Linda Harrison played Nova twice and never said a word. That is the career: a face doing the work the script would not, in one film that barely needed her and one that could not do without her.
Fi1m perspective
Nova has no lines. In Planet of the Apes (1968) she stands near Charlton Heston, looks worried, and is not asked to do anything else; in a film we rate highly, that is the whole of the part Schaffner and the script hand Linda Harrison. Her own account of how she built it is better than anything they gave her to play. She said she thought about animal instincts, that Nova "would react more the way an animal would react, more from fear", and that is what is on screen: a flinch first, a thought second, and nothing performed for the audience's benefit.
The route to that cage is a studio story. Fox signed her in November 1965 after a beauty pageant and a personality test, put her through the revived talent school with the fencing and dance and speech classes, and paid a coach to take the Eastern Maryland out of her voice. Then they billed her as "introducing Linda Harrison" in a role with no dialogue. Before it there were small parts in Batman (1966) and A Guide for the Married Man (1967); after it a regular berth on Bracken's World (1969–70), Airport 1975 (1974), Cocoon (1985) and its sequel, and a cameo as a woman in a cart in the 2001 remake. Supporting work, steadily, across decades. None of it is where the reputation lives.
The reputation lives in the sequel, which is the odder film and the worse one. Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970) gives Nova more to do and still no words, and James Franciscus's Brent spends much of it asking where he is. Harrison does more with a look than Ted Post's script manages for anyone else. We were moved, more than the film around her deserved, watching a man ask his questions of a woman who can only look back at him; she gives each one the same steady attention, and it is the attention, not the answer, that tells us how far from home he is. Heston, who did three films with her, is all teeth and tendon in these pictures. Harrison is the stillness he shouts across.
The fair complaint is that this is one performance, given twice, and that the studio which taught her to speak never found out whether she could. We cannot tell you from the two films we have reviewed. What we can tell you is which to watch for her. The 1968 film is the better film and hardly notices she is there. The 1970 film is not much of a film and would be nothing without her.
Biography
Linda Harrison is an American actress. Born in Berlin, Maryland, she won local and state beauty pageants before being spotted by talent scout Mike Medavoy and signed to a contract at 20th Century Fox.
She is best known for playing Nova opposite Charlton Heston in Planet of the Apes (1968) and Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970). Other credits include the television series Bracken's World (1969–1970) and films such as Airport 1975 (1974, as Augusta Summerland) and Cocoon (1985). She had a cameo in the 2001 remake of Planet of the Apes.
Harrison was married to film producer Richard D. Zanuck from 1969 until their divorce in 1978.
