Cheeta the chimpanzee - who starred in Tarzan movies alongside Johnny Weissmuller in the 1930s – has died.
For many years he had been a resident at The Suncoast Primate Sanctuary in Palm Harbor, Florida, where it was announced that the iconic star of the golden age of film died on Christmas Eve of kidney failure.
According to the Sanctuary’s outrach director, Cheeta was “roughly 80 years old, loved finger-painting and football and was soothed by nondenominational Christian music.”
One of Hollywood's most famous animals, Cheeta the chimpanzee starred in the Tarzan movies of the early 1930s alongside Johnny Weissmuller and Maureen O'Sullivan, who played Tarzan and Jane.
He outlived both of his co-stars as Weissmuller died in 1984 aged 79, while O'Sullivan was 87 when she passed away in 1998.
