B-52s Fred Schneider is devastated. He has just discovered that Cheeta, the chimp star of the Tarzan movies, is not who is says he is.
Fred has discovered that the Cheeta in the movies, the chimp reported to have recently turned 76-years old, is a fraud.The fake Cheeta is actually a chimp rescued from a sideshow from the Santa Monica Pier in the 60s.
The LA Times has unveiled that this chimp we are thought was the star of the Tarzan movies and also co-starred with Rex Harrison in Dr Doolittle is an impostor.
Author R.D. Rosen started the investigation in 2007 when he set out to write the biography of the famous chimpanzee.
Rosen discovered that the ape in the early should have been 19 when he co-starred with Ronald Reagan in Bedtime for Bonzo and 34 when he was in Dr Dolittle, but in studying the films he identified the age of the ape to be younger than 10.
He says the Cheeta passed off as the 76-year old original is closer to 50-years old today.
The perpetrator of the scam is said to be the ape’s trainer Tony Gentry, who juggled his story over the years and failed to match up his comments with an accurate timeline.
At Cheeta’s official webpage it states “The author's research revealed that Cheeta is unlikely to be as old as we'd thought, although he is clearly old. It has also been difficult to determine which movies, if any, our Cheeta may have been in. This will almost certainly remain a Hollywood mystery”.
Poor Fred Schneider. Today he says he is “hurt, betrayed, angry”.
