Monkey Show
I want to make something very, very clear. This column’s review of the autobiography of Cheeta, Tarzan’s chimpanzee, has absolutely nothing to do with the man who just got elected to the White House last month. Cheeta’s opus was published in Britain two months ago (Fourth Estate, 336 pages) and has become a runaway best-seller. Is it a spoof? Obviously, but it’s a brilliant one, taking us back to the good old days of Hollywood when stars kept their mouths shut about politics, and their noses clean from cocaine--at least in public.
For any of you who have not heard of Cheeta, he is the longest living chimp, 76 as of this writing, whereas most of his kind live only up to 40-45 years in the wild. Which goes to show the Hollywood jungle may not be such a bad place after all. Cheeta ascribes his longevity to his daily injections against diabetes, and the benefits of a civilized society. “Me Cheeta” may well be among the finest tinseltown memoirs ever written, rivaling those of David Niven’s and Errol Flynn’s. He was shipped over from Africa as a baby, and hit the big time right away with “Tarzan and his Mate” in 1934. His co-stars were the great Johnny Weissmuller and the beautiful Maureen O’Sullivan, both of whom received top billing although it was Cheeta who stole the show.
Once in training by the Hollywood Sammy Glicks, who knew they had a money-spinner in their pay, the chimp became a star as soon as the first Tarzan movie was released. I remember seeing the film in Greece as a child--one of the few American movies allowed by the Germans to be shown--and the German officers laughing loudly when Cheeta would open his mouth and stick his tongue out and make fun of the strange Anglo-Saxons trying to capture his boss, Tarzan. Cheeta did not pull his punches back then, and does not pull them now, in print. His autobiography sticks very close to the facts. He did not like Charlie Chaplin, and calls him “a world-historically unfunny charlatan,” but in Chaplin’s case I tend to disagree with the chimp. I was among the last people to photograph Chaplin, for Paris Match magazine in 1969, and I found him to be extremely charming and rather conservative in his views of the Cold War. (The Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia had him hopping mad).
Otherwise, Cheeta is right on the money. Rex Harrison was among the most repellent of men, a conceited creep who was rude to underlings and people who couldn’t answer back--the great Noel Coward always pretended to kick a tire upon seeing him, as Harrison reminded him of a used car dealer--and Cheeta lets Harrison have it. The chimp’s last movie was with the ghastly Dr Dolittle, and Cheeta recounts how he had been deposited by the dastardly Harrison at the top of a monkey-puzzle tree. Harrison had a bet with his wife, Rachel Roberts: “If the monkey makes it down you can sleep with Richard Burton, if he’ll have you, and if it doesn’t, then I can divorce you…” Nice guy, this Harrison. Cheeta did not make it down the tree, much to the distress of animal lovers in the set. The chimp finally falls down, unhurt, and the overpaid creep Harrison loses his bet.
To my surprise, Cheeta is very rude about Esther Williams, the swimming beauty, as well as the fabulous Errol Flynn. The latter I met during my youth, and he was a much misunderstood man. Extremely well read, his parents were academics, he treated Hollywood’s world with the disdain of an aristocrat toward the great unwashed. Perhaps if Cheeta would have made a movie with him, and gotten to know him better, he would have changed his mind. Cheeta also disliked Mickey Rooney, which in my mind is like hating apple pie, the corner drug store, and cheer leaders on a Saturday afternoon. Never mind. At one moment, Cheeta is having dinner with Joan Crawford’s poodle Cliquot, a terribly boring evening, and then he is witness to a steamy lesbian scene between Marlene Dietrich and Mercedes de Acosta. “You can well imagine how bored I was watching them, and I scampered off to look for Johnny.”
And so it goes. I knew most of the stories, but, after all, I’ve been around since donkey’s years. Cheeta writes well, and has strong views on human beings and sex. When I called the publisher and asked for the identity of the ghost writer, the answer was that Cheeta wrote it himself. I do not doubt it. “How could I not envy humans,” asks the author. “They were so much more interesting than anything other species had come up with.” Hear, hear! My problem is that although I agree with Cheeta--we humans are more interesting than the rest of God’s creations--how come we have come to this? To have posturing peacocks like Joe Biden spouting gibberish that would have the hook working overtime in a beer hall, or egregious self-publicists like Christopher Hitchens preaching on prime TV about the evils of the Catholic church. Ours is a scene of Hogarthian squalor and retching, and you and I, dear readers, are responsible for it. We have allowed those beyond redemption, the utter scum of this world, the coarse, the greedy and the avaricious to lead us, and now it’s time to pay. Long live Cheeta.
Comments
Cheetah’s wrong… it almost made me cry (even as a simian Human, myself) charlie chaplin was enormously talented, and so I agree with yourself Taki.
See only real apes can *fail to see the genius resident in their progeny, like me & I dare say yourself are ape-arently taken for granted, Tak’san. In the distant past, I could speak, though mom couldn’t. Did she *know it, no. I had to screw some ‘bith#ch, then I got some kid out of it, who could. Like papa, like son, amen.
I was shocked (then ‘dismayed’ is a given as after-shock) by Cheetah’s remarks. Although I’ll never be as good an actor as himself, that’s true. Oh, to Be Cheetah, now, those WERE the good’old days.
Ah, alas, you can never go home or be Cheetah, per se, again. That’s ok, me and my son play catch, and do crossword puzzles together. And bith#chs now can speak too.
Thanks G-d. err… (God, maybe they speak too much?)
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My favorite story about Cheetah concerns the alluring Maureen O’ Sullivan who referred to Cheetah as “That Bastard” because every time she had an intimate scene with Tarzan… and the Chimp was around to see it, the surly devil would stalk her off set and attempt to either scratch or bite her.
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What a malicious, egregious allusion, beneath and unbefitting a man of (what I supposed) was your calibre. You really made a monkey of yourself.
I am shocked. Shocked. Mostly, disappointed.
Why didn’t you just Photoshop your headshot to appear in blackface? That would show ‘em.
Perhaps it is just your doddering old age, or maybe you’d just like to protect your fellow carousers and running-buddies. But books like Hollywood Babylon and Mind-Controlled Sex Slaves and the CIA certainly put the lie to your white-washed assertions about the circumspect movie stars of yore.
Let’s see...John Barrymore...Fatty Arbuckle...Bob Hope...Marilyn Monroe...Alistair Crowley...Howard Hughes...Laurel Canyon...and the House on Un-American Activities Committee.
To say nothing of the infamous Hearst Castle.
What a bad joke.
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Vell, I’ll say this with regard to Mr. Sabin’s revelation above, about the bastard Cheetah. At least it’s clear Cheetah hadn’t stolen from our (heterosexual) vocabulary the word ‘gay’, to now mean [sweetly] ‘homosexual’. As if such weren’t sweet enough (though as typical of this world often also NOT so sweet.) Give us back our word. It just suddenly occurs to me, did Cheetah bite and scratch maureen for not paying attention to him, or because he wanted Clark/Tarzan, or whatever bastard was the male lead? … Holy hell, Batman.
This could be a Spanish movie by Moldovar… he won something, do I have the spelling of his name correct?
Didn’t he do Volver with Penelope Cruz, & Bad Education etc. I don’t know.
Where is Dame Edna, for heaven’s sake, vhen we need Her. ? She’d clear this right Up of pimples, possums. ... Gosh, wuv, her. I get goosebumps. Well, even more – the short hairs standUp on the back of my neck, the dear. … Although Mr. Sabin’s posts thankfully have calmed down a bit. I thought for a sec., like W. Bush, he knew Satan? Don’t sweat it kids too much, the devil and the Lord they swig from the same bottle, of course.
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I only knew Cheetah toward the end of his career. I came across him at Hurley’s where I mistook him for the late Ben Gazarra. He was very good about that, and gamely admitting that it happened all the time. I think he was a bit chagrined about being reduced to making TV appearances and was secretly pleased at being remembered for his salad days.
He dropped out of sight for a while and I heard dark tales of his drinking with Delmore Schwartz in the village.
I’m very glad to see he pulled himself together. He was a simian celebrity to remember.
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Reports of Ben Gazzara’s death are greatly exaggerated !
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All right, it was a bit churlish to make fun of Ben Gazzara. I’m pretty sure he passed away sometime this year. I do recall Gazzara hanging around P. J. Clark’s in the 70’s wearing a trench coat, staring into his drink. motionless for a very long time. I thought it funny and a bit affected at the time. Then again maybe he was just bombed. Or perhaps he was waiting for Cheetah?
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All right, it was a bit churlish to make fun of Ben Gazzara. I’m pretty sure he passed away sometime this year.
Nope! Still running for his life at age 78. He survived years of blockbuster drinking bouts with Peter Falk and the late John Cassavetes - so he may just be pickled - but he’s in three movies this year, including “Eve”, directed by Nathalie Portman and co-starring Lauren Bacall (!).
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S F Curt. You are indeed right. Ben Gazzara is still going strong.
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Time for you and your blogsters-buddies to spare a little space and time from your clever musings to advance the Revolution. No one else is, though there are hundreds advancing other interests. Divided we are impotent and vulnerable; a spark not a torch. Organized unity is a revolution’s lifeblood, especially the civil disobedient one. It is free, voluntary, secure and powerful.
Ron Paul left the Revolution without hope of advancing towards our goal and no explaination of the simplistic formula able to connect us quickly while expanding exponentially through circles of patriots across our land.
“Wheels within wheels”, circles of patriots connecting to other circles...like Armstrong, the Canadian hero Intrepid, who united the European underground prior to the outbreak of WWII. No one knew each other beyond their immediate circle; no memberships, no lists, no dues or donations, just people organized and UNITED against the enemy - “Resistors”, “Watchmen”, “Minutemen”, PATRIOTS.
If we neglect to organize, there can never be unity. Without unity, our goal to restore our highest law cannot be won. The Constitution of the United States protects us only if we ACT BEFORE the knife is at our throat.
This message must be broadcast, relayed while there is yet time. Will you?
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When Flynn was born they broke the mold. He oozed class and there will never be another.
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I had the pleasure of being introduced to Cheeta at Madison Sq Garden a while back and must say he looked - from the waist down - remarkably like how I’ve always imagined Hillary Clinton, sans bottom half of pantsuit.
He was a charming chmip and, although mono-syllablic, appeared to have a superior vocabulary to most of the hoodlums coming out of the Knicks game.
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If you want a revolution you are a bit confused. Revolution is what the other team is all about. As the name implies, revolutions involve revolving from one bad state to the next.
What we Paleo’s want is a restoration. Of course this may be a delusion, rather like the desire of the Romans to restore their Republic.
My gloomy guess is that once a people have had their day in the sun, once they lose their culture, they are like the prize fighter who’s legs have given out. It’s all downhill from here.
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Seriously, come on - isn’t w. bush, cheetah’s doppleganger. Or, reincarnation if cheetah died before w. bush was born? Or, who knows maybe ‘history’ was made and cheetah if he died after w. bush was born, leaped upon his ‘alleged’ death – into w’s soul and took w. bush over, which led to Cheney and jews in the form of neocons. - It’s ‘logical’. -
I ‘believe’ it, since it “helps” to believe something – gets those ENDORPHINS or the brain’s natural painkillers going full-speed… but here’s the important point – it gets them going - naturally. Naturally under God in mother Nature is divine, too. Amen.
Don’t do drugs especially meth – it only gets the endorphins going super-speed artificially – then when you come down it hurts since you used too much of the endorphins and it takes them longer to release again naturally. Stay, divinely Natural, possums. Beautiful.
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