Check out this shocking story about how the supposedly living Cheeta the Chimp (star of several Tarzan movies and President Reagan’s Bedtime for Bonzo film) isn’t really alive like everyone claims and is replaced by an impostor in a bit of Hollywood mythology!
In November 2007, Rosen tracked down veteran animal trainers who said they knew Cheeta well. 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.
