LITMIR.BIZ

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think of Chaplin.’) Furthermore, The Story of My Life also turned out to be gone. Similarly My Life Story and In My Life. And My Lives. And My Lives and Loves. Likewise, as I soon found when tentatively attempting to branch out, My Life in Film, A Life in Film, My Life in Movies, A Life in Movies, My Life in Art and My Life in Pictures (unbelievably that goddamned Chaplin had snaffled that one too).

      Despairing somewhat, I thought it might be terrifically daring to begin something with ‘American…’ or ‘Hollywood…’ before discovering that everything begins ‘American…’ or ‘Hollywood…’. Cheeta Speaks came to me as a revelation while I was dozing in this very chair, as did the realization that another great clown, Harpo Marx, had used it up.

      Switching tack, I cast around for something a little more descriptive of my story: Wonderful Life seemed just about perfect for the five minutes I thought it was mine. Ditto Survivor, A Survivor’s Story, Memoirs of a Survivor and, the one I really wanted most, From Tragedy to Triumph. It turned out that there are whole libraries of books called From Tragedy to Triumph. And not a single one called From Triumph to Tragedy, I noticed, as if human life only ever proceeded in the one direction, at least in autobiography.

      These were meant to be the first words of my literary career. Those humans who thought the very idea of my writing an autobiography was laughable would have been thoroughly confirmed by the sight of me struggling through a series of sleepless afternoons, incapable of producing so much as a single letter. Maybe they were right—actors should stick to acting. My respect for writers, whom I’d silently sneered at throughout my career when presented with another psychologically incoherent script for Tarzan or Jane or me, went through the roof.

      Writing was hard! It seemed like there had just been too many human lives, and words were no longer capable of coping with them. Words were wearing thin with all those human lives using them up, and always the same lives, moving confidently away from tragedy towards triumph. Who could possibly, I thought, want another memoir by anyone? Let alone yet another ex-movie star’s reminiscences? How presumptuous to assume that a celebrity’s hoary old Hollywood war-stories could be of interest to anyone but himself!

      At this low ebb, my dear old friend the utterly inimitable Kate Hepburn came to the rescue. Kate had had no such difficulties with the title for her own autobiography. What was the subject? Me, Kate had decided, ‘A book all about me, by me. I see no reason why it shouldn’t be called Me.’ Now, Kate has her Connecticutian sense of entitlement, which helps her march unblushingly up to anything she wants and take it, but I couldn’t accept that she had permanently vacuumed up the title Me. What about the rest of us? Enough—surely somebody else could call their book Me as well as Kate Hepburn, or ‘Katharine of Arrogance’, as she was rather unfairly known during the time we were closest. So, after nearly a month of work, I had my beginning. Me. I even had a perfect vision of the cover, which the publishers will mess with over my dead body: Me, and then my name in a different font, and that terrific photo which…well, you’ve already seen it for yourself. Left to right—Barrymore, Gilbert, Bogie, Bacall with the ice-creams, me, Garbo doing the rabbit ears behind my head and I think that’s Ethel Merman’s drink I’ve just knocked over. Don’t I look young?

      I was delighted with this breakthrough—who says chimpanzees have no business writing memoirs?—though keenly aware that unless I managed to up my rate from an average of one letter a fortnight, the whole project might turn out to be a bit of a long haul. In fact, the next two words—the dedication—represented a moderate acceleration in that they took only three weeks of agonized wrestling.

      I took a break and returned to my painting—a series of nostalgic jungle-scapes that hardly stretched me. I wanted some time to reassess. What was I writing this book for? The ostensible reason was the one proposed by my dear friend and housemate Don, in partnership with Dr Jane Goodall, the charming and still attractive (though frequently wrong-headed) English naturalist. That is, I would use the story of my life to help their campaign against the cruelties perpetrated on chimpanzees and other animals in the name of screen entertainment. Of course, I love Don and respect the eminent and attractive Dr Goodall, and will certainly do what I can to assist No Reel Apes, as the campaign is snappily known. But it seemed to me that something about this conception of Me was still blocking me off from the story I really wanted to tell.

      Returning to my text, which remained stalled at a word-count of three, I attempted to press on into the acknowledgements section, the part writers often refer to as ‘the hardest page of the book’. Or actors do, anyway. And here I had my inspiration: I was lolling in my tyre, where I do most of my best thinking, struggling with those tricky little questions of who to put in, who would have to be left out, how to make each message of gratitude sound personal and different, who ought to come first and, more importantly, last, when I realized that it was pointless trying to pick out individuals. Without Hollywood, without humanity as a whole, I wouldn’t be here to write these words. Without you I’d literally be nothing. The whole book ought be an acknowledgements section!

      This was the book I wanted to write. No matter how dark the subject, or how painful the memories, or how tough times occasionally became, no matter how appalling and oafish the behaviour of certain people, such as Esther Williams, Errol Flynn, ‘Red’ Skelton, ‘Duke’ Wayne, Maureen O’Sullivan, Brenda Joyce, I would write without bitterness, name-calling or score-settling. I would celebrate what has been a lucky, lucky life, and try to find the good in all those tremendous characters it has been my privilege to know. This would be a book written in gratitude to and with love for your whole species, and everything you have done for animals and for me. A thank-you. A book of love.

      And having made this decision I found that the whole thing just came tumbling out. You are my reason for writing this book, all of you, and Johnny, and of course the fact I’ve learned over seventy years of survival in movies and theatre: that if your profile ever dips below a certain level in this industry, you’re as good as dead.

      Humanity, I salute you!

      Cheeta

      Palm Springs, 2008

PART 1

       1 Inimitable Rex!

      On my last day in motion pictures I found myself at the top of a monkey-puzzle tree in England, helping to settle a wager between that marvellous light comedian and wit Rex Harrison and his wife, the actress Rachel Roberts, and thinking, This is gonna look great in the obituaries, isn’t it? Fell out of a fucking tree.

      This was in ’66, during a day off from filming my supposed comeback picture, Fox’s disastrous megaflop Doctor Dolittle, with Dickie Attenborough and Rex. We were in the grounds of some stately home in the charming village of Castle Combe in County Wiltshire, some time after a heavy lunch.

      Rex was convinced that the tree would puzzle me. Rachel thought I’d be able to work it out. Arriving at the terms of the bet had not been easy. How exactly was I to demonstrate my mastery of this cryptic plant?

      ‘You ought to let it start at the top, and then it’s got an incentive to climb down,’ said Lady Combe. Servants were ordered to fetch a ladder. She was delighted at the success of her party. ‘This is exciting. Is it always so much fun with you film folk?’

      ‘Now then, Cheeta,’ said Rachel, holding a pack of cigarettes very close to my face. ‘You see these Player’s? They’ll be waiting at the bottom for you. You understand? Yummy cigarettes. Don’t you dare let me down.’

      ‘Darling, I’ve just had rather a splendid idea,’ said Rex. ‘Why don’t we forget the money? If the monkey

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