According to Bill Ballantine’s chapter on chimpanzees in WILD TIGERS AND TAME FLEAS: “[A] chimp . . . can still be exhibited until he is from nine to twelve years old. After that, chimps turn ugly, become too tough to handle and must be retired . . . Most old chimps just fade away in a cage – alone, unwanted and growing meaner by the minute.” (I’m assuming that the chimp’s human companion is its long time trainer, and that a feeling of mutual trust existed between them.) |
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Newsreel Animals #16
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4 comments:
We all know this is not a chimp, don't we ?
Similar scenes were de regeur 50 +
years ago at the Bronx Zoos Great Apes Bldg. I'm sure Richard Reynolds can tell us more. Richard do you remember Oka And Makoko ?
Paul Gutheil
This is a gorilla, not a chimp.
I believe this is Susie whose owner and trainer, Bill Dressman, took her around. She had come over on the German dirigible Graf Zeppelin in 1929.
She was a special side show attraction on Ringling-Barnum in Philadelphia in 1930 and again in 1931 at early canvas dates.
She made other cameo field show appearances as well - - Johnny J. Jones carnival (April 1930), 101 Ranch & Wild West on Long Island (July 1930), and the Rubin & Cherry carnival (August 1930). Additionally, she was exhibited at Chicago’s Lincoln Park zoo, Toronto’s Canadian National Exhibition, Madison Square Garden’s Pet Show, and World’s Museum, East Side Resort, NY. For these appearances she traveled around in a glass-enclosed cage mounted on a truck.
Finally on June 11, 1931 she landed in the Cincinnati Zoo, its first ever gorilla. She died there in October 1947.
Dressman was with her at Cincinnati Zoo and regularly “dined” with her to the amusement of the visitors. I believe these shots are from such an occurrence.
From the front it looks like a
mountain gorilla but from the side
not so much
In the film clip, Susie raps on the table for service and also tries on the hat seen on the table.
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