The actors beneath the makeup were not immune to the physical and political trials that time-traveling apes Cornelius, Zira, and Milo face among mankind in Escape From the Planet of the Apes. Kim Hunter, Roddy McDowall and Sal Mineo all suffered needless persecution that marred their Hollywood careers.

Hunter (who had already snared an Oscar for A Streetcar Named Desire back in '51) found herself blacklisted and unable to work during the McCarthy era because of her civil rights activism. In 1962, she testified before the New York Supreme Court with the hope of clearing the names of others similarly trampled on by the era's hysterical hunt for Communists, an experience which surely informed her work in three Apes films as the complex Dr. Zira.

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