Planet of the Apes star Roddy McDowall was one of us. The former child star was a huge film fan and student of film history. He appeared in many classic movies across six decades, but his fantasy film credits (beyond the PApes series) also included weird monster movie It! (1967), disaster flick The Poseidon Adventure (1972), horror The
Legend of Hell House (1973), comedy The Cat From Outer Space (1978), and the iconic Fright Night (1985). McDowall was heavily involved behind the scenes in the movie business, serving in the Oscars-awarding Academy and on the Screen Actors Guild board, as well as working in film preservation. He collected movies - the only way you could back before videotape, with an extensive range of original film prints. This habit was to result in a raid on his home by the FBI in 1974...
Roddy was born in London in September 1928 and grew up as part of a theatre-loving family. He started his career before the cameras as a child model in print advertisements. At the age of nine he won an award for a role in a school play, and in the 1930s he started appearing in various films including two with Will Hay -Convict 99 (1938) and Hey! Hey! USA! (1938). With the start of the Second World War, the McDowall family relocated to America, where little Roddy had even greater opportunities to pursue a career in movies.
McDowall - then aged 12 - won two roles in significant 20th Century Fox movies: Fritz Lang’s Man Hunt (1941) and John Ford’s historical melodrama How Green Was My Valley (1941), where he met and befriended actress Maureen O’Hara - the pair would remain friends for life. The Ford movie won the Best Picture Oscar and young McDowall became a well-known face around Hollywood.
Realising they had a talented young man on their books, Fox kept McDowall busy. He played the younger version of Tyrone Power’s character in Son of Fury (1942), won top billing for 1942’s On the Sunny Side, and was again first-billed in My Friend Flicka, in which McDowall’s Ken raises a horse to adulthood. McDowall was a genuine star in the 1940s, borrowed by MGM to lead Lassie Come Home (1943), where he met another life-long friend, Elizabeth Taylor. By 1944, film exhibitors voted McDowall fourth on an influential list of the Stars of Tomorrow.