While humans have been going to the cinema since its invention in the early part of this century, it is a little known fact that apes have been attending even longer. Indeed, it is now thought that for as much as fifty years prior to the invention of the medium, chimps, baboons, and other monkeys were stealthily filing into theatres, buying popcorn, and waiting for the movie to start. Needless to say, they were often disappointed.
The oral tradition of turn-of-the-century vaudevillians is replete with accounts of irate, movie-loving monkeys, howling and exposing themselves to performers and audience alike. Myrtle Mandelbaum, who with her sisters Fanny and Magda, toured theatres throughout North America with their famous "just glad to see me!" act, recalled it this way:
"We were in Cleveland at the old Orpheum, Fanny had just killed with her, 'Is that a brisket in your pocket?' line when out of nowhere this monkey jumps on stage, screaming like an air raid siren. We didn't know what to do, Big Mike was trying to grab the monkey with his hook from off stage and Magda was trying to ignore him and say her line, 'Hey sailor, is that a battleship in your pocket?' but the monkey kept doing things to her leg, you know? Anyway, that was the first time we had trouble with the apes, but it sure as pete wasn't the last. There was an orangutan in Hoboken, a bunch of spider monkeys out in St. Louis, and a couple of gorillas in Baltimore who must have been drunk. It was no picnic back then, let me tell you."
The experience of the Mandelbaum sisters was by no means unique. One notorious evening at the Palladium in New York, Little Tom and the Thumbs were pelted to near unconsciousness by fecal matter thrown by over a dozen rhesus monkeys. The "Rhesus Pieces" incident as it came to be known, led to the 1911 crackdown on sales of tickets to monkeys. It should be noted that Little Tom maintained until his death in 1958 that the feces were actually thrown by Diminutive Dan, leader of a rival midget act, and that the rhesus monkeys were framed.
Although technically banned from all theatres after 1911, monkeys continued to disrupt vaudeville acts, broadway plays, and even the occasional opera performance until the advent of the silent movie.
CHAPTER 2 - "Roll 'em!"
It was with an almost audible sigh of relief that the theatre going public greeted the invention of the motion picture. It was generally thought that the monkeys, who had for fifty years expressed their impatience at the lack of films in wholly inappropriate monkey ways, would now be content that the medium had finally caught up to their expectations. The public was to be sorely disappointed yet again.
Monkeys, it soon became obvious, did not even like movies. Love stories held no appeal for them, Westerns never seemed to amuse beyond the first few gun shots, and comedies were never thought to have enough banana jokes by the simians in attendance. Frankly, the monkeys just didn't get it. This did not seem to dissuade the vast majority of monkeys from continuing to patronize the movies and over indulging in popcorn, milk duds and other refreshments, often to the point of being noisily sick. By the late 1920's this had become something of a fad, with monkeys, particularly baboons, going to the pictures with the expressed intention of sitting in the balcony, packing down as much soda and candy as they could, and then spewing on the audience below. Audience numbers, not unexpectedly, started to decline and movie palaces were having more and more difficultly finding organ players to accompany the films, as the accompanist was often the preferred target of much monkey sick. Indeed it was this, rather than the advent of the "talkie", that truly spelled the end of silent films. Once again, we have the monkeys to blame.
CHAPTER 3 - "Solitaire: The film that never was."
It was within a few years of the advent of the talking motion picture that the Solitaire delusion first made its appearance. Some claim it was a chimp veteran of the Great War who had been gassed repeatedly, (and surprisingly at his own request), who first saw the Solitaire game. Others maintain the delusion had its origin in a pair of mandrils who chanced to see Laurel & Hardy naked at a bath house on Second Avenue. Whatever its beginnings, there can be no doubt that the delusion spread quickly throughout the entire primate community.
Monkeys, always avid film goers, began to pack movie houses beyond capacity. They universally claimed to be watching a game of solitaire on the screen, no matter what film the theatre was actually showing. Numerous attempts were made in the early days of the Delusion to convince the monkeys that they were in fact nuts, but of course convincing a monkey without a large stick is an exercise in futility. They persisted in screaming out seeming non-sequitors like “Red Nine on Black Ten! Yes!” during the most tender love scenes and generally making themselves intolerable. The sole exception ever documented to the Solitaire Delusion was the 1952 film “Burning Monkey Solitaire” by the Austrian director Droppa Mapantz. Mapantz, with the intention of catering to this monkey insanity, filmed an actual game of solitaire. Unfortunately for Mapantz and his investors, the monkeys who saw the film were convinced they were watching a Jeff Chandler movie, demanded their money back, and left.
CHAPTER 4 - "The Final Reel"
By the late 1950’s monkeys had been disturbing audiences for over four generations and the public had had enough. Irate audiences waged a lobbying campaign for congress to take action against the “Hairy Menace” and in 1958 they did just that. Congressman Jared Smith, (R-Connecticut), came up with a plan to encourage the primates long standing fascination with head wound research. Financing was pushed through the appropriations committee and The Center For Blunt Trauma was founded outside of Bethesda. The Center was an immediate success. Monkey audience numbers started to decline immediately as gibbons, orangutans, chimps and howlers all made their way to Bethesda to be bonked on the head. The golden age of monkeys at the movies had finally ended.
