Long Live Cheetah!

Mrs Vache Folle likes Keith Olbermann, so we sometimes watch Countdown. Last night, it was uplifting to learn from that show that the chimpanzee who played Cheetah in those Tarzan movies is still alive and kicking at age 74. He was underrated as an actor, in my opinion, and the Tarzan flicks would not have been half as good without him.

I loved Tarzan movies when I was a kid, and they frequently came on early on Saturday mornings. I would imagine that I was Boy, Tarzan’s adopted son, and swing from wild grape vines in the woods. Our hogs served as stampeding elephants in my fantasies. There was always at least one elephant stampede in a Tarzan movie, and I would pretend not to notice that Indian elephants were involved rather than African elephants. Everyone knows Indian elephants are better actors.

Anyway, Cheetah made the movies for me, and Johnny Weismuller was, to me, Cheetah’s sidekick. Tarzan never did figure out how to use articles in his speech or the first person pronoun, and I figured he was a little retarded. Without Cheetah, he would never have made it.