From time to time, a television program or a movie comes along that is set locally, like the old “The Dick Van Dyke Show”...

...set in New Rochelle, or the Movie “Big” with Tom Hanks, which featured nearby Playland as the initial setting.

My ears perked up at the line quickly said by Michael Douglas in “Greed” as he jabbed a fellow stockbroker:

”How’s Larchmont  treatin’ you?”

Its fun to hear or see a familiar reference in the popular media. (On second thought, was that a dig at the Larchmont lifestyle?”)

Archie Bunker , in the early Seventies, got stuck in the elevator with an erudite businessman who was “President  of the Larchmont Rotary Club…”

But little known to us all, the old classic ”Planet of the Apes” (1968,)  albeit unintended by the filmmaker, depicts a visual reference to Larchmont.  It becomes apparent at the very end that Charlton Heston, playing the time-traveling astronaut, has been running around in a future ape-ruled NYC Metropolitan Area... as evidenced by him stumbling across the beat up remains of the Statue of Liberty.

There is a scene where the two chimp doctors bring this highly intelligent human back to their clay abode and he asks to see a map. He can’t speak due to an injury.

Dr. Cornelius’s map of Metropolitan New York, 3200 AD

They show him a roll out map of what can only be the NY area, with the limits shown as we all see on our road maps, Long Island to the right, Manhattan in the center and the Hudson River to the west.

To the left is the New Jersey shore.

I think they call that the "Forbidden Zone."

Astronaut Taylor pointing out his arrival point ashore. Larchmont Harbor

The ape anthropologist then asks Heston where he came ashore, and he points to the upper right corner, to the shoreline above what is obviously the Long Island Sound. And more importantly, Larchmont Harbor.

"I thought there was launch service here”

So there you have it, another Larchmont reference in popular culture. Great movie.

And for all you local Planet of the Apes trivia buffs out there, I just hope that’s not your mechanical heart valve he finds.

                                                                                        ----  Jim Fleming

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