Jiggs and Dorothy Lamour on set in 1936 filming Her Jungle Love (1938),
where things started happily enough, but sadly ended in tears ...
I.
In his day, Jiggs was the top chimp actor in Hollywood, starring, for example, as Cheeta alongside Johnny Weissmuller and Maureen O'Sullivan in Tarzan the Ape Man (dir. W. S. Van Dyke, 1932), as well as featuring in several later Tarzan movies (where he was sometimes cast as Nkima).
He appeared too in the hilarious Laurel and Hardy short, Dirty Work (dir. Lloyd French, 1933), where he was even given a speaking role, uttering the famous last line of the film: 'I have nothing to say.' [1]
Jiggs's was also cast (as Gaga) alongside Dorothy Lamour (as Ulah) in Her Jungle Love (dir. George Archainbaud, 1938). This was to be his final picture, for reasons we shall discuss shortly.
II.
Legend has it, that Jiggs had been brought over from Africa by Gary Cooper, but that the latter found him a bit too boisterous and so sold Jiggs to a pair of Hollywood animal trainers, who raised him alongside their pet collie, Spanky, of whom the young chimp was unusually fond - even refusing to work on set at times unless the dog, who exerted a soothing influence, was present.
Unfortunately, it seems that although present on the set of the south seas adventure movie Her Jungle Love, Spanky failed to work his calming canine magic on his simian pal ...
For whilst Jiggs and the film's female star Dorothy Lamour initially had a happy relationship - he would lovingly groom her long hair for lice and make her laugh with his monkey tricks - things soured after Jiggs attacked the young actress and she had to be rescued by an on set assistant [2]. Afterwards, Lamour vowed never to work with an animal again (dropping Jiggs in favour of going on the Road with Hope and Crosby).
That's certainly regrettable and it has left a black mark against his reputation ever since, even though Jiggs had previously shown himself capable of acts of great tenderness towards his female co-stars; one recalls, for example, the fact that on the set of Tarzan the Fearless (dir. Robert F. Hill, 1933) he carefully removed a thorn
from the hand of Jacqueline Wells after she and lead actor
Buster Crabbe had both failed to extract it.
Even more regrettable, however, is the fact that Jiggs died of pneumonia shortly before the release of Her Jungle Love in the spring of 1938; he was just 9-years-old.
Jiggs was laid to rest in the Los Angeles Pet Cemetery [3].
Notes
[1] See the post published on 27 Nov 2023 in which I discuss the idea of having nothing to say: click here.
[2] Unfortunatey, I don't know what caused this incident. As Jiggs was a sexually immature chimp, one doubts that he was overexcited by the alluring presence of Dorothy Lamour in a sarong. Readers who are interested, however, in the erotic relationship between human females and male chimpanzees, might like an earlier post published on 9 Feb 2017: click here.
[3] Lamour died in September 1996, at the age of 81. She was interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park - Hollywood Hills, in Los Angeles. Unlike Jiggs, who has no star, Lamour has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, awarded for her contribution to radio and the motion picture industry.
