierra began showing up on screen in 1971 in such films as The Wrath of God. Sierra quickly familiarized himself with TV viewers via his continuing role as Julio Fuentes in the weekly sitcom Sanford and Son. He left Sanford in January of 1975 to accept the part of detective sergeant Chano Amenguale on Barney Miller, a role he held down until the fall of 1976. Next up, Sierra starred as Dr. Tony Menzies on A.E.S. Hudson Street, a 1978 TV comedy that folded after six weeks despite positive critical comment. Two years later, he was cast as South American revolutionary "El Puerco" on the nighttime serial spoof Soap, figuring prominently in the series' up-in-the-air final episode in 1981. Gregory Sierra's more recent television roles have included Lt. Victor Maldonado on the NBC sci-fier Something is Out There (1988), and the ill-fated Lt. Lou Rodriguez on the trendy 1980's cop show Miami Vice.

Trivia: Character actor Lou Wagner has been visible in movies and television since the mid-'60s, but his most visible big-screen part was played under such heavy makeup that audiences can be forgiven for not remembering him. Wagner was one of a handful of actors carried over from the original Planet of the Apes (1968) to its sequel, Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970), playing Lucius, the young assistant to chimpanzee scientists Cornelius (Roddy McDowall and David Watson) and Zira (Kim Hunter) in the two movies. Born in San Jose, CA, in 1948, Wagner's short stature (reportedly five feet, two inches) and youthful features made him a natural to play young teenagers, and across the late '60s and into the start of the 1970s he often did just that, on series such as Lost in Space and Dragnet, in addition to appearances in feature films, including Hello Down There (1969) and Airport (1970, in which he had three very funny scenes as a know-it-all boy passenger). In his television debut in the Lost in Space episode "The Haunted Lighthouse," Wagner managed to squeeze some pathos out of the role of a lonely alien boy with a secret, while on the Dragnet episode "The Big Departure" he made the most of his role as a pseudo-intellectual teenage rebel. By the 1970s, in addition to showing up in Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, Wagner had settled into character and supporting roles, mostly in television, with the occasional movie role here and there. He has worked regularly into the 21st century, with an occasional bigger part to highlight his career, such as his starring role in Starry Night (1999).

Trivia: British actor Roddy McDowall's father was an officer in the English merchant marine, and his mother was a would-be actress. When it came time to choose a life's calling, McDowall bowed to his mother's influence. After winning an acting prize in a school play, he was able to secure film work in Britain, beginning at age ten with 1938's Scruffy. He appeared in 16 roles of varying sizes and importance before he and his family were evacuated to the U.S. during the 1940 Battle of Britain. McDowall arrival in Hollywood coincided with the wishes of 20th Century-Fox executive Darryl F. Zanuck to create a "new Freddie Bartholomew." He tested for the juvenile lead in Fox's How Green Was My Valley (1941), winning both the role and a long contract. McDowall's first adult acting assignment was as Malcolm in Orson Welles' 1948 film version of Macbeth; shortly afterward, he formed a production company with Macbeth co-star Dan O'Herlihy. McDowall left films for the most part in the 1950s, preferring TV and stage work; among his Broadway credits were No Time for Sergeants, Compulsion, (in which he co-starred with fellow former child star Dean Stockwell) and Lerner and Loewe's Camelot (as Mordred). McDowall won a 1960 Tony Award for his appearance in the short-lived production The Fighting Cock. The actor spent the better part of the early 1960s playing Octavius in the mammoth production Cleopatra, co-starring with longtime friend Elizabeth Taylor. An accomplished photographer, McDowall was honored by having his photos of Taylor and other celebrities frequently published in the leading magazines of the era. He was briefly an advising photographic editor of Harper's Bazaar, and in 1966 published the first of several collections of his camerawork, Double Exposure. McDowall's most frequent assignments between 1968 and 1975 found him in elaborate simian makeup as Cornelius in the Planet of the Apes theatrical films and TV series. Still accepting the occasional guest-star film role and theatrical assignment into the 1990s, McDowall towards the end of his life was most active in the administrative end of show business, serving on the executive boards of the Screen Actors Guild and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. A lifelong movie collector (a hobby which once nearly got him arrested by the FBI), McDowall has also worked diligently with the National Film Preservation Board. In August, 1998, he was elected president of the Academy Foundation. One of Hollywood's last links to its golden age and much-loved by old and new stars alike -- McDowell was famed for his kindness, generosity and loyalty (friends could tell McDowall any secret and be sure of its safety) -- McDowall's announcement that he was suffering from terminal cancer a few weeks before he died rocked the film community, and many visited the ailing actor in his Studio City home. Shortly before he was diagnosed with cancer, McDowall had provided the voiceover for Disney/Pixar's animated feature A Bug's Life. A few days prior to McDowall's passing, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences named its photo archive after him.