Me Cheeta: My Life in Hollywood

“A dazzling performance….An incisive, hilarious study of Hollywood folkways.”

—Wall Street Journal

The tell-all memoir of all tell-all memoirs, Me Cheeta is the unexpurgated true life story of the  granddaddy of all Hollywood animals, Cheeta the Chimp, star of the Tarzan films. The Washington Post calls this insider’s tale from the Golden Age of the Silver Screen, “Hilarious, catty, melancholy and, occasionally, deep,” and it was nominated for Great Britain’s prestigious Man Booker Prize (though Chimp Booker Prize would be more appropriate). As told to James Lever, Me Cheeta is one ape’s story of his on-and-off screen interactions with the likes of Johnny Weissmuller, Maureen O’Sullivan, Rex Harrison, and Bela Lugosi. Tinkerbell, Paris Hilton’s dog, had her literary day, as did Socks the First Cat. Now it’s Cheeta’s turn!

Cheeta the chimp was just a baby in 1932 when he was snatched from the jungle of Liberia by the great animal importer Henry Trefflich. That same year, Cheeta appeared in Tarzan the Ape Man, and in 1934 in Tarzan and His Mate, in which he famously stole clothes from a naked Maureen O’Sullivan, who was dripping wet from an underwater swimming scene with Johnny Weissmuller. Other Tarzan films followed, and later roles with Bela Lugosi in the 1950s. Cheeta finally retired from the big screen after the 1967 film Doctor Dolittle with Rex Harrison, whose finger he accidentally bit backstage while being offered a placatory banana. Cheeta now lives in Palm Springs, where, at age seventy-seven, he is by far the oldest living chimpanzee ever recorded.