Back from the road

only to notice that I have, once again, cruelly forgotten Cheeta's Birthday

Oh the embarrassment.

Naturally (as with all celebrities of the First Water) it was less of a typical anniversary and more of a vertically-integrated, marketing event.

There is the birthday itself:

From Wiki:

His 76th birthday was celebrated on 9 April 2008, at his "Casa de Cheeta" in Palm Springs at an event hosted by Dan Westfall and Diane Weissmuller, (Johnny Weissmuller, Jr.'s widow). The press and many Palm Spring celebrities attended.

Then the book deal:

A literary agent has been hired on his behalf ahead of the publication of his ghost-written autobiography, Me Cheeta, scheduled for release in October 2008. [1]

And then of course, a soupcon of gossip to keep the nation riveted.

Not monkeying around: Cheeta the chimp applies for Walk of Fame spot

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame have gone to the dogs, so why can't Cheeta the chimp get some love? The animal actor, whose credits include the 1967 comedy Dr. Doolittle and the Tarzan movies, is trying for the seventh time to get a sidewalk star and become the first monkey to get the honor. His handlers have launched an online petition to get supporters to urge the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce to give him a star in 2009.

Each June, the Walk of Fame Committee picks from hundreds of nominations a list of inductees for the next year.

Cheeta's "inclusion on the Hollywood Walk of Fame will not only give recognition to one of the international, animal megastars of all time, but focus attention on his fellow primates in the wilds of Africa who now face extinction," the petition reads.

...

And yet I wonder if, among all these handlers and hangers-on, even one of them remembers Cheeta the thespian.

Or Cheeta the Paleo-Method superstar, who was making a stiff like Johnny Weissmuller look good before Marlon Brando was wearing big boy pants.

Or even remembers Cheeta's most famous line:

"We didn't need dialogue,


"We had feces!"