A few days ago, I received this news in my inbox: The chimp who played “Cheetah” in the Tarzan movies died on Christmas Eve at the age of 80.
I didn’t cover it for one really big reason.
I’ve never heard of chimp making it to 80. I’ve heard of them living into their 70’s. 80 is possible, but I would have thought that more notice would have been paid to Cheetah’s really advanced age.
Well, it turns out that there is no proof that the chimp that died on Christmas Eve was Cheetah.
From ABC News:
A Florida animal sanctuary says Cheetah, the chimpanzee sidekick in the Tarzan movies of the early 1930s, has died at 80. But other accounts call that claim into question.
Debbie Cobb, outreach director at the Suncoast Primate Sanctuary in Palm Harbor, said Wednesday that her grandparents acquired Cheetah around 1960 from “Tarzan” star Johnny Weissmuller and that the chimp appeared in Tarzan films between 1932 and 1934. During that period, Weissmuller made “Tarzan the Ape Man” and “Tarzan and His Mate.”
But Cobb offered no documentation, saying it was destroyed in a 1995 fire.
Also, some Hollywood accounts indicate a chimpanzee by the name of Jiggs or Mr. Jiggs played Cheetah alongside Weissmuller early on and died in 1938.
In addition, an 80-year-old chimpanzee would be extraordinarily old, perhaps the oldest ever known. According to many experts and Save the Chimps, another Florida sanctuary, chimpanzees in captivity generally live to between 40 and 60, though Lion Country Safari in Loxahatchee, Fla., says it has one that is around 73.
A similar claim about another chimpanzee that supposedly played second banana to Weissmuller was debunked in 2008 in a Washington Post story.
Writer R.D. Rosen discovered that the primate, which lived in Palm Springs, Calif., was born around 1960, meaning it wasn’t oldest enough to have been in the Tarzan movies of Hollywood’s Golden Age that starred Olympic swimming star Weissmuller as the vine-swinging, loincloth-wearing Ape Man and Maureen O’Sullivan as Jane.
While a number of chimpanzees played the sidekick role in the Tarzan movies of the 1930s and ’40s, Rosen said in an email Wednesday that this latest purported Cheetah looks like a “business-boosting impostor as well.”
“I’m afraid any chimp who actually shared a soundstage with Weissmuller and O’Sullivan is long gone,” Rosen said.
Cobb said Cheetah died Dec. 24 of kidney failure and was cremated.
“Unfortunately, there was a fire in ’95 in which a lot of that documentation burned up,” Cobb said. “I’m 51 and I’ve known him for 51 years. My first remembrance of him coming here was when I was actually 5, and I’ve known him since then, and he was a full-grown chimp then.”
Film historian and Turner Classic Movies host Robert Osbourne said the Cheetah character “was one of the things people loved about the Tarzan movies because he made people laugh. He was always a regular fun part of the movies.”
In his time, the Cheetah character was as popular as Rin Tin Tin or Asta, the dog from the “Thin Man” movies, Osbourne said.
“He was a major star,” he said.
At the animal sanctuary, Cheetah was outgoing, loved finger painting and liked to see people laugh, Cobb said. But he could also be ill-tempered. Cobb said that when the chimp didn’t like what was going on, he would fling feces and other objects.
Another reason why I was skeptical of the story is that the CNN reporting of the death claimed that Cheetah liked listening to contemporary Christian music.
Chimps are highly intelligent animals.
No intelligent animal would listen to that crap on purpose.
LOL
But wad about if it was highly-spirited gospel music?
I wondered about this myself. I remember a picture of “Cheetah” back in the 1970’s that showed a really ugly old chimp smoking a cigar. I am a huge fan of Edgar Rich Burroughs and I always found the Tarzan movies 1930 – 1950 an instult to the Tarzan as depicted in the books. To be honest about it the Lord Graystoke/Tarzan of the 25 Tarzan books was both unrealistic, and racist. I have all of Edgar Rice Burrough’s books in first edition copies, and I love the illustrations found in them. Tarzan primate compadre was “Little Nkima” a monkey”, not an ape.
I red all the Burrough’s Tarzans too, just can’t remember their racism, not at all; but I was 8-10 when reading them.
Or maybe the finnish translation was a bit different. In the 70s, a black was a nigger here, nothing wrong with that.
And there were ab. 10 niggers in Finland in those days..
Bridget, in the United States, that is not a word that person of European descent normally uses.
In the 1970’s, the word here was “colored.” Nigger was the word used by the Klan and those opposing the integration of school and public facilities. Black or African American are the words we normally use now.
“not normally” is a mild way to phrase it!
the word is only used by racists in the USA.
We have an issue with some historically named geographic features using that name with the argument between retaining an historic name and changing it to eliminate the extreme offense it causes.
Like Rick Perry’s hunting ranch?
LOL
There’s also a place off the coast of Australia with the same name.
Our cultural referents change over time. Books and movies I enjoyed when a lad, I now find both sexist and racist. I also notice much more smoking & alcoholic beverages, but less gratuitous cussing and sexual references in the old media.
The Latin root of the “N-word” is common to many words/placenames describing something black and is in itself harmless. But the negative baggage associated with its historically pejorative use, especially in the US, makes it one of the new English curse words. It’s so taboo w/in the white American lexicon, that I can’t even bring myself to say or write it for any reason whatsoever.
Language is a strange thing, no?
From what I’ve read, the “original” Cheetah was not a nice animal at all, and sometimes tried to bite / attack the actors. This is pretty typical for older chimps, and it’s among the many reasons why I doubt any validity to the “Cheetah dies at 80” story.
Peggy Richter
Once a “show” Chimp reached adulthood they usually replaced it for just this reason. Male chimps can be particular violent as they age. Heck, male anthropoids (possibly excepting Bonobos & Gorillas) are generally not very gentle creatures.
the original story in the Washington Post is a great read.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/25/AR2008112500939.html?hpid=features1&hpv=national
probably the most telling comment is Jane Goodall’s, upon meeting this chimp, saying, “why, he doesn’t look older than 45”
The other thing that’s telling is that all of these stories use the word “Cheetah” and not “Cheeta.”
Cheeta is the name from the series.