Celebrity Biographies
Buck Kartalian
Veteran character actor Buck Kartalian’s name doesn’t ring a bell. But fans of “Planet of the Apes” will surely remember Julius, the guardian of the cages where the protagonists are locked up. The interpreter died on May 24, 2016, at the age of 93, at the Providence Holy Cross Medical Center, in Mission Hills, California, as reported by his son Jason.
Born on August 13, 1922 in Detroit, Michigan, Buck Kartalian made it big as a wrestling fighter before trying his luck as an actor. He debuted in 1953, in an episode of the Robert Montgomery Presents series . After embodying a sailor, in a small appearance in Escala en Hawai , he did not stop chaining one shoot after another, albeit in very minor characters.
He played Dynamyte , one of the prisoners accompanying Paul Newman , in Cool Cool, from 1967. His best-remembered character was the cigar-smoking gorilla Julius, jailer from Planet of the Apes , who seems to be having fun tormenting astronaut George Taylor ( Charlton Heston ), with a hose. He even had a memorable phrase: “You know what they say, what humans see is what they do.” He donned the monkey makeup again in one of the sequels, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes , where he was another primate named Frank.
Married to Margaret, with whom he had three children, the aforementioned Jason has followed in their footsteps in the world of cinema, as a producer and director of films such as the little-known Seahorses . He continued acting throughout the years in titles such as The Outlaw or the series How I Met Your Mother .