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Lie of the Jungle: The Truth About Cheeta the Chimpanzee? Read The Washington Post ~ December 7, 2008 also see: Cheeta's Bio New York Times Report : December 28, 2011 ‘Tarzan’ Star Cheetah Dies In Florida At 80 — Maybe Los Angeles Times ~ December 28, 2011 Chimp's purported age, film claim prompts questions CNN ~ December 29, 2011 Cheetah: Not-so-true Hollywood stories Boston Globe ~ December 30, 2011 World Loses a True Legend Winnipeg Free Press ~ January 4, 2012 |
www.erbzine.com/mag6/0611.html |
Article in Look Magazine - June 6, 1939 
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TARZAN THE APE MAN with Denny Miller
www.erbzine.com/mag14/1480.html
www.erbzine.com/mag9/0987.html With Maureen O'Sullivan 
Vera Miles and Cheetah www.erbzine.com/mag5/0557.html |
www.erbzine.com/mag13/1349.html Painting by Cheetah From the Wayne James Collection |
Click to see full UK newspaper article /ERBzine News Archive 14 www.erbzine.com/news/news14.html |
 
Cheeta 3-D cards from Tarzan's Savage Fury www.erbzine.com/mag5/0582.html www.erbzine.com/mag5/0583.html |
Dino-Armored Tarzan vs. Realistic Cheetah www.erbzine.com/mag13/1398.html |
Johnnie Sheffield and Cheeta www.erbzine.com/mag3/0363.html |
X-Rated Tarzan Film from 1977 www.erbzine.com/mag7/0704.html |
Tarzan Rescues Cheta View Master Reel |
Andrea Miniatures
Swingin' Memoir |
Tarzan's chimp Cheeta reaches 74 |
Verdun Guardian ~ April 1938
Mystery surrounds Cheeta, purportedly the world's oldest chimpanzee
LA Times ~ February 14, 2009
Could Cheeta the chimp, the famous performing primate who's said to have starred alongside Johnny Weissmuller in the Tarzan films and Rex Harrison in Dr. Doolittle, be an impostor? It's a story whose plot resembles a 1930s screwball comedy, but author R.D. Rosen says it's true: Cheeta the chimp, said to be the oldest nonhuman primate in the world at 76, is not who he claims to be. (Or rather, he's not who his deceased trainer, Tony Gentry, claimed he was.)
In 2007, Rosen set out to write a book about Cheeta: his abduction from the wilds of his native Liberia; his storied history in Hollywood; his bizarre post-stardom life with trainer Gentry, who stipulated in his will that Cheeta be euthanized after his death, fearing no one else could provide the proper care for him; Gentry's subsequent reversal of that decision at the behest of a relative and fellow animal trainer, Dan Westfall, who runs the Palm Springs sanctuary to which Cheeta was eventually retired. It was plenty of fodder for a book. As our colleague Scott Gold puts it, "If only it were true." From Gold's story:
Cheeta's "birthday" has been celebrated, not on the anniversary of his birth, but on April 9, the anniversary of the day he supposedly landed in the United States. Rosen figured that point -- the dramatic account of Cheeta's arrival, with Gentry, according to legend, hiding him under a jacket on the Pan Am flight -- was a logical place to begin his research. It didn't take long for the first discrepancy to surface. It turned out, Rosen said, that the sort of flight Gentry had described wasn't available commercially until 1939 -- seven years after Gentry supposedly smuggled Cheeta into the U.S.
Rosen initially dismissed the story's inconsistency as an honest mistake. But odd discrepancies began to add up. The author watched movies supposedly featuring Cheeta in pivotal roles: Dr. Doolittle and even Bedtime for Bonzo, starring a young Ronald Reagan. Since chimpanzees' appearances change dramatically as they reach adulthood -- before they're 10 years old -- it was clear to Rosen that the ape stars of these films were actually juveniles. The timeline given for Cheeta's life would have had him at 19 when Bonzo was released and 34 when he purportedly made a big comeback in Doolittle. Rosen wrote in the Washington Post Magazine:
As Cheeta's claims to fame were springing leaks, I began spending hours in front of my television, freeze-framing on close-ups of various Cheetas in MGM Tarzan movies I had rented. I would take an 8-by-10 glossy of Westfall's Palm Springs Cheeta, approach the television and compare the two images. Chimpanzees' faces change quite a bit as they age, not unlike most human ones, but the contours and configuration of an ear change very little. I would freeze on a frame of Cheeta in three-quarters or full profile and try to find a match. In each Tarzan movie, the Cheeta role had been played by more than one chimp, depending on what talents the scene called for. (In fact, there was another, less well publicized Cheeta in Palm Harbor, Fla., who was also said to be in his 70s and a veteran of Weissmuller movies. But that's another story.) The trick was to look at all the scenes and positively identify Westfall's Cheeta in at least one. But none of the movie chimps' ears was an adequate match for the Palm Springs Cheeta's.
After this realization, Rosen spoke with animal trainers of the period who said they were well acquainted with Cheeta. Gold gives the details: The chimp, they told him, had been a performer at Pacific Ocean Park, the old Santa Monica attraction -- and had never been in films, Rosen said. It was Gentry, Rosen said, who'd passed Cheeta off as a star -- not even as a Cheeta, since there were many over the Tarzan years, but as the Cheeta. Rosen's best guess is that Cheeta was born around 1960, not 1932, performed as a pier attraction for a few years and was then given to Gentry by another trainer when Pacific Ocean Park closed in 1967. A nice ape, Rosen said, but not a star.
In late 2007, Rosen mustered the courage to tell Westfall of his findings. "He inherited a lie," Rosen said. "It took on a life of its own." Rosen helped Westfall change the language on Cheeta's website to reflect the doubts that had been raised; Cheeta, the site says now, "is unlikely to be as old as we'd thought, although he is clearly old." The plot thickened even further when Rosen compared various interviews given by Gentry over the years. He explains in his Washington Post Magazine article:
I went back through my papers to find the 1985 L.A. Times feature story -- "A Chimp Off the Old Block in Many a Tarzan Movie." In the piece, Gentry "ticked off" his favorite chimps among those he trained for the movies, ending with his current Cheeta: "I bought him from a dealer when they closed down the old Santa Monica Pier. Lemme see, when was that? Late '30s sometime. Mebbe 1938. Anyway, he was about 2 or 3 years old.... So this Cheeta did one [movie] with Lex Barker. Or was it two with Weissmuller and one with Barker? Which ones? I dunno...."
There was further evidence of Gentry's confusion -- or perhaps deliberate obfuscation of his Cheeta's résumé. In 1985, a few months after the L.A. Times feature, People magazine published a feature on Gentry and Cheeta titled "Tarzan's Co-Star Cheetah Aims for Hollywood Immortality but Finds It's a Jungle Out There," beneath a heartwarming photo of Cheeta, beer can in hand, kissing Gentry on the nose.
The story is not a paragraph old before Gentry is described as having "fed, pampered and trained the 4-foot, 158-pound star for 38 years." Since we know Gentry got Cheeta when he was a baby, that would mean Cheeta was born in 1947 (1985 minus 38 years), or 15 years after the year in which he usually claimed he got him. It would mean that, at a time when Gentry was telling Westfall and many other people that Cheeta was 53, he was only in his late 30s.
Because so many of the people whose stories could potentially have unraveled Cheeta's confusing tale have passed away, the absolute truth is unlikely to ever come to light. As the updated bio on Cheeta's website reads, "This will almost certainly remain a Hollywood mystery."
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Can this 'Cheeta' prosper after chimp attack?
The timing could not be worse.
USA Today ~ February 23, 2009Me, Cheeta: My Life in Hollywood (Ecco, 336 pp., $24.95) is an amusing tell-all by the chimp who played second banana to Johnny Weissmuller, Ronald Reagan and Rex Harrison. The sassy "memoir," written by ghostwriter James Lever, was a hit in Britain last year and arrives in bookstores in the USA on March 3. READ AN EXCERPT
But Cheeta's release follows the horrific attack last week by a pet chimpanzee named Travis in Stamford, Conn., that left a woman in critical condition. The chimp was shot and killed by police. And now there is controversy about whether the "Cheeta" living in retirement in Palm Springs — and the focus of much press because of the upcoming book — appeared in the Tarzan movies of the 1930s and '40s.
Cheeta's handler, Dan Westfall, has backed off from such claims on his website. He says it is now "difficult to determine which movies, if any, our Cheeta was involved in." The chimp was the subject of an article in Entertainment Weekly last fall in which Westfall claimed the former Hollywood star was 76 years old. But after an investigation by the Los Angeles Times, it appears Westfall's primate may be several decades younger. The Cheeta of movie fame (sometimes spelled Cheetah) apparently was played by numerous chimps, and it's unclear whether any are still alive. So is this book likely to find an audience?
Yes, says Dan Halpern, publisher of Ecco Books, which is publishing Me, Cheeta. "Everyone seems to have a problem with the idea of this book, as if it's non-fiction. It's fiction!" Halpern says. "It's not about the Cheeta in Palm Springs. It's an imaginary memoir." Halpern concedes that the chimp pictured on the book jacket is the Palm Springs Cheeta, "but I can't seem to get across the fact it's a phony story. There's a leap to be made here." Halpern calls the Connecticut attack "horrible." But he takes solace in the fact that everyone who has read the book has laughed. "And that makes it all worthwhile, especially in these dark times," he says. Ecco says it probably won't use the Palm Springs chimp in future promotions of the book.
Primatologist Jane Goodall speaks out about chimpanzee attack
CHEETAH THE ARTIST
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From the Brian Bohnett Collection
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Cheetah
the chimpanzee, who acted in classic Tarzan movies in the early 1930s,
died of kidney failure Saturday at Suncoast Primate Sanctuary in Palm Harbor,
a sanctuary spokeswoman said. Cheetah was roughly 80 years old, loved fingerpainting
and football and was soothed by nondenominational Christian music, said
Debbie Cobb, the sanctuary's outreach director. He was an outgoing chimp
who was exposed to the public his whole life, Cobb said today.
Cheeta
the chimpanzee, who appeared in the Tarzan movies, has attended a party
to celebrate his 74th birthday. Cheeta is kept by US primate sanctuary
owner Dan Westfall, who was given him by an uncle who was a Hollywood animal
trainer in the 1930s. The chimp, who appeared opposite Johnny Weissmuller
in 12 films, is recognised by the Guinness Book of World Records as the
world's oldest chimp. Cheeta was given a sugar-free cake at the party as
he is now diabetic. Chimpanzees rarely live past 40 in the wild but can
reach 60 in captivity. Cheeta is very active and "still has every tooth
in his head". Representatives from a Spanish film festival attended
the party to present Cheeta with the first award of his career - an International
Comedy Film Festival of Peniscola prize. Westfall adopted Cheeta in 1992
from his uncle, who obtained the chimp from Africa in the 1930s. 
"C.H.E.E.T.A.
stands
for Creative Habitats and Enrichment for Endangered & Threatened Apes.
Dan Westfall started the sanctuary when he received custody of Cheeta of
Tarzan movies fame. He created a desert sanctuary to provide residence,
care, and rehabilitation for homeless or unwanted ex-show business primates.
There are chimpanzees, orangutans, and monkeys at our desert refuge." 
He's
been an actor, a world record holder, a circus performer, recipient of
a star on the Palm Springs Walk of Stars and now a featured artist. Not
a bad life for a 72-year-old retired Palm Springs resident. Even better
considering his beginnings as an orphaned baby taken out of Liberia in
the 1930s. And he's not human.
