Sixties moviegoers went ape over Linda Harrison whose most memorable role featured her wearing nothing more than a loincloth She left an indelible impression as the mute human Nova opposite Charlton Heston’s time traveling astronaut Taylor in the classic sci-fi film Planet of the Apes (1968) where Earth was turned upside down with talking, horseback riding apes in charge and the humans their slaves. Linda’s Nova was brought back for the sequel Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970) where astronaut James Franciscus comes looking for his missing buddy and finds the apes ruling uptop and a city of mutant humans underground. Due to these films immense popularity, Linda will always be remembered as the beauty among the beasts. “Nova meant new,” reminded Linda. “I felt very comfortable playing her. I didn’t even have to audition. Dick [Zanuck] told me I had the quality they wanted.” She surely did. With her long, dark hair and big brown eyes, Linda had the perfect combination to bring Nova to life on the big screen.
Birthday wishes also to the late Alexandra Hay. She was a long-haired wispy blonde with waif-like delicate features in the vein of Sue Lyon and Carol Lynley, and played a number of cool chick roles in the late sixties including Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner as a gum chewing carhop who befuddles Spencer Tracy; Otto Preminger’s misfire of a comedy Skidoo as Jackie Gleason’s vapid daughter who falls for hippie John Philip Law; and Jacques Demy’s underrated Model Shop as the marriage minded girlfriend of Gary Lockwood’s photographer wannabe on the day he learns he has been drafted). Like most of her sixties contemporaries, the seventies and eighties found her turning to exploitation films (such as 1000 Convicts and a Woman!) and television. She died in October 1993 at age forty-nine.
Read my interview with Linda Harrison in Fantasy Femmes of Sixties Cinema.
For more on Alexandra Hay, read my profile in Glamour Girls of Sixties Hollywood.