Word: cheeta
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...Trigger to Gentle Ben and Babe The Talking Pig, the true-life stories of cinema's animal stars are seldom told. Fewer still get to tell the tale themselves. So a frisson of disappointment ran through London's literary circles last week when it was revealed that Me Cheeta,, the just-published memoirs of the chimpanzee who starred in 11 Tarzan movies from 1934 to 1948, is actually the work of a ghostwriter, James Lever. Even before the "autobiography" appeared to a string of rave reviews, expectations for Me Cheeta, had been primed when it was longlisted for the Guardian...
None of which should deter potential readers; surely it's no longer a shock to discover that celebrities sometimes seek a little polish for their memoirs. And in this case, well, let's cut a chimp some slack here: Cheeta's screen career, which stretched right up to 1967 (Dr. Dolittle), called for a mastery of physical performance - mime, slapstick, acro- and aerobatics - not of stage English. Even his leading man, Tarzan, rarely ventured much beyond "Aaaheeyaaheeyaheeyaheeyah" or "Jane not worry." Now though, at the age of 76, and living out the last of his days in a Palm Springs...
Kidnapped from the Liberian jungle, Cheeta grew up fast in the libidinous jungle of Hollywood, hanging out with the alpha males - Kirk and Clark and Doug Jr. - and jostling for the attention of the dominant females - Kate and Marlene and Bette. He didn't stint with the booze and the Lucky Strikes, lost his virginity to a bonobo (a cruel joke played by Charlie Chaplin) and snorted "star-powder" (a homeopathic remedy, they told him). And despite his star billing, Cheeta had to put up with some pretty cutting social prejudice. At one typically drunken lunch party, Cheeta recalls, "Sylvia...
...soon as she came in with her characteristic mink coat I knew we would be friends,” Butler says. “She is an eccentric personality. She wears neon pink and cheeta...
Swinging from vines in the 1930s and '40s, Johnny Weissmuller was King of the Jungle. But on the ground he often played straight man to his sidekick, Cheeta. More than a dozen chimpanzees took the role, and the last was genial Jiggs. Born in Liberia, he was brought to the U.S. by Hollywood trainer Tony Gentry along with sister Susie--another Cheeta portrayer--who died last month at 64. Gentry's nephew Dan Westfall, a theater performer, inherited the pair and built a facility on his property to house them. The scene-stealing siblings were in more than 15 Tarzan...