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Jeff Burton was an actor who played the role of Dodge in the 1968 20th Century Fox film, Planet of the Apes. After 11 years in the Army, including Korea where he was an Infantry captain, Burton played in stock and TV. He got the best break of his career as Dodge, the astronaut who ended up as a stuffed exhibit in the simian museum of natural history.[1] At the time, Jeff Burton was working as a parole department official in Los Angeles.[2]

On May 21, 1967, the first day of filming in Page, Arizona, Charlton Heston complained that they.. "were more than half an hour late starting this morning because the beards weren't sent up for the other astronauts, who of course haven't had time to grow their own. They weren't well applied when they did come... The heat is bad here. One of the other two actors playing astronauts [Jeff Burton] passed out from the heat."[3]

Explaining the effects used to transform Dodge into a stuffed corpse, make-up designer John Chambers joked, "We just didn't have the heart to send Jeff to a taxidermist!" Instead, special contact lenses were made to cover Jeff Burton's eyes completely, giving a 'glazed' appearance. A custom mouthpiece which fit inside his lips & cheeks added to the 'stuffed' illusion, and translucent body make-up completed the effect. Between takes the actor was overheard to comment "I don't see how those stuffed animals can stand it!"[4]

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