rehab units. I was touched to see how delighted the longshoremen along the pier were at the sight of the rescued animals, crowding around the shelters, offering bits of food and cigarettes, calling and waving. If not quite on the same scale as, say, Gloria Swanson’s reception on her return from Paris, with crowds strewing gardenias and roses in the path of America’s Sweetheart (while she secretly nursed a near-suicidal guilt over the child she’d just aborted in order to stay on top),
Forest Lawn
nonetheless received a welcome that, I think, would have satisfied even my old friend the great MGM publicist Howard Strickling. It was a very moving moment, and confirmed everything I’d suspected about humans—they were the happiest damn things I’d ever seen in my life. And they
loved
animals.
“Sonofabitch, this goddamn Depression,” Mr. Gentry muttered inexplicably, as the longshoremen maneuvered the shelters around. Christ, I thought, if they’re like this when they’re
depressed
… “Soon as Earl gets this lot sent off to Trefflich’s you know what I’m gonna do, DiMarco?”
“You’re gonna quit with the poisonous snakes.”
“I might do that. And I might take a walk down to the corner of Fulton and Church where I hear a little place called the White Rose Tavern has opened for business. And I suggest we make a Noble Experiment on our first legal drinks in the United States of America.”
“We takin’ the Cheater, boss?”
“The Cheater of Death? Sure we are. Gentlemen, I propose we embark on a little stroll.”
Which was what Julius, DiMarco, Mr. Gentry and I did. Now, I don’t know whether or not April 1933 was some sort of an economic peak in American history—I’m an entertainer, not a historian, never claimed to be one—but it seemed to me like you humans must have been going through a quite mind-boggling period of success. Over the course of that first awestruck walk I saw lines of men and women patiently attending huge vats of steaming soup, not shoving or fighting for it as we’d have done, but respectfully observing a hierarchy that extended back down the street for hundreds upon hundreds of humans. They also had a miraculous system of circular receptacles on the trails beside the streets, into which humans would toss scraps of food for other humans to discover and relish. Even in the gutters there could be found pieces of exotic fruits, which I saw several humans scoop up and savor! New York wasn’t, good grief, a “jungle,” as it’s so often described—the forest, now
that
was a jungle, with its everyday infanticide and cannibalism. There were no leopards, no snakes here, “Nothing to fear but fear itself!” was the boast I would keep hearing. And I thought I began to understand why
Forest Lawn
had been refused entry to America while the death-snake was still at large. This land was a haven dedicated to freedom from Death. The whole damn place was a rehabilitation center!
Any remaining anxieties I might have been harboring about being separated from the other chimps were overwhelmed by the storm of sense-impressions of Lower Manhattan, and the bewildering fact that every second person on the street seemed to
know my name:
“Hey, Cheeta!,” “Where’s Tarzan, bud?,” “You’re in the wrong jungle, Cheeta!” Either that or they called out, “Kong! Hey, Kong! You takin’ that thing up the Empire State, mister?” It was acase of mistaken identity, perhaps. Perhaps I’d somehow been here before. I mean,
what was going on?
My head swam with it all—the humans crowding around smiling at me and shaking my hand, the stacked towers of shelters that hinted at the promise of unimaginable fruits should you clamber to their crowns, the glossy black shelters on wheels that sped by and kept the humans penned in on the “sidewalks…”
It was a sort of prophecy in a way, my unforgettable procession down the sidewalks of Manhattan seventy-odd years ago, shaking hands and
Forest Lawn
nonetheless received a welcome that, I think, would have satisfied even my old friend the great MGM publicist Howard Strickling. It was a very moving moment, and confirmed everything I’d suspected about humans—they were the happiest damn things I’d ever seen in my life. And they
loved
animals.
“Sonofabitch, this goddamn Depression,” Mr. Gentry muttered inexplicably, as the longshoremen maneuvered the shelters around. Christ, I thought, if they’re like this when they’re
depressed
… “Soon as Earl gets this lot sent off to Trefflich’s you know what I’m gonna do, DiMarco?”
“You’re gonna quit with the poisonous snakes.”
“I might do that. And I might take a walk down to the corner of Fulton and Church where I hear a little place called the White Rose Tavern has opened for business. And I suggest we make a Noble Experiment on our first legal drinks in the United States of America.”
“We takin’ the Cheater, boss?”
“The Cheater of Death? Sure we are. Gentlemen, I propose we embark on a little stroll.”
Which was what Julius, DiMarco, Mr. Gentry and I did. Now, I don’t know whether or not April 1933 was some sort of an economic peak in American history—I’m an entertainer, not a historian, never claimed to be one—but it seemed to me like you humans must have been going through a quite mind-boggling period of success. Over the course of that first awestruck walk I saw lines of men and women patiently attending huge vats of steaming soup, not shoving or fighting for it as we’d have done, but respectfully observing a hierarchy that extended back down the street for hundreds upon hundreds of humans. They also had a miraculous system of circular receptacles on the trails beside the streets, into which humans would toss scraps of food for other humans to discover and relish. Even in the gutters there could be found pieces of exotic fruits, which I saw several humans scoop up and savor! New York wasn’t, good grief, a “jungle,” as it’s so often described—the forest, now
that
was a jungle, with its everyday infanticide and cannibalism. There were no leopards, no snakes here, “Nothing to fear but fear itself!” was the boast I would keep hearing. And I thought I began to understand why
Forest Lawn
had been refused entry to America while the death-snake was still at large. This land was a haven dedicated to freedom from Death. The whole damn place was a rehabilitation center!
Any remaining anxieties I might have been harboring about being separated from the other chimps were overwhelmed by the storm of sense-impressions of Lower Manhattan, and the bewildering fact that every second person on the street seemed to
know my name:
“Hey, Cheeta!,” “Where’s Tarzan, bud?,” “You’re in the wrong jungle, Cheeta!” Either that or they called out, “Kong! Hey, Kong! You takin’ that thing up the Empire State, mister?” It was acase of mistaken identity, perhaps. Perhaps I’d somehow been here before. I mean,
what was going on?
My head swam with it all—the humans crowding around smiling at me and shaking my hand, the stacked towers of shelters that hinted at the promise of unimaginable fruits should you clamber to their crowns, the glossy black shelters on wheels that sped by and kept the humans penned in on the “sidewalks…”
It was a sort of prophecy in a way, my unforgettable procession down the sidewalks of Manhattan seventy-odd years ago, shaking hands and
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