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Cheetah Dead At 80 – Well, Not Quite

Posted by: Linda Carbonell on December 28, 2011.

Weismuller, O'Sullivan, Sheffield and Jiggs Jr.

The original Cheeta, who appeared in the first two Johnny Weismuller Tarzan movies, was a chimpanzee named Jiggs who was brought to America in 1929 and died in 1938. He was owned and trained by Tony and Jacqueline Gentry. The Gentrys owned several chimps who portrayed Tarzan’s primate companion, including Jiggs Jr.

Gentry created a myth about one of his chimps, which lived at a sanctuary in California, so one of them was alleged to be past 70 years of age.

None of these are the Weismuller chimp who died on Christmas Eve of kidney failure.

The Cheetah who is being mourned today was donated to the Suncoast Primate Sanctuary in Palm Harbor, Florida, by Johnny Weismuller when the actor/businessman retired and sold his estate in that state. The chimp has been living at the Sanctuary since the mid-1960s, so, at the very least, Cheetah was around 50 years old. He was fond of finger painting and interacting with his humans.

Weismuller was not the first actor to portray Edgar Rice Burroughs jungle hero, that honor belongs to Elmo Lincoln in the 1918 silent Tarzan of the Apes, but he was the first to be totally associated with the role. Born in 1911 in Romania, Weismuller was brought to the United States in 1914 by his parents. A lack of immigration laws and confusion over his right to represent the U. S. A. in the Olympics caused Weismuller to claim that he was born in Pennsylvania. Beginning in 1922, through the 1924 and 1928 Olympics, Weismuller won 52 US National Championships, set 67 world records and won five gold and one bronze Olympic medal. His record at the Olympics would not be tied until 1964 by Don Schollander and broken in 1972 by Mark Spitz. Weismuller stood 6’3″ tall, a full foot taller than his first Jane, actress Maureen O’Sullivan. The Irish-born actress was as well known for her seven children as for her acting career. One of her daughters is actress Mia Farrow.

Though he was not the movie Cheetah, the chimp who passed this weekend was famous because of his association with Weismuller and his unusually long life.

Our thanks to Wikipedia for the research on the movie chimps and their genealogies. You guys are my best friends.