Me Cheeta: My Story

By Cheeta

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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Mar 15, 2011
• ISBN: 9780062047199

Cheeta

Cheeta was just a baby when snatched from the Liberian jungle in 1932, by the great animal importer Henry Trefflich, who went on to supply NASA with its 'Monkeys for Space' programme.

Reviews for Me Cheeta

[alexrichman_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A ridiculous idea, really - a wicked autobiography from a chimp at the heart of the Golden Age of Hollywood, replete with bitchy asides about so-and-so's sexual history. Despite the campy concept, it still manages to pack a sweet love story amongst the dark humour.

[riverwillow · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a brilliantly funny and moving expose of Hollywood penned by the star of several Tarzan movies, Cheeta. OK, the original Cheeta, Jinks, died in the 1930s but that doesn't prevent James Lever from producing a fantastic pastiche of all those Hollywood memoirs telling the truth about the sex, booze and drug fuelled exploits of Mid-Twentieth Century Hollywood. There are some hilarious anecdotes - the one with the Rolls Royce, David Niven and Johnny Weissmuller will stay with me for a while. I also particularly loved Chapter 8. This is also a book with a strong emotional heart, the love Cheeta feels for his Tarzan, Johnny Weissmuller, is as innocent and pure as Hollywood isn't and Cheeta's innocent and often misguided observations on human/animal relations are insightful and moving.

[joycefraser_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Once upon a time I thought dirrrttty words were best spoken in a plummy poshey-oshey voice but since discovering Me Cheeta, “the greatest celebrity autobiography of our time” I now know that filth comes best from an ape. Scurrilous, defamatory, racy and rude Cheeta’s tale spans a life lived in the fast lane during the golden age of Hollywood. From the barbarous jungle of Liberia to the barbarous jungle of Hollywood, Cheeta went on to scale the heady heights of fame as Tarzan’s trusty sidekick.Cheeta dishes the dirt on all the famous names of the era, Rex Harrison is described as “an absolutely irredeemable [rude word!] ”, Maureen O’Sullivan (Tarzan’s Jane) is an “old trout” and Lupe Velez is an “adulterous canicidal bitch”. Chapter 8 has been completely excised “on legal advice’ what salacious and unfounded gossip have we missed?!So apart from being a hilarious spoof what is the point of it all? It is beautifully written; the early chapters describing Cheeta’s life in the jungle and his separation from his family are positively eye-moistening. But most poignant of all is Cheeta’s love for the ultimate alpha male Johnny Weissmuller, Tarzan, a big-hearted, misguided but beautiful human-being. The real author behind Me Cheeta is editor James Lever who was commissioned to ghost-write the story by his publisher Nick Pearson at Fourth Estate who’d read a news report about Cheeta’s 75th birthday celebrations. In preparation Lever read a multitude of memoirs from the 1930’s and 1940’s the most affecting being Weissmuller Jnr’s memoir of his father who died in poverty and obscurity after six disastrous marriages. So this spoof autobiography is also about the dangers of fame and the futility of celebrity, I hope you are listening Paris Hilton. Read, guffaw and enjoy.

[jintster_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is the memoir of Cheeta the chimp who co-starred with Johnny Weissmuller in the MGM and RKO Tarzan films. The first chapter is one of the funniest openings of any book I've read - (Cheeta is the subject of a bet between Rex Harrison and his wife - if she wins she can sleep with Richard Burton "if he'll have you" if he wins she won't kill herself if he leaves her).If the rest of the book doesn't quite maintain these standards, it's still a hugely enjoyable and wickedly bitchy (satire of a) memoir of the Hollywood golden age. In places Cheeta's love of Weissmuller is even rather touching. Anyone with a good knowledge of Hollywood stars of the 30s and 40s will get even more laughs out of this then I did. But even if a number of jokes and digs sailed over my head, enough hit the mark to leave me grinning like the narrator through most of the book.

[gaskella_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This year’s oddball choice on the Booker longlist is a satire on Hollywood as seen through the eyes of Tarzan’s long-lived chimp companion. When it was published last autumn as an autobiography, the book had Cheeta listed as its writer, but it didn’t take long for the real author to be uncovered; James Lever, a book editor, has his name on the paperback.Cheeta, now aged 76, looks back on his life. In the first section, he tells us how he and many other animals were ‘rescued’ from the jungle and ‘rehabilitated’ by humans, how he was selected to go to Hollywood where he became ‘part of the family’ belonging to L.B.Mayer. There, Cheeta met the love of his life, Tarzan in the sublime form of Johnny Weissmuller, and Johnny too got a pal who would always be there for him. Cheeta didn’t get always get on with Jane however – Maureen O’Sullivan found ‘the ape-talk a trifle wearying’. Johnny’s reply, ‘Jane angry. Jane need smack on rear end.'Ere long Cheeta is mixing with all the stars and indulging in all the vices - smoking, drinking, sniffing cocaine from starlets’ cleavages and indulging in high jinks with Douglas Fairbanks and David ‘Niv’ Niven. There were those he didn’t get on with too, particularly Charlie Chaplin who had to upstage everyone, (he got his own back in spectacular fashion with members of Charlie’s garden menagerie). Johnny always stuck up for Cheeta though. Esther Williams was another, but we don’t know the details as that chapter was ‘removed on legal advice’! Eventually the films got worse, Cheeta’s role was diminished and the Tarzan brand faded. In the last section of the book, Cheeta has retired to a sanctuary where he paints and dreams.Very clever and often scabrously funny, this spoof plays long and hard with the facts of Hollywood’s golden age – after all, its targets are dead. Young Cheeta’s innocent belief that the human’s had his best interests at heart was neatly handled, as was the older Cheeta’s world-weary cynicism about the system that had made him, but spat him back out when he was no longer useful, his comeback having flopped.Luckily, I grew up watching all the black and white movies on Saturday afternoons when my Dad and brother went off to the footie, so I was familiar with all Cheeta’s co-stars. Reading it without this grounding may prove tedious though, for at 320 pages, it is too long by about a quarter. It shouldn’t make it onto the Booker shortlist, but it has been a great choice to stimulate discussion and successfully raise the media profile of the prize. I found it to be in parts, hilarious and truly fascinating, also a little repetitive, but above all it was a really interesting exercise in satire and good fun.

[heptonj · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

It's a good job this book was written by a monkey or the lawyers would be beating a path to the authors door!This is a very sad, very funny book which gives an insight into the Hollywood scene of some years ago and a chance to step back and realise what a ridiculous species we are. I would love to know who wrote this and grassed-up so many 'stars'.

[fence_2 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I should have known from that opening paragraph that I wasn’t going to enjoy this book. It has that “amn’t I amusing and witty” narration style that, for me, simply fell flat. Perhaps it is just that I don’t know enough about the stars of the 1940s & 50s to get all the hilarious references and anecdotes. Or maybe it was just written in a style that left me uncaring. Who can say.Actually, it was probably the fact that I was on the train that led to me reading this. I’d asked Himself if he had any book for me to try, and although he hadn’t read this one he said I could borrow it. So I read it for an hour and a half, and got so far through that I figured I’d try and finish it. But the second half, at least, of my reading was reduced to a skim through every second page. It just didn’t hold my attention in the slightest.

[deltaqueen50 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Once in a great while a book will find it’s way into your life and earns a place of honor on your bookshelves. Such a book is Me Cheeta: My Life In Hollywood by James Lever. Extremely readable, this clever spoof of Hollywood memoirs will have you laughing one minute, gasping with shock the next, and then actually bring you to tears with it’s moving story of a chimp that makes it big in Hollywood. This is one monkey that isn’t afraid to dish the dirt. Stories of the stars and their way of life in the thirties and forties, is both hilarious and eye-opening. The fact that Cheeta, the oldest chimpanzee on record, is still alive and well, living in Palm Springs, painting pictures and stealing cigarettes warms the cockles of my heart.If you are looking for a slightly different read, I would recommend this book. From his hilarious well documented battles with co-star Maureen O’Sullivan, who played Jane, and his insights on all the stars of the day, especially at MGM, you don’t have to be a particular fan of “Tarzan” movies to enjoy Me Cheeta. Definitely one of the year’s best books for me, but a warning for the faint-hearted, there is some animal cruelty described and some explicit sexual conduct.

[joellalibrarything · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is basically the Guardian's Unsettling Animal Picture Of The Week in book form. And, like many of the pictures, says a lot more about us than it does about them. Weird and disturbing.

[bzine_3 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Wow! Who would think this jokey high concept book about an animal actor in the Golden Age of Hollywood could have something deeply moving to say about love, time, death and the nature of humanity? Highly recommended.

[sanddancer_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book is everything you would want from a Hollywood memoir - full of scandal, gossip, name-dropping and self-delusion - it hardly matters that it isn't real. The book is written as a memoir by the chimp who co-starred with Johnny Weissmuller in the 1930s Tarzan films. As with most memoirs, the book starts with Cheeta's early life in the jungle, progressing through his arrival in America, his first taste of fame and the highs and lows of a career in Hollywood's Golden Age. It got off to a bit of a slow star and at first I wasn't sure that I would enjoy it so much, but then it won me over. The part about Cheeta's later life, his fall from favour in Hollywood and his career beyond that, were particularly good, and I actually found the ending incredibly moving, which I wasn't expecting at all from a spoof.

[davidgoldsteen · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Funny and poignant, "Me Cheeta" is the ultimate insider/outsider peek into Hollywood's heyday. It's well written, with a narrator who sees people in a way they can't see themselves. Sometimes he gets it wrong, or shows us how we've got it wrong, as when he refers to his capture from the jungle as the beginning of his 'rehab.'A wonderful, funny novel of Hollywood. It transcends parody by allowing the reader to see through (and sometimes see more than) the 'author.' Really nicely handled.Note: the library from which I borrowed this book had it listed with a Dewey Decimal code of 791. Are the librarians in on the joke, or do they think the chimpanzee Cheeta, who appeared in movies in the 1930s, is a) still alive and b) writing?

[bcquinnsmom · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Normally, the thought of reading a book told from the point of view of an animal sends me running, and to be very truthful, I probably would have skipped on this one as well had it not been placed on the Booker Prize Longlist this year. What a mistake that would have been -- actually, more of a shame. Ostensibly written by Cheeta the chimpanzee, bosom companion to Tarzan vis-a-vis the series of movies first produced by MGM then by RKO, the book reads like a Hollywood memoir of debauchery and hedonism among the big stars of the 30s 40s and 50s. But there's so much more between the covers than a pseudo-tell all. Me Cheeta is an ode to Johnny Weissmuller, the best friend Cheeta ever had. It's a look at the downside of the world of stardom and celebrity -- even for animals -- once the box office numbers start falling. It delves into the world of animal cruelty in the name of show business and laboratory research. It's an examination of civilization using the action in the series of Tarzan movies as a starting point. At times it's laugh-out-loud funny, and yet there's a sense of poignancy throughout the book that makes the reader stop and think about the cruelties that humans can inflict upon each other (not to mention animals). I can't really do this book justice in a short review, but it is one of those stories where after you read it, you'll be thinking about it for a while. Very well written, Me Cheeta is refreshing and fun, and I can definitely very highly recommend it.

[kidzdoc_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This tell all biography by a chimpanzee who starred in the Tarzan movies along with Johnny Weismuller was selected for the Booker Prize longlist in 2009. It's filled with snarky humor, jokes about the movie industry and actors, and has numerous references to masturbation, excrement, and other body fluids. I guess I would say that it was well written, but it certainly wasn't a captivating story, and I stopped reading it after 70 pages.