John Daniel II #2

!cid_X_MA1_1240868080@aol, originally uploaded by bucklesw1. Miss Cunningham's arrangements for the exhibition of John II with RBBB during 1924 stipulated that he was to travel and stay with her and that included the hotels in New York City. They were first at the McAlpin on Broadway and 34th St. When RBBB press agent Dexter Fellows arranged for the newspaper men to meet John II, it was at the McAlpin. While in New York John II paid a visit to the American Museum of Natural History where he was shown the mounted John Daniel 1st. Those who observed him at the Museum included the noted primatologist Robert Yerkes, Dr Gregory of Columbia University, and Dr. McGregor and Carl Akeley of the Museum. Akeley was the famed big game hunter and taxidermist who provided the life-like African mammals displayed in the Museum. This photo shows him on the parapet of the roof of the McAlpin Hotel. Miss Cunningham took him up there to romp and play. I guess he was OK on that ledge but it was straight down - -25 stories to the sidewalk. Looks risky to me. Daniel 2nd was the first gorilla to make it to the to top of a New York skyscraper. There would not be another until King Kong in 1933, the former for real, the latter a Hollywood illusion. At the Garden, Norwood's description of the way John 2nd was exhibited suggests an arrangement similar to that for John 1st. Said Norwood - - "With Miss Cunningham in attendance, he was exhibited from a vantage point just in front of a door that led into a room. It was in this retiring room that he had his afternoon naps once the crowd had left the menagerie to see the ring performance."