Linda Harrison

Richard's direct descendant, Harrison's paternal grandfather, Joseph G. Harrison, and Joseph's older brother, Orlando Harrison (Mayor of Berlin 1900–1910 and 1916–1918 and Maryland State Senator for Worcester County, 1916-1928), established J.G. Harrison & Sons Nurseries, which were, at one time, the largest fruit tree nursery business in America, employing some five hundred workers.

The former Harrison Laboratory at the University of Maryland, College Park campus, which Harrison attended briefly, was named for her paternal great-uncle, Senator Orlando Harrison.

Harrison essayed her first dramatic role while attending Stephen Decatur High School, that of "Connie Fuller" in the senior class production of the 1940 Kaufman/Hart play George Washington Slept Here.

Linda Melson Harrison (born July 26, 1945) is an American television and film actress.

In 1956, when she was eleven, Harrison's acrobatic performance earned her first prize in the Delmarva Chicken Festival Talent Contest.

Six years later, at the same festival, Harrison won the "Miss Delmarva" beauty contest.

By the time she entered Berlin's Stephen Decatur High School, Harrison had become a skilled acrobatic dancer.

Harrison also dreamed of becoming an actress and a star.

It was Harrison's plan to become an actress by entering and winning beauty contests, then travel to California to be seen and noticed.

When she was in her teens, Harrison worked summers as a waitress at Phillips Crab House in Ocean City, Maryland; she was dating the son of the restaurant's owners when she flew to California for the Miss America beauty contest.

From time to time, she appeared as a narrator on local TV programs carried on Baltimore TV station WMAR.

On Saturday, May 19, 1962, William Hockersmith crowned her Miss Berlin at the Miss Berlin Beauty Pageant, which was held at the high school.

A month later, Harrison represented her home town at the Delmarva Chicken Festival beauty contest.

After graduating from high school, Harrison enrolled for a summer term at the University of Maryland, College Park, and a secretarial school in Baltimore, but found it uninspiring.

When her oldest sister, Kay, graduated from college and headed for New York, Harrison went with her, with $250 and their mother's credit card.

Several years later, Harrison would lament her "admittedly deficient formal education" to an interviewer, saying that she "missed a great deal because I didn't finish school."

In New York, Kay and Linda shared an apartment and their mother Ida's credit card.

Harrison scored some success as a model, but she disliked New York and was homesick for Maryland.

Less than a year later, she returned home; following her plan to become an actress by winning beauty contests, she entered the 1964 Miss Delmarva beauty pageant as Miss Berlin, and won.

Harrison followed her 1964 victory by entering the Miss Maryland beauty pageant, a preliminary event to the Miss America pageant, itself the final preliminary event to the Miss International contest, which would be held in Long Beach, California, in mid-June 1965.

Harrison won the contest over nineteen other girls; that June, as Miss Maryland, she flew to California for the Miss America contest.

She thought the trip would last for two weeks; bidding farewell to her boyfriend, she scheduled her return home in two weeks, after she was crowned Miss America.

But she was first-runner up, not the winner.

Harrison was "devastated", and so deeply disappointed over losing that she wept backstage.

Her striking good looks and hourglass figure, however, had gained the notice of Mike Medavoy, then an agent at the General Artist Corporation.

"You ought to be in pictures," Medavoy told her.

In August 1965, Medavoy obtained a "personality test" for her at 20th Century Fox.

She played Nova in the science fiction film classic Planet of the Apes (1968) and the first sequel, Beneath the Planet of the Apes; she also had a cameo in Tim Burton's 2001 remake of the original.

She was a regular cast member of the 1969–70 NBC television series Bracken's World.

She was the second wife of film producer Richard D. Zanuck (Jaws, Cocoon, Driving Miss Daisy, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory); her youngest son is producer Dean Zanuck (Road to Perdition, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory).

Linda Melson Harrison was born in Berlin, Maryland.

She was the third of five daughters of Isaac Burbage Harrison, a nurseryman, and his wife, Ida Virginia Melson, a beautician.

She was the middle child, with two older sisters, Kay and Gloria, and two younger sisters, Jane and Joan.

The Harrisons, like Linda's maternal Melson ancestors, had a long history in the Delmarva region.

"I knew she'd be a star when she was only five," Ida Harrison told an interviewer in 1969.

Mrs Harrison, who described her middle daughter as "a little ham", enrolled her in ballet and acrobatics classes at age five.

By age six, Harrison was performing on stage, and liking it.

She attended Berlin's Buckingham Elementary School, which her mother and all her sisters attended.

According to Ancestry.com, the Melson family were mid-17th century immigrants to Maryland from Melsonby St James in North Yorkshire.

The Anglo-Welsh Harrisons had been resident for generations in West Kirby, Cheshire, when one Richard Harrison, son of another Richard Harrison, emigrated in the early 17th century from West Kirby to the New Haven Colony in what is now Connecticut, thence to Maryland.