With this "talkie" horror film, Hungarian stage actor Bela Lugosi (originally named Bela Blasko), who had starred in the smash-hit Broadway stage play, took over the part for the film when Lon Chaney, Sr.The underground city of Zion, the last free city of mankind, was threatened by 250,000 tunneling and digging Sentinels, boring from the surface straight down, in order to avoid defenses ("a sentinel for every man, woman and child in Zion").A costume pageant was being planned at the Childrens Clinic - Jamie dressed as a pink princess with a tiara, and one of her young friends, Billy Hill (Jeffrey Landman), was dressed as a pirate.The film earned box-office success with $243.6 million (domestic) and $296.6 million (worldwide) on a budget of $30 million.It was the highest-grossing comedy of all-time, until being surpassed a few years later byHome Alone (1990)at $285." The Governor declared that it would not be feasible to send all disobedient and clumsy apes back for reconditioning, as his aide and others often suggested: "Ape Management would become impossibly overcrowded.