Cheeta is a chimpanzee character that appeared in numerous Hollywood Tarzan films of the 1930s–1960s, as well as the 1966–1968 television series, as the ape sidekick of the title character, Tarzan. Cheeta has usually been characterized as male, but sometimes as female, and has been portrayed by chimpanzees of both sexes.
The Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus is an American traveling circus company billed as The Greatest Show on Earth. It and its predecessor have run shows from 1871, with a hiatus from 2017 to 2023. They operate as Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey. The circus started in 1919 when the Barnum & Bailey's Greatest Show on Earth, a circus created by P. T. Barnum and James Anthony Bailey, was merged with the Ringling Bros. World's Greatest Shows. The Ringling brothers had purchased Barnum & Bailey Ltd. following Bailey's death in 1906, but ran the circuses separately until they were merged in 1919.
Toto (1931–1968) was a gorilla that was adopted and raised very much like a human child.
Tyke was a female African bush elephant from Mozambique who performed with Circus International of Honolulu, Hawaii. On August 20, 1994, during a performance at the Neal Blaisdell Center, she killed her trainer, Allen Campbell, and seriously injured her groomer, Dallas Beckwith. Tyke then ran from the arena and through the streets of the Kakaʻako central business district for more than thirty minutes. Unable to calm the elephant, local police opened fire on the animal, which collapsed from the wounds and died. While the majority of the attack in the arena was recorded on consumer videotape by several spectators, additional professional video footage captured the attack on local publicist Steve Hirano and the shooting of Tyke herself.
Guy the Gorilla (1946–1978) was a western lowland gorilla who was London Zoo's most famous resident and often profiled on children's TV shows and natural history productions. The exact day of Guy's birth was unknown, but the official birthday was set by the Zoo as May 30, and he received large numbers of cards each year.
Buddy is a 1997 American family comedy drama film written and directed by Caroline Thompson, produced by Jim Henson Pictures and American Zoetrope, and released by Columbia Pictures on June 6, 1997. It starred Rene Russo as Mrs. Gertrude "Trudy" Lintz and Robbie Coltrane as her husband.
Captive Wild Woman is a 1943 American horror film directed by Edward Dmytryk. The film stars Evelyn Ankers, John Carradine, Milburn Stone, and features Acquanetta as Paula, the Ape Woman. The film involves a scientist, Dr. Sigmund Walters, whose experiments turn a female gorilla named Cheela into a human by injecting the ape with sex hormones and via brain transplants.
Massa was a male gorilla who reached the age of 54 years. At the time, this was the oldest gorilla ever recorded, though later individuals would eventually surpass that record.
Gertrude Ada Davies Lintz was an English-American dog breeder and socialite known for keeping exotic animals, including chimpanzees and gorillas, in her Brooklyn home. Her gorilla Buddy was sold to a circus and renamed Gargantua. Her gorilla Massa was sold to the Philadelphia Zoo, eventually becoming the longest-living documented gorilla. Her 1942 memoir Animals Are My Hobby inspired the 1997 American film Buddy. Lintz was played by Rene Russo in the film.
The Ringling brothers were five American siblings who transformed their small touring company of performers into one of the largest circuses in the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Four brothers were born in McGregor, Iowa: Alfred T., Charles, John and Henry William, and the family lived in McGregor for twelve years, from 1860 until 1872. The Ringling family then moved to Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, and finally settled in Baraboo, Wisconsin, in 1875. They were of German and French descent, the children of harness maker Heinrich Friedrich August Ringling (1826–1898) of Hanover, and Marie Salome Juliar (1833–1907) of Ostheim, in Alsace. While there were seven Ringling brothers, Alfred, Charles, John, Al and Otto Ringling were the main brothers in charge of the circus shows. All of the brothers were Freemasons. In 1919, they merged their Ringling Brothers Circus with America's other leading circus troupe, Barnum and Bailey, ultimately creating the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, which operated for 98 years, until 2017.
Charlie Chan at the Circus is the 11th film produced by Fox starring Warner Oland as Charlie Chan. A seemingly harmless family outing drags a vacationing Chan into a murder investigation.
Where East Is East is a 1929 American silent drama film starring Lon Chaney as an animal trapper in Laos. The motion picture is Chaney's penultimate silent film and the last of his collaborations with director Tod Browning. While this film is essentially a silent film in form, with intertitles and no spoken dialogue, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer released it with a Movietone soundtrack of effects and music.
John Ringling North was the president and director of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus from 1937 to 1943 and again from 1947 to 1967.
Al G. Barnes Circus was an American circus run by Alpheus George Barnes Stonehouse that operated from 1898 to 1938.
Patrick Walshe was an American dwarf character actor and circus performer who specialized in impersonating and portraying animals. He is best known for playing Nikko, the head of the Winged Monkeys in the MGM film The Wizard of Oz (1939). He appeared in only a few films, as most of his work was in theater, vaudeville and circus. Throughout his vaudeville career, he was a frequent collaborator of Lew Fields and Joe Cook.
Samson (1949–1981) was a male silverback western lowland gorilla given to the Washington Park Zoo in Milwaukee Wisconsin by the Pabst Brewing Company. Samson reached a weight of 652 lb (296 kg) and lived alone in a glass enclosure. He often hit the windows in frustration and managed to break the glass four times. He was moved to the Milwaukee County Zoo in 1959, and quickly became the main attraction. Samson was one of the largest gorillas in captivity.
John Daniel (1917–1922) was a lowland gorilla who was raised among humans in Uley, England.
Joe Martin was a captive orangutan who appeared in at least 50 American films of the silent era, including approximately 20 comedy shorts, several serials, two Tarzan movies, Rex Ingram's melodrama Black Orchid and its remake Trifling Women, the Max Linder feature comedy Seven Years Bad Luck, and the Irving Thalberg-produced Merry-Go-Round.
John Daniel II, originally called Sultan, was a Western gorilla who was captured in August 1923 in the French Congo when he was about three years old. The gorilla then passed into the possession of an Englishwoman named Alyce Cunningham, who raised him as a successor to John Daniel I. He toured with Ringling Circus in America and was exhibited at the London Zoo before his death in 1926.
