World’s most famous chimpanzee exposed as imposter
A Hollywood chimpanzee famed for his supposed appearances alongside Johnny Weissmuller in the 1930s “Tarzan” movies and recognised by the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s oldest living primate is almost certainly an imposter, research suggests.
Cheeta the Chimpanzee will officially turn 77 – almost double the normal lifespan of a chimpanzee – when he celebrates his “birthday” on Thursday. The anniversary actually marks the date in 1932 when the ape is alleged to have arrived in the United States from Liberia, according to the story of his former owner, Hollywood animal trainer Tony Gentry.
Gentry claimed to have smuggled the baby chimpanzee onto a Pan Am flight. But, according to an article in the Daily Mail, Cheeta’s life story – as told by Gentry – is not all it seems.
Cheeta’s official biography has him making his screen debut opposite Weissmuller in 1934′s “Tarzan and his Mate”. The ape then went on to star with Ronald Reagan in 1951′s “Bedtime for Bonzo” before taking the role of Chee-Chee in “Doctor Doolittle” in 1967.
Cheeta and Gentry then settled into retirement, with the ape even pushing Gentry’s wheelchair around as his health deteriorated.
Since his owner’s death in the 1990s, Cheeta has been cared for by Gentry’s nephew, Dan Westfall, who had set up a sanctuary for showbiz apes and monkeys in Palm Springs where Cheeta spends his time painting critically and commercially acclaimed “apestract” artwork and, more recently, updating his MySpace site.
But when Westfall and American author Richard Rosen began researching the details of Cheeta’s life for a biography, details of Cheeta’s of the story made no sense.
There were no Pan Am flights from Liberia to the United States, as Gentry had claimed. And the apes in both “Bedtime for Bonzo” and “Doctor Doolittle” were much younger than Cheeta would have been at the time, according to Gentry’s account.
Rosen dug deeper comparing Cheeta’s ears – a chimpanzee’s most distinctive feature – to those of the apes in every Tarzan film and failed to find a single match.
Finally Gentry’s friends told him they believed he had picked up Cheeta from a pier amusement park in Santa Monica in 1967.
Cheeta’s web page now recognises the doubts over his career, stating: “It appears that the facts of our Cheeta’s past will almost certainly remain a Hollywood mystery.”