{TEXTBOOK} Me Cheeta: the Autobiography

ME CHEETA: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY PDF, EPUB, EBOOK

But how, I hear you asking, can a chimpanzee write a book? Easily, it seems. Take a look at this week's bestseller lists; at a guess, 70 per cent of the non-fiction titles are ghost-written. Did Cliff Richard ever snort cocaine off Constance Bennett's cleavage? I think not. Did Cheeta really do these things? Who cares? The point is that he could have done, and it makes for a grand story. Just don't go looking for innocent larks and family- friendly anecdotes; Cheeta is partial to four-letter words, and has come up with the bitchiest, most scurrilous chronicle of the Dream Factory since Kenneth Anger brought out Hollywood Babylon. The sheer starriness of the celebrities in walk-on roles makes your average autobiography look like the dribblings of a nonentity. How about Scott Fitzgerald, who sat next to our hero at a screening? Joan Crawford? Marlene Dietrich? Humphrey Bogart? There is great love there, and the autobiography is as much about Weissmuller as it is about Cheeta. The conceit of reading a book telling you what Hollywood was like as seen through the eyes of a chimp may be an odd one, but this was a treat from beginning to end. I'm so glad I had the chance to read it. Apr 11, Jazzy Lemon rated it it was amazing Shelves: magicalsquareadventures As much a biography of the life of Johnny Weissmuller and an insider's look into the escapades of several early film stars this is a charming, romp in the Hollywood life of Cheeta, the chimpanzee in the Tarzan films of the 30s. A very good read, highly recommended. Dec 24, Tracey rated it really liked it Shelves: auto-biography , This was something really different and I was not sure what to expect. What I did get was a book that was very funny, and also crude, lewd and rude. There are some descriptions of people that hit hard and hold nothing back which makes it entertaining and perhaps scandalous. Who ever created the idea for this book really hit pay dirt and I hope we are not treated to the lost diaries of Rin Tin Tin or Trigger's life with Roy. If you want something different to read then I highly recommend the book This was something really different and I was not sure what to expect. If you want something different to read then I highly recommend the book. I feel terrible for binning this. It's well written, it's witty, it's a great idea. But there is no narrative progression. I'm half way through and I do enjoy the wisecracking and the style and the made-up stories about david niven and all of the hollywood greats, but they're not real, and there's no reason to carry on. I probably shouldn't give it 3 stars, considering I'm n I feel terrible for binning this. Seven years after its original publication, the first French translation of Me, Cheeta has just been released by Le Nouvel Attila, whose founder has been exploring all kinds of genre literature for the past twenty years. I first heard about it on the French radio programme Mauvais Genres. Little is known about the author, said Francois Angelier, programme creator and presenter. Actually, Angelier added, rumour has Seven years after its original publication, the first French translation of Me, Cheeta has just been released by Le Nouvel Attila, whose founder has been exploring all kinds of genre literature for the past twenty years. Actually, Angelier added, rumour has it that James Lever might just be a pseudonym, that the actual author of Me, Cheeta might be Will Self. This got my attention. Not that I particularly like Will Self, mind you. But I was intrigued: what do you get by applying his undeniable talent to a topic like Tarzan? So I bought the book. A lot of the readers I know research a book and its author before reading it. I am under the illusion that this provides me with a more unblemished reading experience. Plus, I cannot resist the challenge: how much can I figure out about a writer based on his or her prose? I doubt it is from Will Self. The writing sounds very American, especially the way the metaphors are developed that passage p. I liked the blue button. The tone is however quite personal, constantly funny — with this also very American way of slipping comedy crumbs in the most tragic scenes, keeping the deep sadness but cutting the bitterness — and satirical as only the best satirists like Voltaire can do. Here you go. An interview from August 1st, for the Guardian by Zoe Williams reveals that not only does James Lever exist but also that she knows him from University, that he is British, lives in Kensal Rise, is — or was — broke and 37 at the time and had been unsuccessfully writing for the past 20 years. Me Cheeta was, however, a command from his publisher, who tied Lever to extremely strict deadlines. Most of his work effort was put in the research. The writing was done in one go and hardly corrected. This makes the result all the more impressive. It can also explain the school book quality of the structure 1. So far, Me, Cheeta is my book of the year Both have this marvellous combination of a flawless style precise, fast paced, fun, clever, well documented but never pedantic , a historical and cultural background to which I can relate. In both, the narrative point of view is, to say the least, unusual. The Nine Lives of Ray The Cat Jones is an punk-anarchist, first-person account of the life of a thief who had his hours of fame in the late 20th century. Ray Jones, the narrator, is the opposite of a self-interested criminal. Stealing, he said, is completely acceptable provided that what is taken is taken from people who will not miss it. This, you might say, is nothing but the old Robin Hood tale all over again. However, the novel illustrates it from the insider point of view, giving it an angle that only stories can find. Enabled with similar qualities, Me, Cheeta challenges what we usually see as an intellectual standpoint, more than a moral one: disbelief in humanity 2. The supposed simian author keeps hammering his love for the human race. This starts as a satiric joke. It ends up running throughout the whole novel. Always, new situations are interpreted with the same blissfully stupid adoring glance at human beings. However, as the theme finds its pattern, it twists. At the start of the novel, in the capture scene, Cheeta is running away from a scene of carnage. His mother and his favourite sister have just been killed. Cheeta drags in his wake his brother Cary and his other brother slash archenemy Stroheim. Stroheim catches up with him. Cheeta loses the ensuing fight. Cheeta takes his raptor for an ape. Gentry takes a fight to death for a game. Two short and funny sentences is all it takes to Lever to tell us this: the misunderstanding between chimp and human is total and mutual. Humans love animals. Animals love humans. Me, Cheeta could have been called Love and Misreading. It could have been a Jane Austin novel or a Hernandez comic. From there onwards, the theme of the misinterpretation is recurrent: hundreds of animals are captured and shipped back to the US aboard the cargo named Forest Lawn? This is part of a herculean task to rescue the whole animal kingdom from mutual murder. Animals are kept in closed cages? This is part of a rehabilitation programme where, with food and shelter provided, animals are allowed to laze around as long as it takes to bring down their stress level an awful lot of masturbation is involved at this stage. The seas are overfished? This is in order to make them safer. Through this distorted lens, the human world is reinvented as a Disney-esque theatre. At the centre of its stage, Johnny Weissmuller and Cheeta live the perfect love on a paradisiac set — which Cheeta calls The Dream and which we know as the setting of the early Tarzan movies. Walking us through all the dirty stories of Hollywood Golden Age, James Lever uses and develops this angle. As he does so, the way Cheeta has to lie to himself to preserve his fiction of a perfect world gets more obvious and the satire more subtle. With Jane entering the scene, things start getting ugly. Soon, we come to realise that Cheeta is no fool. As the chimpanzee stops believing in his own lies, we stop believing in his naivety. What was satire becomes irony. This slow reversal takes us all the way to the final pages. There might still be double meaning in these words. Does this sound like American blind-bliss optimistic self-patting auto-satisfaction to you? This is one way of seeing it. Another way is to do what I did after reading about James Lever and recognise this as an expression of what British people quintessentially are: paradox lovers, contradiction seekers, and goddamn animal huggers 4. Francois Angelier, usually so well documented, should have known better. I love you British people! I bought this book as a potential source of some light relief reading, thinking it might amuse me. I was wrong, but initially I was not quite sure why. The image of Cheeta spending his remaining years planning CDs and perfecting his abstract paintings is slightly amusing. He loves exclamation marks. Excessive enthusiasm? When one considers how he deals with humans, one is more inclined to think that there is a strong sense of misanthropy involved. Names, nicknames, place-names etc. Is this a criticism of the lifestyles of some Hollywood people at that time? Or even now? The Index, on the other hand, verges on the misogynistic but more on this later. It has a certain style, but lacks any substance. Contradictions abound. It is, in short, trashy. This was taken up by the media, and generally accepted by many as representing the truth. As part of the continuation of this hoax, James Lever was commissioned as ghost-writer for this book, and it even made it onto the long list for the Man Booker Prize in Literature in ! So all this is a hoax as well not so surprising in itself — chimpanzees do not really speak, philosophise, paint, etc. Instead it ends up being merely too clever by half. The page reference is to pp 3— in other words to the whole text of the book! The entry then goes on to list 8 sub-headings egomania of; ingratitude towards Weissmuller, Johnny; invaluable swimming lessons given by Weissmuller, Johnny; malicious gossip about ex- husbands, lovers, colleagues, etc,; nauseatingly self-justifying autobiography of; unsubstantiated libel against Weissmuller, Johnny, in autobiography; vow of vengeance taken by Cheeta; and web reviews of autobiography. We are, of course, in lala land… So the book is a hoax; the Index tells us it is a hoax; and the Index itself is a hoax, ridiculing both the text and itself, and incidentally the reader who takes any of the book seriously. The really annoying part is that, in order to criticise its position, one needs to go into some detail and point out the inherent stupidities and the above comments are only some of the many others that could be made when everything within me is telling me not to waste my time on this trash! I can only hope that my time has not been wasted, and that it will help others to see through the dangerous, poisonous nihilism books such as this exhibit. This initially anonymous jeu d'esprit was first notable for its skewering of celebrity autobiography--the mendacity, the luvviedom, the omissions; and it's presumably a treat for any devotee of tittle-tattle from the age of the Silver Screen--John Barrymore, the suave David Niven, Gloria Swanson, Marlene Dietrich apparently poisonously subhuman , Esther Williams apparently cock-fixated. All the stars' high jinks are brittle and nasty. Cheeta, the narrator, is brought out of lock-up to lend a This initially anonymous jeu d'esprit was first notable for its skewering of celebrity autobiography--the mendacity, the luvviedom, the omissions; and it's presumably a treat for any devotee of tittle-tattle from the age of the Silver Screen--John Barrymore, the suave David Niven, Gloria Swanson, Marlene Dietrich apparently poisonously subhuman , Esther Williams apparently cock-fixated. Cheeta, the narrator, is brought out of lock-up to lend a note of decadence to orgies. Harold Lloyd has an algae-green pond disguised as a ninth green on a golf course out the back of his house; he laughs mirthlessly as, one by one, his playing partners' perfect irons mysteriously disappear. Cheeta gets a laugh at Chaplin's--Charles Chaplin's, as he desires to be called--expense when he takes the crashingly unfunny comedian's hat into the star's bonobo cage, from which two engorged females have signalled at him and where he proceeds to lose his ape virginity. Beyond this, Lever taps into a vein of sub-Swiftian satire in belaying humans' grossly exploitative conduct towards the natural world. The conceit here is that Cheeta believes the cramped cages of the cargo ship he's being transported to New York in are a form of rehab; that big-game hunters are trying to make the world safe for animals, etc. His tone in retailing celebrity gossip is silkily camp; but the deeper worldview is scouring and indignant. A satirist and smartass, the chimp himself entertains a Nabokovian ambivalence about the magic of the movies. Filming on the 'escarpment' with his beloved Weissmuller and his 'Jane', a rival he drives out, is 'dreaming'. He loves Johnny, who can only say in his senility facing death that Cheeta is the 'best goddamn friend I ever had'. Dec 13, Monty Milne rated it really liked it. This is very funny, although those who will enjoy it most will have a deeper knowledge of 20th century Hollywood than I do. We begin in the grounds of a country house in England, where Rex Harrison, his wife Rachel Roberts and Dickie Attenborough are taking a break from filming "Fox's disastrous megaflop Doctor Dolittle", and taking bets on whether Cheeta will be able to get down from a monkey-puzzle tree. This, then, is an alternative take on Hollywood's golden age; the place where, as Cheeta describes it, the actors perform dreams which are soaked up by the public watching them being played out on the screen. And the price of this is that the "dreamers", as Cheeta sometimes calls the stars, lose their minds. Cheeta works the grimmest parts of the fairytale even into his similes: "But that was as foolish a dream as Lana Turner's daughter Cheryl's hope that her stepfather Lex Barker would stop raping her. But this is far more than a wicked spoof tell-all. It operates, and works smoothly and well, on several levels: it is a Swiftian satire, as Cheeta walks through the world observing human foibles and, often as not, getting them exactly wrong, as when he imagines that the stuffed animal heads adorning the walls of one actor's house are all old pets, lovingly preserved. It is a textbook example of the unreliable narrator "Incidentally, during this conversation, Marlene [Dietrich] and Mercedes [de Acosta] were stimulating each other's sexual organs. You can well imagine how bored I was watching them Review: Me Cheeta by James Lever | Books | The Guardian

He describes real-life servants of colour as the native tribesmen whose onscreen village is always trampled by elephants; the franchise's sad decline when it moved from MGM to RKO, and became increasingly domesticated and focused on Tarzan's 'son', is likened to Weissmuller's unhappy offscreen family life. The final meeting between the aged Cheeta and Weissmuller could have been mawkish, but somehow manages to be elegiac. The book is nostalgic in the word's oldest sense: it captures the ache for a lost home to which we can never return. It suggests everything and everyone we dream and love will inevitably be lost. Jan 31, Heather rated it really liked it Shelves: contemporary , A really funny, satirical take on the Hollywood memoir. The novel is written from the point of view of Cheeta, the chimpanzee who starred in ten Tarzan movies during the s and 40s. Though he is, of course, a chimp, the novel is written as though he were a major human movie star working during the peak of the Hollywood Studio System, and his det A really funny, satirical take on the Hollywood memoir. Though he is, of course, a chimp, the novel is written as though he were a major human movie star working during the peak of the Hollywood Studio System, and his detailed accounts of the drinking, parties, and general debauchery he and his fellow stars engage in are very entertaining, yet quite insightful. While laughing at the absurdity of many of the events Cheeta chronicles, we're also hit with the feeling that this account is probably a very accurate reflection of Hollywood lives during that time. I think you'd miss out on a lot of the book's wit and effectiveness if you weren't familiar with the stars of the 40s and 50s, and felt that I would have appreciated this book a lot more had I a known who Johnny Weissmuller was; b seen any of the Tarzan movies; or c read an autobiography of one of the old stars eg. Kate Hepburn, Errol Flynn. Nonetheless, the book is beautifully written, extremely funny, very, very clever, and a very entertaining read! It's a lot easier to write about a book that never quite does it for me than one where "it's great, so great, run out and read this now! It's a wonderful concept, and at times I found myself very engaged. But oftentimes I found myself having a hard time understanding what was happening, precisely, and at some point I realized w It's a lot easier to write about a book that never quite does it for me than one where "it's great, so great, run out and read this now! But oftentimes I found myself having a hard time understanding what was happening, precisely, and at some point I realized what it was. There's a middle section in this book where a lot of it reads like On the Road or Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, which may be great for some, but I had similar problems getting myself fully engaged in those books as well. The writing becomes very frantic, and things happen in such a breakneck pace, that while I managed to get the overall picture, it was harder for me to enjoy a lot of the books more drug-addled and debauched scenes. Similarly, I wonder if my appreciation of this book would be greater if I were more intimately familiar with a lot of Old Hollywood references, of which there are many, and of which I had no context in terms of understanding just how biting some of Cheetahs comments on many events in that era may actually be. But when the book stops being a book about a pseudo-fictionalized what-if surrounding Johnny's personal life and focuses on the immediate of Cheetah's desires, the book shines. Especially so when we come to understand the Jane-villain problem that plagues Cheetah's professional career. Indeed, Cheetah's relationship to his costar Johnny is portrayed wonderfully and is very touching. Shelves: memoir , humor. Amazon is being quite slow with uploading my review, so here is the text in it's raw form: Cheeta, the star of eleven feature films with the best Tarzan there ever will be, Johnny Weissmuller, tells us what it was like in Hollywood during the Golden Age. While Me Cheeta is hilariously, laugh-out-loud funny in many sequences, there is a serious message under the chuckles; he was removed from his native habitat, along with thousands of other animals over the years, for the sole purpose of entertaini Amazon is being quite slow with uploading my review, so here is the text in it's raw form: Cheeta, the star of eleven feature films with the best Tarzan there ever will be, Johnny Weissmuller, tells us what it was like in Hollywood during the Golden Age. While Me Cheeta is hilariously, laugh-out-loud funny in many sequences, there is a serious message under the chuckles; he was removed from his native habitat, along with thousands of other animals over the years, for the sole purpose of entertaining humans in a particularly frightening episode, he is almost sent to a lab. He, with tongue firmly in cheek, refers to this as being "rescued," but it's left to the intelligent reader to make the distinction. Cheeta describes partying with David Niven or "Niv," as Cheeta calls him , among many others, and has some very sharp barbs for Chaplin, Rooney and Esther Williams. The most touching passages are when he talks about his work and life with Johnny. There is great love there, and the autobiography is as much about Weissmuller as it is about Cheeta. The conceit of reading a book telling you what Hollywood was like as seen through the eyes of a chimp may be an odd one, but this was a treat from beginning to end. I'm so glad I had the chance to read it. Apr 11, Jazzy Lemon rated it it was amazing Shelves: magicalsquareadventures As much a biography of the life of Johnny Weissmuller and an insider's look into the escapades of several early film stars this is a charming, romp in the Hollywood life of Cheeta, the chimpanzee in the Tarzan films of the 30s. A very good read, highly recommended. Dec 24, Tracey rated it really liked it Shelves: auto-biography , This was something really different and I was not sure what to expect. What I did get was a book that was very funny, and also crude, lewd and rude. There are some descriptions of people that hit hard and hold nothing back which makes it entertaining and perhaps scandalous. Who ever created the idea for this book really hit pay dirt and I hope we are not treated to the lost diaries of Rin Tin Tin or Trigger's life with Roy. If you want something different to read then I highly recommend the book This was something really different and I was not sure what to expect. If you want something different to read then I highly recommend the book. I feel terrible for binning this. It's well written, it's witty, it's a great idea. But there is no narrative progression. I'm half way through and I do enjoy the wisecracking and the style and the made-up stories about david niven and all of the hollywood greats, but they're not real, and there's no reason to carry on. I probably shouldn't give it 3 stars, considering I'm n I feel terrible for binning this. Seven years after its original publication, the first French translation of Me, Cheeta has just been released by Le Nouvel Attila, whose founder has been exploring all kinds of genre literature for the past twenty years. I first heard about it on the French radio programme Mauvais Genres. Little is known about the author, said Francois Angelier, programme creator and presenter. Actually, Angelier added, rumour has Seven years after its original publication, the first French translation of Me, Cheeta has just been released by Le Nouvel Attila, whose founder has been exploring all kinds of genre literature for the past twenty years. Actually, Angelier added, rumour has it that James Lever might just be a pseudonym, that the actual author of Me, Cheeta might be Will Self. This got my attention. Not that I particularly like Will Self, mind you. But I was intrigued: what do you get by applying his undeniable talent to a topic like Tarzan? So I bought the book. A lot of the readers I know research a book and its author before reading it. I am under the illusion that this provides me with a more unblemished reading experience. Plus, I cannot resist the challenge: how much can I figure out about a writer based on his or her prose? I doubt it is from Will Self. The writing sounds very American, especially the way the metaphors are developed that passage p. I liked the blue button. The tone is however quite personal, constantly funny — with this also very American way of slipping comedy crumbs in the most tragic scenes, keeping the deep sadness but cutting the bitterness — and satirical as only the best satirists like Voltaire can do. Here you go. An interview from August 1st, for the Guardian by Zoe Williams reveals that not only does James Lever exist but also that she knows him from University, that he is British, lives in Kensal Rise, is — or was — broke and 37 at the time and had been unsuccessfully writing for the past 20 years. Me Cheeta was, however, a command from his publisher, who tied Lever to extremely strict deadlines. Most of his work effort was put in the research. The writing was done in one go and hardly corrected. This makes the result all the more impressive. It can also explain the school book quality of the structure 1. So far, Me, Cheeta is my book of the year Both have this marvellous combination of a flawless style precise, fast paced, fun, clever, well documented but never pedantic , a historical and cultural background to which I can relate. In both, the narrative point of view is, to say the least, unusual. The Nine Lives of Ray The Cat Jones is an punk-anarchist, first-person account of the life of a thief who had his hours of fame in the late 20th century. Ray Jones, the narrator, is the opposite of a self-interested criminal. Stealing, he said, is completely acceptable provided that what is taken is taken from people who will not miss it. This, you might say, is nothing but the old Robin Hood tale all over again. However, the novel illustrates it from the insider point of view, giving it an angle that only stories can find. Enabled with similar qualities, Me, Cheeta challenges what we usually see as an intellectual standpoint, more than a moral one: disbelief in humanity 2. The supposed simian author keeps hammering his love for the human race. This starts as a satiric joke. It ends up running throughout the whole novel. Always, new situations are interpreted with the same blissfully stupid adoring glance at human beings. However, as the theme finds its pattern, it twists. At the start of the novel, in the capture scene, Cheeta is running away from a scene of carnage. His mother and his favourite sister have just been killed. Cheeta drags in his wake his brother Cary and his other brother slash archenemy Stroheim. Stroheim catches up with him. Cheeta loses the ensuing fight. Cheeta takes his raptor for an ape. Gentry takes a fight to death for a game. Two short and funny sentences is all it takes to Lever to tell us this: the misunderstanding between chimp and human is total and mutual. Humans love animals. Animals love humans. Me, Cheeta could have been called Love and Misreading. It could have been a Jane Austin novel or a Hernandez comic. From there onwards, the theme of the misinterpretation is recurrent: hundreds of animals are captured and shipped back to the US aboard the cargo named Forest Lawn? This is part of a herculean task to rescue the whole animal kingdom from mutual murder. Animals are kept in closed cages? This is part of a rehabilitation programme where, with food and shelter provided, animals are allowed to laze around as long as it takes to bring down their stress level an awful lot of masturbation is involved at this stage. The seas are overfished? This is in order to make them safer. Through this distorted lens, the human world is reinvented as a Disney-esque theatre. At the centre of its stage, Johnny Weissmuller and Cheeta live the perfect love on a paradisiac set — which Cheeta calls The Dream and which we know as the setting of the early Tarzan movies. Walking us through all the dirty stories of Hollywood Golden Age, James Lever uses and develops this angle. As he does so, the way Cheeta has to lie to himself to preserve his fiction of a perfect world gets more obvious and the satire more subtle. With Jane entering the scene, things start getting ugly. Soon, we come to realise that Cheeta is no fool. As the chimpanzee stops believing in his own lies, we stop believing in his naivety. What was satire becomes irony. This slow reversal takes us all the way to the final pages. There might still be double meaning in these words. Does this sound like American blind-bliss optimistic self-patting auto-satisfaction to you? This is one way of seeing it. Another way is to do what I did after reading about James Lever and recognise this as an expression of what British people quintessentially are: paradox lovers, contradiction seekers, and goddamn animal huggers 4. Francois Angelier, usually so well documented, should have known better. I love you British people! I bought this book as a potential source of some light relief reading, thinking it might amuse me. I was wrong, but initially I was not quite sure why. The image of Cheeta spending his remaining years planning CDs and perfecting his abstract paintings is slightly amusing. He loves exclamation marks. Excessive enthusiasm? When one considers how he deals with humans, one is more inclined to think that there is a strong sense of misanthropy involved. But Cheeta the Chimp, who starred with them all, is alive and well, retired in Palm Springs as an abstract painter. At the incredible age of seventy-six, he is by far the oldest living chimpanzee ever recorded. Cheeta was just a baby when snatched from the Liberian jungle in , by the great animal importer Henry Trefflich, who went on to supply NASA with its 'Monkeys for Space' programme. That same year, Cheeta appeared in 'Tarzan the Ape Man', and in 'Tarzan and His Mate', in which he famously stole the clothes from a naked O'Sullivan, dripping wet from an underwater swimming scene with Weissmuller. Full of humour, wit and emotion, James Lever's novel tells the truly unique tale of a monkey stolen from deepest Africa and forced to make a living among the fake jungles and outrageous stars of Hollywood's golden age. Cheeta's tinseltown journey extends beyond the screen, to his struggle with drink and addiction to cigars, his breakthrough with a radical new form of abstract painting, 'Apeism', his touching relationship with his retired nightclub-performing grandson Jeeta, now a considerable artist in his own right, his fondness for hamburgers and his battle in later life with diabetes, and, through thick and thin, carer Dan Westfall, his loving companion who has helped this magnificent monkey come to terms with his peculiar past. Blow me. Even the index is a delight. It's mostly made up. The entries for Esther Williams are especially wry. The book has what you might call a loose feel. It's like bumping into the guy at a party, two drinks in, and getting to hear everything that's on his mind. He's furious about that missing Oscar! And all those aloof co-stars who failed to appreciate his worth! Probably because he's Jewish! And so good with the ladies! Especially the non-Jewish ones! He's also happy to burble on about his disastrous family ties. Of his relationship with his famous daughter Jamie, he writes: "I still struggle to get past her coolness toward me. I know I can sound formidable, but inside I'm as fragile as ever. And sensitive as I am, I'm not at my best when I think someone doesn't like me. I'm working on this, but progress is slow. Their books, similarly, are poles apart. He implies that certain female co-stars were gagging for him but certainly doesn't gloat. Nor does he bitch so much as report bitchy things other people have said. He makes an exception for the late David Niven's wife — he hates Hjordis. His world-view is Conservative with a capital C. Hierarchy is everything, as an anecdote about the actor John Mills and his wife makes clear. Rog takes the couple to a restaurant where the manager, who sounds in every other way suitably fawning, makes the mistake of continually addressing them as "Mr and Mrs Mills". I miss them both. Her daughter, Cheryl Crane, deals with this tricky problem head-on: "I don't feel that anything heretofore published has captured the woman that I knew, including her own autobiography. Yet what she's trying to say, and her awareness of the world at large, make her coffee-table book cum family-album compelling. She admits she's had a hard time gleaning details about her mother's life and often seems to be gathering facts for herself, even if, on occasion, she tells us things we have no right to know. Turner — always desperate to have more children — became pregnant by Tyrone Power "the love of her life" , while he was still married to another woman. He breezed off on an airplane trip and they worked out a code so that she could inform him of her plans via ham radio. The words "I found the house today" let him know she had decided to have an abortion. Much of the time, Crane is just making sense of her own scarred life. The men that Lana moved on to — alcoholic Bob Topping, rapist Lex Barker he sexually abused Crane , violent Johnny Stompanato — were about as bad as you can get. Crane famously stabbed Stompanato to death. Me Cheeta: The Autobiography | London Evening Standard

How about Scott Fitzgerald, who sat next to our hero at a screening? Joan Crawford? Marlene Dietrich? Humphrey Bogart? They all have their sordid little secrets, and this monkey takes no prisoners. About the only star to emerge untarnished is Weissmuller, effortless alpha-male and former Olympic swimming champ whose physical beauty makes Michael Phelps look like, well, a chimpanzee. There's a great running gag about Cheeta's rivalry with Maureen O'Sullivan's Jane, whose dress the chimp so memorably made off with while she was doing a spot of skinny-dipping in Tarzan and His Mate. Cheeta evidently found his leading lady a bit of a nag, with her constant shrill cries of 'Cheeta! What are you doing? Stop that right now! Much of this is laugh-out-loud hilarious, but there's a grim undercurrent coursing beneath the racy narrative, not made any less grim by Cheeta's witty faux-naif observations, which pass off the beatings, confinement in cramped cages and general mistreatment of animal actors as 'intensive rehab'. Two hundred horses died during the filming of The Charge of the Light Brigade, starring Errol Flynn, whose interest in dogfights, alas, was not confined to movies about aeroplanes. Cheeta suffered his share of hardship. In he was monkeynapped from the Liberian jungle no wonder he identifies with King Kong and crated up with hundreds of other creatures by an animal importer; it was during the long Atlantic crossing that he first distinguished himself by showing an aptitude for smoking, drinking and playing poker. Later, he was to learn the hard way what it means to be a star. Even after stardom, he, like so many of his human counterparts, lived in terror of his profile dipping below a certain level, which all too often led to despair and an ignominious death, whether by drink or drugs like former child star Bobby Driscoll , suicide Lupe Velez botched her attempt and ended up drowning in her lavatory bowl or in the vivisection lab. Luckily he was rescued by a kindly trainer, but one can only imagine how many animals were not so fortunate. How much of Cheeta's story is true? About as much, I dare say, as in any other autobiography. And this is not just a wicked, bawdy Hollywood history with a serious subtext, it's also a moving tribute to the man who will forever be associated with the role of Tarzan. Cheeta's last meeting with Weissmuller takes place with the actor confined to a wheelchair, unable to speak properly after a series of strokes. The encounter is so sad I burst into tears. That same year, Cheeta appeared in 'Tarzan the Ape Man', and in 'Tarzan and His Mate', in which he famously stole the clothes from a naked O'Sullivan, dripping wet from an underwater swimming scene with Weissmuller. Full of humour, wit and emotion, James Lever's novel tells the truly unique tale of a monkey stolen from deepest Africa and forced to make a living among the fake jungles and outrageous stars of Hollywood's golden age. Cheeta's tinseltown journey extends beyond the screen, to his struggle with drink and addiction to cigars, his breakthrough with a radical new form of abstract painting, 'Apeism', his touching relationship with his retired nightclub-performing grandson Jeeta, now a considerable artist in his own right, his fondness for hamburgers and his battle in later life with diabetes, and, through thick and thin, carer Dan Westfall, his loving companion who has helped this magnificent monkey come to terms with his peculiar past. Funny, moving - and so searingly honest, you know it has to be fiction - 'Me Cheeta' transports us back to a lost Hollywood. Cheeta is a real star, and this is the greatest celebrity non-memoir of recent times James Lever was born in Bolton and educated in Oxford. He's 38, and spent his twenties writing an page novel called 'News Sport Weather', whose subject was 'everything'. It wasn't any good, and nor was it published. He lives in London, where he has worked as a comedy-writer and performer, reviewer, ghost and editor. Me Cheeta : The Autobiography.

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Cheeta is a real star, and this is the greatest celebrity non-memoir of recent times James Lever was born in Bolton and educated in Oxford. He's 38, and spent his twenties writing an page novel called 'News Sport Weather', whose subject was 'everything'. It wasn't any good, and nor was it published. He lives in London, where he has worked as a comedy-writer and performer, reviewer, ghost and editor. Me Cheeta : The Autobiography. Despite the campy concept, it still manages to pack a sweet love story amongst the dark humour. Extremely readable, this Cheeta starred alongside Johnny Weissmuller in the Tarzan movies of the 30s and went on to have a long and successful career in the movies until retiring in He now lives in the C. Me Cheeta : The Autobiography. Cheeta , James Lever. The incredible, and moving true story of Cheeta the Chimp, star of countless Hollywood blockbusters, told in his own words The greatest Hollywood Tarzan, Johnny Weissmuller, died in Cheeta tells it all, a life lived with the stars, a monkey stolen from deepest Africa forced to make a living in the fake jungles of Hollywood. He tells us too of his journey beyond the screen: his struggle with drink and addiction to cigars; his breakthrough with a radical new form of abstract painting, 'Apeism'; his touching relationship with his retired nightclub-performing grandson Jeeta, now a considerable artist in his own right; his fondness for hamburgers and his battle in later life with diabetes; and, through thick and thin, carer Dan Westfall, his loving companion who has helped this magnificent monkey come to terms with his peculiar past. Funny, moving, searingly honest, Cheeta transports us back to a lost Hollywood. He is a real star, and this the greatest celebrity memoir of recent times. You can find our Community Guidelines in full here. Food for London. Digital Edition. The Londoner. The Reader. Matthew d'Ancona. Ayesha Hazarika. Rohan Silva. Ellen E Jones. Laura Weir. Tottenham Hotspur. Crystal Palace. West Ham. Transfer News. Premier League. Champions League. Rugby Union. Horse Racing. A List. ES Magazine. GO London. Things to do. Healthy at Home. ES Best. ES Shop. Travel Offers. Voucher Codes. Property news. Area guides.

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