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29: A Personal Appearance
HE picture for which we cut our honeymoon short was The Mighty Barnum. Zanuck had borrowed Wally Beery from MGM for the title role, while I played Bailey, his partner. Of course, it had to be a picture with animal actors— the kind of movie I hate above all others. There were all sorts of animals in it— elephants, lions, tigers, monkeys.
The star animal was a big female chimpanzee. Whether the real Barnum actually had a big chimp for a pet I don't know, but in the picture the chimp was his constant companion. It was probably a character touch added to Barnum's life by the screen writers, who never hesitate to remake history so that it fits the Hollywood pattern.
This chimpanzee didn't seem to like the trainer who was in charge of her. She was a very sweet chimp, I guess, as chimps go, but she didn't like the fellow who was the boss man. One day she got away from him and started running around the set. The trainer fired a blank cartridge to scare her back into her cage, but instead the chimp climbed up on the scenery and swung up into the flies under the roof.
There she was, where nobody could reach her, costing Twentieth Century and Zanuck more money every minute, because we couldn't shoot without her. Finally Wally Beery went over, looked up at the animal, and began making funny noises in his throat. The chimp cocked an eye at him and down she came.
"What was that noise you made?" I asked him.
"That was monkey language," he grinned.
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