Did Cheetah from Tarzan flicks die at 80?
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 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, Florida 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, California, was born around 1960, meaning it wasn't old
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 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 on December 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
five, 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 faeces and other objects.
- AP
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