MY PERSONAL EXPERIENCES
One Fans Adventures at 20th Century Fox Studios

I hardly know where to begin.  Perhaps at the beginning? My involvement with the studios and special effects miniatures began when I attended the first science fiction convention held in Los Angeles, the '73 "Equicon" run by John and Bjo Trimble.  I went because a friend told me that the original Star Trek "Enterprise" model would be there and they were also going to have a "bridge set" on display.  As it turned out, the Enterprise was not there but Ballentine Books was there handing out free copies of "The Worlds of Star Trek".  It was in this book that we learned that the fellow who currently owned the Star Trek shuttle craft lived in Palos Verdes, which was only about five miles from my house.  So we decide to look in the phone book and call everybody with that last name until we came across the right one and amazingly, the first call gave the desired results.  After explaining who we were and what we wanted, arrangements were made to go to his house for a visit and see his collection.  Well, it turned out that he had allot of things!  Not only did he have the Shuttle Craft, he had a "hero Tricorder", a hypo, several uniforms and I believe he had a pistol phaser as well, though I never saw it.  From "The Andromeda Strain" he had a pressure suit (used in the Piedmont sequences) and nuclear destruct key, from "This Island Earth" he had alien coverall costumes and from "Lost in Space" he had the "Mockup" Robot (the non functional stand-in)!  In his back yard was a copy (he had made a mold) of a 36 inch Flying Sub from "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" and parts for a copy of Robbie the Robot from "Forbidden Planet".  He was the first collector I ever met and he was responsible for getting me started going to studios.

One day while I was visiting him I happened to mention that I'd like to know what happened to the ship from Planet of the Apes.  His bemused response was "why don't you just call the studio?  Its probably still sitting there", he gave me the phone number then sent me on my way.  Frankly, I was flabbergasted!  The thought had never occurred to me but he had done it so why not me?  Well I was a little intimidated, after all who was I to call some big company?  I wasn't particularly out-going and a little shy at that stage of my life (I was 15) but still, if there was a chance, I wasn't going to let that stop me.  All they could do was say "no" right?  He had told me to talk to someone in the "Property Department" so I called and asked for property.  After some transfers I finally wound up talking to Ivan Martin who was in charge of the Construction Department.  He was a nice guy (who I'm sure knew that I was just a fan) and when I told him that I was with a "science fiction convention" and that we were interested in displaying it (my cover story), he assured me that they still had it and yes, I could come down and see it.  I was excited to say the least!

At the Studio

We drove to the construction gate off of Olympic Blvd (I went with my collector friend, too "chicken" to go alone!), parked and walked up to the gate.  This was back by the water tank where they had filmed so many Irwin Allen "planet" exteriors and underwater sequences.  The guard had my name and directed us up the road to the first building.  As we walked we got an eye full of all the familiar things now being stored in and around the "water tank" (BTW, this gate is featured as the entrance to the Marine base in the beginning of "Escape from the Planet of the Apes" and if the camera was panned to the right, you would able to see all this stuff through the chain link fence.  In the movie the building behind the gate, up the hill to the right, is Ivan Martins office).  We could see sections of the full-size "Seaview" mockup, the "Spindrift" cockpit window section, the reactor from the "Seaview", the full scale "Pod" from "Lost in Space"

 and stacks of other things that we had no time to look at.  Mr. Martins secretary told us to go right in after she let him know we had arrived.  He was a big imposing man with a square jaw and short military style hair cut (in contrast to my own shoulder length locks!) and a very serious demeanor.  We shook hands and he offered us chairs.  I was nervous but we talked for a little while and I explained again that we were interested in displaying the mockup.  I told him that we wanted to look at it first to see what condition it was in before committing to the display.  He said that it was right outside and we could go out there right now if we wanted.  You don't have to ask me twice!  Out we went!

He took us around to another outdoor storage area behind his office and directly across from the main set construction building.  This huge building and the storage area are featured in "Fate is the Hunter" with Glenn Ford where it is used as a hangar and aircraft parking area.  The plane was still there, right where they had left it and the outside of Mr. Martins office still had a sign that read "Baggage Claim".  The first thing we came across (remember, we were trying to be "business like" so we couldn't act too excited, but I was!) were the folded up remains of the "Flying Sub" interior set, still on its platform.

Next to it was the rocket engine exhaust bell from the wreckage of the spaceship seen in "Beneath the Planet of the Apes" and a section of the sewer tunnel also used in "Beneath".

 I later learned that the rocket nozzle was a real one from an Atlas ICBM.  In the distance was a forest of masts and smoke stacks from the "Tora Tora Tora" battleship models, all sitting on their dollies.

  Poking out between them was the tail section of the "Doomsday Missile" also from "Beneath".  Finally we got past the stacks of construction materials and there was the ship.

The Full Scale Mockup

It was sitting on the same wooden frame you see in "Escape" and the ship was rusty!  Don't believe everything you hear in that "Apes" video documentary, this ship was built out of welded steel with TWO layers of one sixteenth sheet steel for skin, not "plywood"!  Inside it featured steel frames spaced about every 24 inches and they were at least 8 inches high.  I never was told why it was built so heavily but I believe they were either planing to drop it into the lake or they intended it to sink and surface on command with some sort of ballast tank arrangement.  A testament to its heavy construction is the fact that it spent three hours banging around on the rocks when its anchor cable broke during the off shore filming of "Escape".  It still went on to finish the film, only needing the nose cone replaced as it had been lost.

In fact the bottom was still heavily dented from this misadventure.  We climbed around on it for a while and shot pictures then Mr. Martin decided to go back to his office after simply telling us to "let him know" when we were through!  Well, with no one watching we got a few shots of the other things too (not that he would probably have cared, he was a nice guy and surely knew we were just fans).

The fuselage was covered with a seamless sheet metal skin, the only joints being where the upper and lower panels met at the horizontal centerline and this was almost entirely covered by the canards and side fairings.

The large fairings were welded sheet metal assemblies over metal framing filed with urethane foam and the canards were simple shells.  The canards had been lost too so these were replacements (note the lack of "vents").  After climbing up on the boiling hot mockup I found that the escape hatch was loose so I removed it to get a shot of the interior structure.

A wooden frame remained inside, probably for supporting the mortar device which blew the hatch free in the first movie.  The windows were heavy glass panels with Masonite frames and they were also loose, just laying flat on the deck area.  I grabbed them and set them back in place to get shots of the ship looking more complete.

While up there I noticed that there was a slight buckle in the skin where the center ridge meets the upper apex of the windows.  This was further evidence of the severe pounding the ship had taken while on the rocks.

When backing up to get that shot of the windows I stepped on the nose cone and discovered it wasn't too well attached!  Fortunately it didn't collapse and I quickly stepped off it.  The air sampling "periscope" was missing, a hoisting hook occupying its place.  We couldn't get shots of the interior because no one had brought a flash but there was a small plywood floor built in the cockpit area and three large tanks were mounted to it, probably as floatation devices.

Two steel poles came down at angles (same angle as the sides of the window center ridge) from the apex of the windows to the lower structure as additional support for the roof behind.

A plywood wall extended across the back, preventing us from seeing the interior of the heat shield assembly.

The side hatch might as well have been welded shut because we could not even get it to wiggle, even with me laying on my back on the tanks inside and using my legs to push with.  Later I would learn that it had been built with a working exterior pull type latch and the salt water had probably rusted it solid.  We did try pulling the ring outside but we assumed it wasn't real because it didn't move at all, not to mention that standing on that slippery side fairing was a bit risky.

Too bad too, because the hatch had some nice interior detail on it (the rest of the interior was just open structure painted flat black).  Before climbing down I stopped to get a few shots of the "Doomsday Missile" from "Beneath" which was laying along side the capsule.

The ships "heat shield" was a metal outer ring assembly with a fiberglass shell for the actual shield portion and it looked pretty convincing even in real life.

Finally I ran out of film after having stupidly brought only one roll.  This was the first "photo survey" I had ever attempted and I'm lucky it came out at all.

We returned to Mr. Martins office to let him know that we were leaving and that was when I told him that we might like to put an interior in the ship for display purposes and could we get copies of any blueprints they might have of it?  He just picked up a phone, talked briefly with someone and said they'd be here in a few minutes.  I couldn't believe it!  I walked out of the studio and my feet never once touched the ground!  Other trips would follow and we would see allot more over the coming years.

Where Are They Now?

Since that time I have lost track of the mockup.  I did see it once after it had been moved to the Fox ranch in Malibu for the Apes TV pilot episode but I didn't get any pictures of it there.  However the replacement nose built for "Escape" had been made out of fiberglass and it had a little eight inch sheet metal tip that someone had taken, probably as a souvenir.  In the process they had broken off the fiberglass section underneath and instead of taking it too, they had just turned it around and stuck it back into the nose cone.  Maybe it's "second best" but I wanted something too so I took that.  The ship sat out in a field near the caretakers house for a time and part of it can be seen in an episode of the old TV show "SWAT".  They filmed the episode around the buildings and junk stored at the ranch and the ship is seen there in its last known location.  You never see a clear shot of it but in one scene the heat shield is visible in the background and in another the characters are crouching next to it.  That's it.  One day I asked the caretaker what happened to it and he said he thought "a stuntman had bought it".  This was when the ranch was being cleared of studio debris so it could be opened to the public as a State Park.   The rear wall of the original interior set survived too.   I heard years later that Apes collector Paula Christ had gotten it from the studio and had it in her back yard.  Maybe its still there?  The cockpit seats seem to have gone to a prop rental house as one of them was used on "Babylon 5".  The Astronauts flightsuits were sold by Western Costume and at least one (the one worn by female astronaut "Stewart") wound up at a used clothing store in Hollywood.  A collector I know bought it for twenty dollars!  The astronauts backpacks, complete with equipment, are in the hands of collectors too, though I've never seen them.  I did see the Ape "court room" furniture at a warehouse belonging to a company that specialized in decorating bars and restaurants.  They had the Ape casket from the "funeral" scene too and it was made of yellow Styrofoam!  As for the rest of the exterior mockup, I don't know if the "stuntman" got the sections that made up the ships aft fuselage or not.  They were simply left off so the heat shield section could be mounted there instead.  The aft side fairings were behind one of the small stages on the "Olympic" side of the studio (long since torn down) and the four panels that made up the aft fuselage were in a storage area at the ranch.  They all disappeared so maybe he got them too, I don't know.

I have heard a wild rumor that the ship was seen decorating the front of a restaurant somewhere and it was painted yellow!  So far this story is unconfirmed.  Naturally, I would appreciate hearing from anyone who knows its true whereabouts or fate.  I suspect that it was simply cut up for scrap but you never know, it could still be out there somewhere.  It certainly was built to last!