Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp is an American action/adventure comedy series that originally aired Saturday mornings on ABC from September 12, 1970 to January 2, 1971 and rebroadcast the following season. The live-action film series featured a cast of chimpanzees given apparent speaking roles by overdubbing with human voices.
Production
Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp had a "seven-figure budget" with location filming, props and costumes, and the laborious staging and training of the animals. The filmmakers made the most of the budget, staging multiple episodes with the same settings and wardrobe, occasionally reusing the more elaborate chase footage. Lance Link drove a 1970 Datsun Sports 2000 while villain Baron Von Butcher (and his chauffeur Creto) used a late-'50s Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud. The primates themselves rode Kawasaki MB-1 Coyote minibikes in a number of episodes.
Two of the three producers/creators were Stan Burns and Mike Marmer, former writers for Get Smart! Both resigned from their jobs as head writers on The Carol Burnett Show to work on Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp.
According to The Believer, "to make the dialogue fit the chimps’ lip action, Burns and Marmer went to ridiculous lengths. Voiceovers were ad-libbed on the set, giving birth to beautifully absurd moments of the chimps breaking into songs at the end of sentences or spontaneously reciting Mother Goose rhymes just so it would look right." Co-producer Allan Sandler explained that the writers studied the silent film footage of the chimps, and counted the syllables as the chimps' mouths moved. The writers would then shorten or lengthen the scripted lines according to the syllable count.
Plot construction
Owing considerable lineage to Get Smart, the plot was always played for laughs and featured Lancelot Link and his female colleague, "Mata Hairi," whose own name in turn was a play on Mata Hari, in secret agent and spy satires. Link and Hairi worked for A.P.E., the Agency to Prevent Evil, in an ongoing conflict with the evil organization C.H.U.M.P., the Criminal Headquarters for Underworld Master Plan (sic).
APE's chief Darwin gave Link and Hairi their orders after explaining his "theory" about each crime-in-progress, a play on the Darwin theory of ape-to-human evolution. CHUMP's monocled chief Baron von Butcher inevitably hatched the latest plan to endanger the world. The Baron's network of international bad guys included his shifty chauffeur Creto, mad scientist Dr. Strangemind, imperious Dragon Woman, drowsy Wang Fu, singing sheikh Ali Assa Seen, and the cultured Duchess. One or more of these bad guys would appear in each episode.
A regular weekly feature, during the intermission between spy stories, was chimpanzee TV host "Ed Simian" (styled as an impersonation of Ed Sullivan of the popular Ed Sullivan Show) introducing a musical number by an all-chimpanzee band, "The Evolution Revolution." The second intermission feature was "Chimpies", a short series of comedy blackouts similar to the "Crazy Shots" gags that writers Stan Burns and Mike Marmer had created for Steve Allen's TV show. The Chimpies repertoire: Freddie and Joe, two chimps in loud suits as burlesque comedians, telling riddles; Monk the Magician, a chimp producing streams of handkerchiefs and other objects from his coat; Herman and Sherman, a chimp and a miniature-chimp ventriloquist dummy; and Sneezes, showing a chimp sneezing and other chimps reacting to it.
The characters
A.P.E. Lancelot Link (played by Tonga, voiced by Dayton Allen imitating Humphrey Bogart). His surname is a play on 'The Missing Link' Mata Hairi (played by Debbie, voiced by Joan Gerber. Mata spoke in a high, whiny voice reminiscent of the Dumb Dora comediennes of the 1920s and '30s. Her name was a take-off on Mata Hari. Commander Darwin (voiced by Dayton Allen) - Named after Charles Darwin. Bruce - Official A.P.E. courier.