SIMIAN PUPPETS (& Costumed People)
American Tourister Gorilla -
From 1980 to 1983 American Tourister created a series of three commercials
featuring a berserk gorilla who jumped, threw and generally banged the
hell out of a variety of American Tourister luggage. Inside that hairy
costume was actor Don McLeod, the world's foremost pseudo-simian who has
starred in a variety of monkey roles including the lead ape on the
syndicated TV series TARZAN: THE EPIC ADVENTURES/SYN/1996-97; the movies Trading
Places (1983) and Naked Gun 2 and 1/2: The Smell of Fear (1991);
and a surprise visit to the Moscow Circus where he came out in a cage and
fooled the people into thinking he was the real thing.
Galen the chimp - Highly evolved chimpanzee on the
sci-fi adventure PLANET OF THE APES/CBS/1974. Galen (played by Roddy
McDowall) spoke the English language and walked upright as did the rest of
his simian kind (an atomic holocaust destroyed most of mankind but evolved
the apes on planet Earth to a higher form of life). When a time-warping
spaceship carrying astronauts Alan Virdon (Ron Harper) and Pete Burke
(James Naughton) from the year 1988 landed on this futuristic landscape of
A.D. 3085, Galen befriended and protected them from enslavement by his
fellow creatures who saw "man" as an evil threat to their
current world. He later fled with the earthmen after accidentally killing
an ape leader who was trying to kill the astronauts. At this point the
program became a futuristic version of THE FUGITIVE with a group of angry
apes in hot pursuit espousing the sentiments "The only good human is
a dead human." Other monkey character included Urko the ape (Mark
Lenard), a military leader and Zaius (Booth Colman), an orangutan
politician. The series is based on the novel Planet of the
Apes by Pierre Boulle which spawned the motion picture Planet of
the Apes (1975) starring Charlton Heston (on which the TV series is
based), as well as the animated Saturday morning cartoon RETURN TO THE
PLANET OF THE APES/NBC/1975-76.
Mugato - Huge ape-like
carnivore seen on episode No. 45 "A Private Little War" on the
sci-fi series STAR TREK/NBC/1966-69. While visiting Tyree (Michael Kovack)
the leader of a primitive hill people, Starfleet Captain James T. Kirk
(William Shatner) was attacked by a large white ape with red face, and a
small white rhino-like horn on the top of its head. Its poisonous fangs
put Kirk's life in jeopardy when he was bitten during the attack. Luckily,
the cure for the poison lay in a native plant known as the "mahko
root" that was administered by the Kahn-ut-tu medicine woman named
Nona (Nancy Kovack).
Nairobi Trio - Mechanical windup toy gorillas featured
on a recurring skit on the comedy program THE ERNIE KOVACS
SHOW/CBS/NBC/1952-56. The Nairobi Trio were actually three human actors
dressed in bowler hats, overcoats and rubber gorilla masks who played
musical instruments to the beat of the song "Solfeggio." One of
them sat at an upright piano, another at a xylophone and the third carried
a conductor's baton. At key points during the music, the ape with the
xylophone hammers, would turn from his xylophone and bash the head of the
gorilla conductor. Ernie Kovac always played the conductor. The other two
gorilla musicians were played by a number of actors including Peter
Hanley, Edie Adams (Ernie's Wife), Eddie Hatrak, Barbara Loden, puppeteer
Larry Berthelson and occasionally by Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis. The
routine was inspired by the music from the record "Solfeggio"
which singer Peter Hanley brought into work one day to accompany his Do,
Re, Me singing exercises. After hearing the song just three times, Ernie
Kovacs created those masochistic, mechanical monkeys. The Nairobi Trio
made their first appearance on THE ERNIE KOVACS SHOW on April 21, 1954. On
the sitcom FRIENDS/NBC/1994+ Chandler Bing (Matthew Perry) stayed
up to watch classic Ernie
Kovacs reruns that featured the antics of the Nairobi Trio.
Ozmoe the monkey -
Remote-controlled monkey character on the children's program OZMOE/ABC/1951.
Constructed of latex rubber compound and operated via an electronic remote
control system, Ozmoe interacted with such characters as Poe the Crow, Sam
the Clam, Throckmorton, the Sea Serpent, Roderick Dhon't, the Leprechaun,
Horatio the Caterpillar; and Misty Waters, a curvaceous mermaid. The
program (created by Henry Bank) was located in a fictional sub-basement of
Studio Z of the ABC Television center. Bradley Bolke, Jack Urban, Elinor
Russell, Alan Stapleton and Jan Kindler provided the voices for the
puppets.
Palcus - Small monkey-like
creatures on the live-action sci-fi series LAND OF THE LOST/NBC/1974-77.
Two of these Palcus, a boy named Chaka (Philip Paley), and a girl named Sa
(Sharon Baird), befriended the Marshall family, a group of humans who were
accidentally transported to the Land of the Lost via a time portal. The
Palcus helped the humans in their battle against the savage lizard people
named the Sleestaks and any prehistoric dinosaurs that roamed the land.
UCLA linguistics professor, Victoria Fromkin created a 200-word language
called "Paku" for the monkey like creatures who inhabited this
prehistoric land.
Tracy the gorilla - Ghostbusting gorilla on the Saturday
morning children's live-action program THE GHOSTBUSTERS/CBS/1975-76. Tracy
wore a beany cap with propeller top. He was one of a trio of ghostbusters
who tracked down the ghosts of famous criminals. His human partners were
Eddie Spencer (Larry Storch) and Kong (Forrest Tucker). Remember Kong is
the human. Tracy is the ape. Beneath the heavy gorilla costume was Bob
Burns, a film editor from KNXT-TV in Los Angeles.
Zephyr the Monkey
-
Brown furry monkey doll once the childhood toy of disk Jockey Johnny Fever
(Howard Hessman) on the sitcom WKRP IN CINCINNATI/CBS/1978-82/SYN/1990-92.
During a live marathon radio broadcast when Johnny was forced to stay
awake on-the-air for more that twenty four hours, he began to cry from
exhaustion and told the story of his toy monkey doll named Zephyr and how
he lost it when he left it in a hotel room.
