An actor’s life is not a happy one. And that goes double, it seems, for actors of the non-human variety, even those who share 94 percent of their DNA with their fully bipedal co-stars. The latest celebrity chimpanzee to come to a sad end is Travis, who had appeared on US television on the Maury Povich Show, in clothing ads with Morgan Fairchild and in a TV pilot with Michael Moore and Sheryl Crow, and who was shot by police on Tuesday after he suddenly attacked his owner’s friend and could not be restrained.
It is rare that a chimp acting career ends well. Peggy, the first famous great ape (stop-motion gorillas atop Empire State Buildings excepted), suffered indignity from the start by being forced to assume the gender-inappropriate name Bonzo to star opposite Ronald Reagan in the 1951 film Bedtime for Bonzo. Peggy then languished and died in obscurity while her co-star went on to preside over the free world.
Then there was J Fred Muggs, a chimp more or less raised from infancy, proto-Truman Show-style, on the Today Show between 1953 and 1957. He became increasingly aggressive — though there were rumors that his jealous co-host aggravated this by spiking Muggs’ drink — and was finally dropped after allegedly biting guest Martha Raye. After a brief foray into fingerpainting, he is now said to be living quietly in Citrus Park, Florida.
And then there’s Bubbles, Michael Jackson’s pet. One can only guess how brief the sigh of relief was after he left his first home, a cancer-research laboratory, before he realized where he’d fetched up. Bubbles made several public appearances with his owner in Jackson’s heyday but in old age was exiled from the Neverland ranch (where Jackson apparently had several other chimps doing odd jobs and cleaning). For a long time, nothing was seen or heard of the long-suffering animal but rumors of his death turned out to be exaggerated.
He now lives on a ranch in Los Angeles and one suspects does not miss the showbiz lifestyle one little bit.
Tarzan’s Cheeta has perhaps fared best, if the autobiography he brought out last year, full of sex, drugs and rock-n-roll, is anything to go by. Which of course it isn’t, as (a) the role of Cheeta was assayed by numerous chimps over the years, and (b) none of them was literate. They all retired to various zoos and ranches and hopefully, in this marginally more enlightened age, we shall not have to rip their like from their natural habitat again.
SEEKING CHANGE: A hospital worker said she did not vote in previous elections, but ‘now I can see that maybe my vote can change the system and the country’ Voting closed yesterday across the Solomon Islands in the south Pacific nation’s first general election since the government switched diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to Beijing and struck a secret security pact that has raised fears of the Chinese navy gaining a foothold in the region. The Solomon Islands’ closer relationship with China and a troubled domestic economy weighed on voters’ minds as they cast their ballots. As many as 420,000 registered voters had their say across 50 national seats. For the first time, the national vote also coincided with elections for eight of the 10 local governments. Esther Maeluma cast her vote in the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
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