A new biography which is already a treasure and likely to gain classic status!

Tarzan aficionadas will instantly recall Cheeta the chimpanzee, now 76 years old, and invariably a good reason for seeing the Johnny Weissmuller features again, apart from spotting the recycled footage from earlier films and, particularly the cunning used in the censor-evading sequences.

The new book, 'Me Cheeta - the autobiography', literally takes apart the myth and legends about Hollywood as , like the song in 'Cabaret', we see it all through his eyes, in his happy years of retirement at Palm Springs, secure in the knowledge that no animal has ever been successfully sued for libel.  He can now write freely about the golden age of cinema, full of revelations about a lost Hollywood.  It's scabrously funny and yet a bit sad in busting apart its sentimentality and pretensions and showing the innate cruelty of the movie moguls. 

The blurb tells us that 'Plucked from millions of hopefuls in the jungles of Liberia, Cheeta became an international screen icon from the moment of his debut in 1934's Tarzan & His Mate.   He went on to star in a further nine Tarzan films, and later in Dr Doolittle with the appalling Rex Harrison, before his battles with substance abuse forced him into early retirement.'    Initially, he recalls the great star by first calling him 'that marvellous light comedian', before getting down to the more interesting truth ('universally despised, impotent alcoholic') then 'an absolutely irredeemable c*** who tried to murder me'; adding a sideswipe at fellow thesp. 'For three decades I think I 'phoned it in' a bit', he confesses.   It happens to actors.  Look at De Niro'.

The past couple of days have been pleasantly warm and sunny and I've hugely enjoyed getting stuck into 'Cheeta' in the garden - only as a good read, of course.  Curious neighbours peer over the fence on hearing my demented squeals of joy as so many great stars of pre-war cinema get the full treatment.   

Best deal is from Play.com.

                      From 'Tarzan and His Mate' (1934)

                      Jane emerges naked from river; Cheeta steals dress from low branches.

           Jane     'Throw it to me Cheeta, give it to me.   Oh Cheeta, that isn't funny...
                       Throw it down to me, Cheeta, throw it down...Cheeta, can't you see I've got
                       nothing on.   Cheeta, give it, give it to me.   GIVE IT TO ME!'

                       Cheeta hands over the dress.

           Jane      'Good monkey.'

"Sheffield decided to leave the industry and enrolled in college to further his education. He lived and worked for a time in Arizona.

"He married a woman named Patricia in 1959 in Yuma, Arizona. He and Patty have three children: Patrick M. Sheffield, Stewart Sheffield and Regina L. Sheffield."