RODDY MCDOWELL, English actor died (b. 1928); Unmarried. A close friend of Elizabeth Taylor’s…need we say more? McDowell was one of the few child actors who successfully transitioned into adult stardom, notably in heavy makeup as various “chimpanzee” characters in three of the Planet of the Apes movies (1968 – 1973) and in the 1974 TV series that followed. Other film appearances included Cleopatra (1963), in which he played Octavian (the later Emperor Augustus); It! (1966), in which he played a Norman Bates character reminiscent of Psycho; The Poseidon Adventure (1972), in which he played Acres, a dining room attendant; Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry (1974); Class of 1984 (1982); Fright Night (1985), in which he played Peter Vincent, a television host and moderator of telecast horror films; and Overboard (1987) in which he played a kind-hearted butler.

Like his friend Elizabeth Taylor, Mr. McDowall grew up in the movies, and more so than many others, he maintained his equilibrium about his celebrity.  By the time his mother, Winifred, brought her son to this country from England in 1940, when he was 12 years old, he had already appeared in 17 movies.

Acting, he said, was ”like being a fruit picker — it’s seasonal,” and no matter how popular an actor is, he worries about his next job. His response was to keep working, sometimes accepting assignments that were beneath his talent, but generally finding something of value in whatever he did.

With the outbreak of World War II, he came to the United States with his mother and his sister. Within several weeks of his arrival he did a screen test for ”How Green Was My Valley.” Lew Schreiber, the casting director at 20th Century Fox, disliked him because he was not, in the actor’s words, ”cute and adorable” in the Hollywood tradition. When the test came on the screen, Mr. Schreiber put his hands over the projector, and said to William Wyler, ”You don’t want to see this kid.” But Mr. Wyler, who was scheduled to direct the film, insisted on seeing him, and hired the young English actor.

McDowall kept a lot of secrets for a lot of people, famous, once famous, about to be famous. Friendship” was the key word in Roddy McDowall’s life. One friend opined, “He had friends everywhere. It didn’t matter if you went months, even years, without being face-to-face with him; if you were his friend, he kept in touch with notes and postcards, always written with red ink in a calligrapher’s hand.”