Cheeta Still Lives, World's Oldest

Chimps - a reprieve to the tobacco companies.

..and you can charge em anything. Theyre so stupid.

Sucking the smoke into the lungs must come natural. Odd.

do the no smoking laws apply to chimps if they cant read english or spanish?

Who the hell gives them the first cig?

These days of course, it is not cool to admit to those dark days as a tobacco addict. Not to mention having to plead guilty to cruelty to an animal. However, back then it was a case of the ape already being a smoker so I wasn't leading him astray, he was doomed to life in a cage (albeit a clean and reasonably roomy one), he was damned lonely and confused, so what the heck! Maybe one hour, two or three days a week was a small price to pay to know I made a difference in his existence.

Until then I loathed chimpanzees - thanks entirely to Hollywood's efforts of debasing them, dressing them in clothes, forcing them to work with Ronald Reagan, ( ) etc etc - but since then I have learned a fair bit about them, they are truly amazing animals.

I don't think anybody was critical of you, lezzles. I understood that the chimp already was a smoker. I have read of a number of smoking chimps in my time, so I'm not shocked. As you say, smoking was viewd differently, once upon a time. I smoked from childhood to about age 50 or 51.

Officer who shot chimp warned to stay awayFriday, July 25, 2008 | 6:25 AM AUSTIN, TX -- Newly released documents say a University of Texas police officer who shot and killed a research animal in March was warned to stay in his car before firing 10 rounds and killing Tony the chimp.
The Austin American-Statesman says documents it obtained show UT police officer Paul Maslyk drove his personal car to the Keeling Center for Comparative Medicine and Research when a 140-pound, almost 18-year-old chimpanzee broke out in March.
Tony escaped from a jungle gym area by jumping more than 15 feet and grabbing the top of a corral wall.
Attendants at the center tried to subdue the animal by firing tranquilizers at it, but Tony snatched the gun and broke it.
As the animal approached Maslyk, he feared for his safety, told the animal he was going to shoot-- and fired.
UT police officers have since undergone training in chimpanzee behavior.
Maslyk didn't immediately return a phone message left by The Associated Press.

Cheeta is one of the last living remnants of the golden era of Hollywood. Most of the rest were child stars during that era (as was Cheeta, of course, who started his career as a mere babe in the 1930s). By my reckoning, there are only a handful of stars left from that era:

Mickey Rooney
Elizabeth Taylor
Margaret O'Brien (annoying kid sister in Meet Me in St. Louis)
Dickie Moore (played lots of child/juvenile parts in the 30s and 40s)
Jimmy Lydon (starred in the "Henry Aldrich" series of films)
Olivia DeHavilland (just celebrated her 92nd birthday)
Joan Fontaine (DeHavilland's sister, now 90)
Van Johnson (92 in August)
Luise Rainer (two-time Oscar winner, now 98 years old)
Deanna Durbin (87, star of a number of Universal musicals in the '30s and 40s)
Angela Lansbury (not a star, but she did get her start in Gaslight)

Can't think of anyone else. There are probably some character actors from that era who are still around, but nobody prominent.

Jackie Cooper

Ah yes, how could I omit him?

I saw Cheeta on the Sunday Morning program, with Charles Osgood. He looked like he was doing all right. His caretaker gave him a shot of liquor during the interview. He said the chimp was a drinking buddy with the last caretaker. This guy only seems to give the occasional shot. At the end of the segment, Cheeta was riding in a car, wearing the sort of hat I associate with Groucho Marx, or Milton Berle.

I had long believed that older chimps become unmanageable with people, but this guy appeared perfectly civilized.

He still throws his feces at children

Cheeta hard at work writing his memoirs.

Hey, isn't that Jackie COOGAN? Later to become Uncle Fester in Addams family?

oops...2 different people. Jackie Coogan did play Uncle Fester, but that's a different actor than correctly identified jackie cooper.

Good morning, ragman. Yeah, Jackie Cooper played the newspaper editor in a Superman movie or two.

yuppers..he played Perry White. And, I recall him a series (ran 3 yrs or so) in the early '60s called Hennesey, too!

Hennesy was pretty good. In one episode, Bobby Darin played a malingerer, who was bucking to get out of the military, to get back to his career. In the end, he changed his mind, and they closed the episode with him doing his current hit, Mack the Knife.
Just prior to Hennesy, Cooper did a series called, I think, The People's Choice. It had a basset hound in it that looked into the camera and talked to the audience.

Or was that a beagle?