Happy 76th Birthday, Cheeta!
Posted: Thu Apr 03, 2008 5:47 am
I had no idea Cheeta was still alive. 
He turned 76 yesterday, and is currently living the quiet life in Palm Springs.
I couldn't find a birthday article, but I found this one from January...
I LOL'd when the weekly pet expert (Warren Eckstein, http://thepetshow.com) who dials in to the local radio station was talking about this. He said that until a couple of years ago Cheeta was drinking alcohol and smoking cigars daily. The lady DJ said, "Just like my mother!"
He turned 76 yesterday, and is currently living the quiet life in Palm Springs.
I couldn't find a birthday article, but I found this one from January...
Tarzan fans set to go ape crazy for memoirs of Cheeta the chimp
It's the latest and probably the last tell-all star autobiography from Hollywood's golden age.
But this memoir is a different species entirely from the normal rags-to-riches tale of a big-screen leading man or woman - it's the life of Cheeta the chimpanzee.
Tarzan's famous co-star, who embarked on his screen career in the 1930s alongside Johnny Weissmuller and Maureen O'Sullivan, is the subject of Me Cheeta, to be published by Fourth Estate in October.
The 75-year-old chimp, now enjoying retirement in a Palm Springs sanctuary, will not be going near the word processor personally. Fourth Estate has teamed him up with a ghostwriter but is promising a "funny, moving and searingly honest" memoir.
Looking back: Cheeta today, and in the movie that made his name alongside
Maureen O'Sullivan and Johnny Weissmuller
It will cover his experiments in modern abstract art, his battle with alcohol and cigars, his struggle with diabetes and, of course, that illustrious cinema career.
Cheeta was brought from the jungles of Liberia, West Africa, to the U.S. by Hollywood animal trainer Tony Gentry and appeared that year, 1932, alongside Weissmuller and O'Sullivan in Tarzan the Ape Man.
His antics entertained the audiences of a further 11 Tarzan movies - notably when he stole O'Sullivan's clothes as she swam naked in a river.
In the 1950s he worked with Bela Lugosi, and his swansong was Rex Harrison's Doctor Dolittle in 1967.
Despite his turbulent life, Cheeta has outlived his co-stars, both human and animal, and is now listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the oldest recorded non-human primate.
He even survived owner Gentry's wish that he should be put down after his own death. Instead the trainer's nephew Dan Westfall persuaded him to leave Cheeta to him, and has looked after him ever since.
Me Cheeta will not be the first of the chimpanzee's works available to fans - his art may already be bought online.
I LOL'd when the weekly pet expert (Warren Eckstein, http://thepetshow.com) who dials in to the local radio station was talking about this. He said that until a couple of years ago Cheeta was drinking alcohol and smoking cigars daily. The lady DJ said, "Just like my mother!"