[1] Producers on the film, disappointed by a pre-production attempt to create ape movement using mime and animatronics, instead hired Elliott on the strength of a "very apelike" screen test.
[1] He brought his findings back to the forty some actors who played apes in the film,[4] and appeared onscreen himself as Silverbeard, Tarzan's adoptive chimpanzee father.
[2] When Dino de Laurentiis decided to produce the sequel King Kong Lives in 1986, Elliott came back to the screen under the giant ape's suit created and worn by Rick Baker for the first movie instead of him.
[3][1][5] Elliott's later career has mixed acting work with jobs as a movement director, movement-based drama teacher, and animal-role choreographer.
[5] Jobs coaching and choreographing other actors' movement for non-human characters include work on the films Quest for Fire (1981),[1] Congo (1995),[4] The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005), Where the Wild Things Are (2009),[1] Snow White and the Huntsman (2012), and Jack the Giant Slayer (2013),[3] and on Birmingham Stage Company's theatrical adaptations of Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book (2004) and Michael Morpurgo's Kensuke's Kingdom (2005).