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The Naked Ape | |
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Directed by | Donald Driver |
Screenplay by | Donald Driver |
Based on | The Naked Ape by Desmond Morris |
Produced by |
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Starring | |
Cinematography | John A. Alonzo |
Edited by |
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Music by | Jimmy Webb |
Production company | |
Distributed by | Universal Pictures |
Release date |
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Running time | 85 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
The Naked Ape is a 1973 American comedy film, loosely adapted from the non-fiction book of the same name by Desmond Morris, written and directed by Donald Driver, and starring Johnny Crawford, Victoria Principal, Dennis Olivieri, Diana Darrin, Norman Grabowski, and John Hillerman, with animated segments created by Murakami Wolf Studios. The film was released on August 1, 1973, by Universal Pictures. [1] [ failed verification ] [2] [3]
The Desmond Morris book had been optioned for a film adaptation in 1968, and aside from some factual consultation, Morris was not involved in the screenplay writing. Initially set up at Universal, after initial screenplay drafts were submitted, the book was deemed unfilmable and was almost sent into turnaround, until Playboy magazine founder Hugh Hefner, who had been producing other film projects at the time, agreed to co-finance the project.
Leading lady Victoria Principal later said that her career momentum was hurt by the film's failure. [4] [5]
In a series of satirical live action and animated vignettes, the evolution of humanity is depicted and explored, primarily through the experiences of Cathy, a tour guide in a natural history museum describing the ages of mankind and its advancement, and Lee, a college student who meets Cathy in one of his classes and grows infatuated with her. Through them, rituals of courtship, sex, marriage, workplace manners, and military service are dramatized, suggesting that despite centuries of change, certain behaviors remain constant.
Desmond John MorrisFLS hon. caus. is an English zoologist, ethologist and surrealist painter, as well as a popular author in human sociobiology. He is known for his 1967 book The Naked Ape, and for his television programmes such as Zoo Time.
The aquatic ape hypothesis (AAH), also referred to as aquatic ape theory (AAT) or the waterside hypothesis of human evolution, postulates that the ancestors of modern humans took a divergent evolutionary pathway from the other great apes by becoming adapted to a more aquatic habitat. While the hypothesis has some popularity with the lay public, it is generally ignored or classified as pseudoscience by anthropologists.
Roustabout is a 1964 American musical feature film starring Elvis Presley as a singer who takes a job working with a struggling carnival. The film was produced by Hal Wallis and directed by John Rich from a screenplay by Anthony Lawrence and Allan Weiss. The screenplay was nominated for a Writers Guild of America award for best written American musical although Roustabout received a lukewarm review in Variety. The film's soundtrack album was one of Elvis Presley's most successful, reaching no. 1 on the Billboard Album Chart. It was filmed in Techniscope at Paramount Studios, with carnival sequences shot in Thousand Oaks, California. Filming began in March 1964.
John Ernest Crawford was an American actor and singer. He first performed before a national audience as a Mouseketeer. At age 12, Crawford rose to prominence playing Mark McCain in the series The Rifleman, for which he was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Emmy Award at age 13.
Mommie Dearest is a 1981 American biographical psychological drama film directed by Frank Perry and starring Faye Dunaway, Steve Forrest, Mara Hobel, and Diana Scarwid, with supporting performances from Xander Berkeley in his feature film debut along with Rutanya Alda and Jocelyn Brando. Adapted from Christina Crawford's 1978 autobiography of the same name, the film follows her and her brother Christopher's upbringing under their adoptive mother, actress Joan Crawford, depicting her as abusive, controlling, and manipulative, prioritizing her Hollywood career over her family.
The Damned Don't Cry is a 1950 American film noir crime-drama directed by Vincent Sherman and featuring Joan Crawford, David Brian, and Steve Cochran. It tells of a woman's involvement with an organized crime boss and his subordinates. The screenplay by Harold Medford and Jerome Weidman was based on the story "Case History" by Gertrude Walker. The plot is loosely based on the relationship of Bugsy Siegel and Virginia Hill. The film was directed by Vincent Sherman and produced by Jerry Wald. The Damned Don't Cry is the first of three cinematic collaborations between Sherman and Crawford, the others being Harriet Craig (1950) and Goodbye, My Fancy (1951).
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The Naked Ape: A Zoologist's Study of the Human Animal is a 1967 book by English zoologist and ethologist Desmond Morris that looks at humans as a species and compares them to other animals. The Human Zoo, a follow-up book by Morris that examined the behaviour of people in cities, was published in 1969.
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Portrait in Black is a 1960 American neo-noir melodrama film directed by Michael Gordon, and starring Lana Turner and Anthony Quinn. Produced by Ross Hunter, the film was based on the play of the same by name by Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts, who also wrote the screenplay. The film was distributed by Universal-International. This was the final film appearance by actress Anna May Wong.
Judith Ann Morris is an Australian character actress, as well as a film director and screenwriter, well known for the variety of roles she played in 58 different television shows and films, starting her career as a child actress and appearing on screen until 1999, since then she has worked on film writing and directing, most recently for co-writing and co-directing a musical epic about the life of penguins in Antarctica which became Happy Feet, Australia's largest animated film project to date.
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Tarzan, a fictional character created by Edgar Rice Burroughs, first appeared in the 1912 novel Tarzan of the Apes, and then in twenty-four sequels by Burroughs and numerous more by other authors. The character proved immensely popular and quickly made the jump to other media, first and most notably to comics and film.
Planet of the Apes is a 1968 American science fiction film directed by Franklin J. Schaffner from a screenplay by Michael Wilson and Rod Serling, loosely based on the 1963 novel by Pierre Boulle. The film stars Charlton Heston, Roddy McDowall, Kim Hunter, Maurice Evans, James Whitmore, James Daly, and Linda Harrison. In the film, an astronaut crew crash-lands on a strange planet in the distant future. Although the planet appears desolate at first, the surviving crew members stumble upon a society in which apes have evolved into creatures with human-like intelligence and speech. The apes have assumed the role of the dominant species and humans are mute primitives wearing animal skins.
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