Maurice Evans (3 June 1901 – 12 March 1989) was one of the twentieth century's most celebrated interpreters of Shakespeare, a stage star who later became familiar to television and film audiences worldwide as Dr. Zaius in the original Planet of the Apes films and as Samantha's father in the sitcom Bewitched.
Early notes on this site once suggested Evans had been born in Wales, without being able to confirm where. That claim does not hold up: he was born at 28 Icen Way in Dorchester, Dorset, England. His Welsh connection comes through his father, Alfred Herbert Evans, a Welsh-born dispensing chemist and keen amateur actor who adapted novels by Thomas Hardy for the local amateur dramatic company in Dorchester — and who gave young Maurice his first taste of the stage.
Evans made his professional stage debut in 1926 and joined the Old Vic company in 1934, before moving to the United States, where he became a Broadway sensation as Richard II, Hamlet and Macbeth. He took American citizenship in 1941 and went on to bring Shakespeare to American television throughout the 1950s, winning an Emmy Award for his 1960 television production of Macbeth.
His best-remembered screen roles came later in his career: the ape philosopher Dr. Zaius in Planet of the Apes (1968) and Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970), the doomed neighbour Hutch in Rosemary's Baby (1968), and the warlock father Maurice in Bewitched (1964–1971). He returned to live in England by the end of the 1960s and died in a nursing home in Rottingdean, East Sussex, in 1989, aged 87.