A heartbreaking tale of Hollywood monkey business
John Malkovich made his Radio 4 debut this week, playing a chimp. One always expects the unexpected from this most singular of actors – but even so, Me, Cheeta: My Life in Hollywood (Saturday) was full of wonderful surprises. Adapted from the book by James Lever, this was the imagined “memoir” of the ape who starred in the early Tarzan movies, and who went on to become the longest-living chimp on record. It began with Cheeta, now living in retirement in Palm Springs, lounging by the pool and reflecting on his life’s work.
Cheeta, in Lever’s rendering, is a tragicomic mixture of simian nature and human nurture. He began life in the jungle, with a beloved mother whose coat, he now realises, was “the colour of Coca Cola refracted through ice”. She was slaughtered by the same “animal talent scouts” who took him captive.
He doesn’t bear a grudge. “Sooner or later, every creature that lives in the forest learns that there is only the hierarchy, and the constant dance of death.” Transported to Hollywood, he finds the rules are much the same. Some people – the famous ones – are “very special human beings”, whose sins must always be forgiven.
The most special, for Cheeta, is his co-star Johnny Weissmuller (played by Julian Sands). The moment he sees the former Olympic swimmer striding across the film set in a skimpy loincloth, Cheeta knows he has found his alpha male. “I leapt into the arms of the king of the jungle, and my heart did a somersault all of its own.” Weissmuller befriends the chimp – taking him to parties with Marlene Dietrich and Humphrey Bogart, among “so many dear friends”, and plying him with booze and cigarettes.
But it proves to be a lopsided love. Locked in his cage for months between Tarzan shoots (such are “the vagaries of an actor’s life”), Cheeta is baffled that Weissmuller never visits. And when Cheeta is sacked by MGM for biting (“They said I was difficult. I, who would work for a cigarette!”), Weissmuller simply vanishes from his life. Cheeta reinvents himself as an artist, making finger paints for his keeper to sell online. But his longing for Weissmuller never goes away.
The real Cheeta died in 2011, at the age of 80. But his inner life has been gloriously reconstructed here, through Lever’s words and Malkovich’s voice. Listen to it on the BBC Sounds app, but be warned: it might break your heart.
Guy Garvey: Recording Dad (Radio 4, Sunday) was a tearjerker of a different kind. Garvey, the lead singer of Elbow, spent a decade recording his father in conversation: his anecdotes, his childhood memories, all those “tales without a punchline”. Since his father’s death, this aural treasury has become Garvey’s most precious possession. Now, he wants to help the rest of us make our own.
It’s a brilliantly compassionate idea. My own father died last spring, and the thing I am most afraid of forgetting – even more than his face or hands – is his voice. These days, as Garvey pointed out, it couldn’t be easier to capture the voices we love: we all carry sophisticated recording devices in our pockets. Professor Catherine Loveday, a specialist in memory, provided psychological advice. It can be awkward, asking to record a loved one before they die. But once they get talking, she said, most people relish the chance to pass on their memories. Do it now, before it’s too late.
After all that emotion, I thought I’d find some respite in Open Country
(Radio 4, Saturday). But instead of the usual mild-mannered rural fare, this week’s episode was about the “Windermere Boys”: the 300 orphans who were rescued from Nazi concentration camps and brought to the Lake District to recuperate in 1945.
It was almost unbearable to listen to: the joy of the survivors at being transported from “hell to paradise”, and their delight in the most basic comforts (“Proper beds, with proper sheets, with a pillow…!”). Most moving of all was the testimony of Kevin, a local boy who befriended Mendel, an emaciated Pole while they were in neighbouring hospital beds. Mendel gradually confided in the innocent Kevin about the horrors he had endured. He had survived four different Nazi camps. His mother, father and two sisters had all been murdered. Whenever Kevin’s mother came to visit, Mendel would seize her hand and cling to it, tears running down his cheeks.
Decades later, Kevin got a phone call from Philadelphia. It was Mendel, wanting to catch up with his friend.
“Well, I broke down like a baby,” admitted the old man. He wasn’t alone.