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| - APJAC International Productions was a movie production company founded in 1963 by Arthur P. Jacobs, who already headed his own publicity agency, The Arthur P. Jacobs Co., Inc. APJAC's first production was What a Way to Go!, directed by J. Lee Thompson. The 1964 comedy was initially intended as a vehicle for Marilyn Monroe, before her death in August 1962 left the role to Shirley MacLaine, and co-starred many of Jacobs' other PR agency clients. The successful movie was followed by plans for family musical Doctor Doolittle, while the company struggled to get approval for Jacobs' pet project, a movie adaptation of Pierre Boulle's French novel La Planète des singes (Planet of the Apes). Mort Abrahams was executive vice-president and associate producer (and later producer) of APJAC’s movies fro
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| - APJAC International Productions was a movie production company founded in 1963 by Arthur P. Jacobs, who already headed his own publicity agency, The Arthur P. Jacobs Co., Inc. APJAC's first production was What a Way to Go!, directed by J. Lee Thompson. The 1964 comedy was initially intended as a vehicle for Marilyn Monroe, before her death in August 1962 left the role to Shirley MacLaine, and co-starred many of Jacobs' other PR agency clients. The successful movie was followed by plans for family musical Doctor Doolittle, while the company struggled to get approval for Jacobs' pet project, a movie adaptation of Pierre Boulle's French novel La Planète des singes (Planet of the Apes). Mort Abrahams was executive vice-president and associate producer (and later producer) of APJAC’s movies from about January 1966 until 1969. As Jacobs' right-hand man, Abrahams gave practical experience to Jacobs' vision and concentrated on script and production matters while his partner blazed ahead with stars and publicity. Although his title was associate producer, he hired writers and actors and in today's parlance he would simply have shared the producer credit with Jacobs, who might even have been labelled executive producer. Abrahams explained that in 1963, Arthur had met with Allain Bernheim, a literary agent in Paris, who gave him the novel. Arthur was immediately struck by it and called Richard Zanuck of Twentieth Century Fox, who optioned the rights for Arthur. Image:Apjac.jpg It was reported in January 1967 that Jerome Hellman Productions had merged into APJAC Productions, with Hellman and Jacobs as partners and Abrahams continuing as production vice-president. At that time, APJAC were said to be still filming Doctor Doolittle and preparing movie projects Planet of the Apes, Midnight Cowboy (a Jerome Hellman production), Choice Cuts (a Twentieth Century Fox black comedy with a James Bridges screenplay of a novel by French writers Thomas Boileau and Pierre Narcjac; the book was eventually adapted as Body Parts in 1991), Goodbye Mr. Chips (a roadshow musical for MGM), The Man Who Was Thursday (a Leslie Bricusse musical of G.K. Chesterton's novel), All the Beautiful People (from a Richard Dowling novel) and A Time of Glory (a World War I aviation adventure thriller by Charles K. Peck jr.). Three months later, Fox's Richard D. Zanuck announced a fifth production arrangement with APJAC; Jacobs and Hellman had acquired a Tom Naud original story and screenplay tentatively titled Thunder Over Dahomey, the other co-productions being Doctor Doolittle, Planet of the Apes, Choice Cuts and All Night Stand. While some of these projects never came to fruition and Midnight Cowboy was passed over for not being "family-friendly", Doctor Doolittle received it's world premier before Queen Elizabeth II at the London Odeon on 12 December 1967 and Planet of the Apes was filmed between May and August 1967 for a February 1968 release. The enormous success of Apes spawned a series of four further Planet of the Apes film sequels from APJAC between 1970 and 1973, as well as plans for a TV spin-off. After acting as sole producer on The Chairman (1969) and associate producing and co-writing the screenplay for Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970), Mort Abrahams left APJAC in order to team up with the independent producer Ray Stark. Frank Capra Jr. joined APJAC Productions around 1970, replacing Abrahams. According to Capra, Jacobs "basically did the deal making and the setup up and acted as an executive producer, and I would end up being the producer person and we had no one else working in the company." Capra served as associate producer from Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971) to Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973), but Jacobs' refusal to credit him onscreen as anything other than “associate producer” led to an acrimonious split. Publicist Jack Hirshberg was another member of the APJAC organisation. He recalled Jacobs "was a great movie fan and he made movies from the point of view of a movie fan. Like a lot of other people, he wasn't self-indulgent and figured he wouldn't do something very artyschmarty and so forth to glorify his own name. We didn't do anything dirty. There wasn't a single dirty word in anything that we did. There wasn't even a dirty plot. I suppose the closest we ever came to it was in 'Play It Again, Sam', and that was a really great comedy. There wasn't anything the whole family couldn't go to see. And that was his whole approach to movies - he had great respect for movies as the old-fashioned movie-makers made them, and whatever we did we really did it right. I think the box office results of the pictures that APJAC made testify to that. He had a great feel for what the public would accept and would buy." In December 1972 Hirshberg arranged for reporter Sam Maronie to have a walk-on part in Battle for the Planet of the Apes. This was a favourite promotional tool of Arthur P. Jacobs, and nationally-syndicated journalists Army Archerd, James Bacon and Joyce Haber were all featured in his Apes movie projects.
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