Director Robert Wise was so proud of this movie that he held yearly parties with surviving cast members to celebrate it.
The steam engine was located in California and renovated for this movie. The whole engine room was built around it on a soundstage.
The U.S.S. San Pablo was purposely built for this movie in Hong Kong. She actually was powered by diesel engines; the black smoke emanating from the stack came from old tires and other trash burned in a special compartment on the boat. After filming, the boat was sold and survived for many years with various building firms in the Far East, finally using the name "Nola D" and being scrapped in Singapore in 1975.
Impressed with Jerry Goldsmith's musical score for this film, Richard D. Zanuck, then-Head of Production for Twentieth Century Fox, and the son of studio co-founder and President Darryl F. Zanuck, took a leap of faith when he recommended the young composer to producer Arthur P. Jacobs and director Franklin J. Schaffner to compose the music for Il pianeta delle scimmie (1968). Zanuck's gamble had been proven to be extremely successful, as Goldsmith received massive critical attention for his landmark controversial soundtrack for Planet of the Apes. The acclaim he received for the movie helped launch his career in film and television scoring, which spanned over four decades and resulted in worldwide acclaim from critics and audiences alike.