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Marquis Chimps

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Garry Moore with two of the Marquis Chimps in 1959
Garry Moore with two of the Marquis Chimps in 1959
Jack Benny with the Chimps in 1963
Jack Benny with the Chimps in 1963

The Marquis Chimps were a group of trained chimpanzees that were used in variety shows and television programmes and commercials, initially in Britain and then in the United States, from the late 1940s to the 1980s. They were owned and trained by Gene Detroy (born Samuel Wood; November 15, 1909 – July 11, 1986).

History

Samuel Wood was born in Stockport, Cheshire, England, in 1909, to a family of circus performers. He left school at an early age, only learning to read and write in his teens,[1] and worked in the family act as a tightrope walker in music hall shows and carnivals in England, where he was billed as "The Vagabond of the Wire".[2] He developed the idea of working with animals, and attempted to train rhesus monkeys and baboons before buying a chimpanzee, which he named Marquis.[1] He trained Marquis to roller skate, ride a bicycle, and then a high unicycle. By the late 1940s, he had started appearing on stage with several chimpanzees, billed as Gene Detroy and the Marquis Chimps.[3]

In 1950 the Marquis Chimps appeared on the bill at the London Palladium, and visiting American entertainer Danny Kaye suggested that the troupe would be successful in the US. Detroy set up business in Las Vegas, training about twenty different chimpanzees over a thirty-year period, putting them in clothes and training them to use props. They worked principally as a cabaret show in nightclubs in Las Vegas, but became known nationally and internationally through television appearances.[4] They featured regularly on The Ed Sullivan Show, on which they made about thirty appearances, and made many appearances in television commercials for Brooke Bond tea.[2] These included commercials for Red Rose Tea in the United States, and in 1956 on ITV in Britain advertising PG Tips tea; later British advertisements used chimpanzees from Billy Smart's Circus.[1][5]

In the 1950s and early 1960s, the Marquis Chimps also appeared on other networked shows in the US, including The NBC Comedy Hour, The Jack Benny Show, and The Lucy Show.[6] They appeared in The Three Stooges' 1960 film Stop! Look! and Laugh!, and one, Marquis Jr., appeared in the Disney film Toby Tyler.[7] The troupe also featured in the 1961 US situation comedy, The Hathaways. The show aired on ABC and starred Peggy Cass and Jack Weston as suburban Los Angeles "parents" to a trio of performing chimpanzees, named Candy, Charlie, and Enoch. The show ended in 1962 after one 26-episode season.[4][6]

The Marquis Chimps continued to appear in cabaret shows in Las Vegas through the 1970s. Detroy retired in the early 1980s, and died from a heart attack in Las Vegas in 1986.[1] The troupe was taken over by trainer Dan Westfall, a nephew of Detroy, and continued to appear in shows in Las Vegas for some years, before Westfall established a primate sanctuary that also included one of the chimpanzees credited in films as Cheeta.[2]

Discover more about History related topics

Cheshire

Cheshire

Cheshire is an ancient and ceremonial county in northwest England. It is bordered by the counties of Merseyside and Greater Manchester to the north, Derbyshire to the east, and Staffordshire and Shropshire to the south, while the western boundary consists mostly of the England–Wales border with smaller sections leading into the Irish Sea via Liverpool Bay. Cheshire's county town is the cathedral city of Chester and its most populated town is Warrington, while other towns include Congleton, Crewe, Ellesmere Port, Knutsford, Macclesfield, Nantwich, Runcorn, Widnes, Wilmslow, and Winsford. The county is split into four administrative districts: the Borough of Halton, the Borough of Warrington, Cheshire West and Chester, and Cheshire East.

Music hall

Music hall

Music hall is a type of British theatrical entertainment that was popular from the early Victorian era, beginning around 1850. It faded away after 1918 as the halls rebranded their entertainment as variety. Perceptions of a distinction in Britain between bold and scandalous Music Hall and subsequent, more respectable Variety differ. Music hall involved a mixture of popular songs, comedy, speciality acts, and variety entertainment. The term is derived from a type of theatre or venue in which such entertainment took place. In North America vaudeville was in some ways analogous to British music hall, featuring rousing songs and comic acts.

Baboon

Baboon

Baboons are primates comprising the genus Papio, one of the 23 genera of Old World monkeys, in the family Cercopithecidae. There are six species of baboon: the hamadryas baboon, the Guinea baboon, the olive baboon, the yellow baboon, the Kinda baboon and the chacma baboon. Each species is native to one of six areas of Africa and the hamadryas baboon is also native to part of the Arabian Peninsula. Baboons are among the largest non-hominoid primates and have existed for at least two million years.

London Palladium

London Palladium

The London Palladium is a Grade II* West End theatre located on Argyll Street, London, in Soho. The auditorium holds 2,286 people. Hundreds of stars have played there, many with televised performances. Between 1955 and 1969 Sunday Night at the London Palladium was staged at the venue, produced for the ITV network. The show included a performance by The Beatles on 13 October 1963. One national paper's headlines in the following days coined the term "Beatlemania" to describe the increasingly hysterical interest in the band.

Danny Kaye

Danny Kaye

Danny Kaye was an American actor, comedian, singer, and dancer. His performances featured physical comedy, idiosyncratic pantomimes, and rapid-fire novelty songs.

Las Vegas

Las Vegas

Las Vegas, often known simply as Vegas, is the 25th-most populous city in the United States, the most populous city in the state of Nevada, and the county seat of Clark County. The city anchors the Las Vegas Valley metropolitan area and is the largest city within the greater Mojave Desert. Las Vegas is an internationally renowned major resort city, known primarily for its gambling, shopping, fine dining, entertainment, and nightlife. The Las Vegas Valley as a whole serves as the leading financial, commercial, and cultural center for Nevada.

Cabaret

Cabaret

Cabaret is a form of theatrical entertainment featuring music, song, dance, recitation, or drama. The performance venue might be a pub, a casino, a hotel, a restaurant, or a nightclub with a stage for performances. The audience, often dining or drinking, does not typically dance but usually sits at tables. Performances are usually introduced by a master of ceremonies or MC. The entertainment, as done by an ensemble of actors and according to its European origins, is often oriented towards adult audiences and of a clearly underground nature. In the United States, striptease, burlesque, drag shows, or a solo vocalist with a pianist, as well as the venues which offer this entertainment, are often advertised as cabarets.

Nightclub

Nightclub

A nightclub is an entertainment venue during nighttime comprising a dance floor, lightshow, and a stage for live music or a disc jockey (DJ) who plays recorded music. Nightclubs are smaller than live music venues like theaters and stadiums. Often there are few or no seats in a club.

Brooke Bond

Brooke Bond

Brooke Bond is a brand of tea owned by Ekaterra, formerly an independent tea-trading and manufacturing company in the United Kingdom, known for its PG Tips brand and its Brooke Bond tea cards.

Red Rose Tea

Red Rose Tea

Red Rose Tea is a beverage company established by Theodore Harding Estabrooks in 1894 in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada. Estabrooks began his career in trade imports and exports, and soon moved specifically to the tea trade. Realizing the inconsistency in loose leaf servings, Estabrooks began packaging his tea leaves into single-serving bags to ensure quality and consistency in every teacup.

ITV (TV network)

ITV (TV network)

ITV is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network. It was launched in 1955 as Independent Television to provide competition to BBC Television. ITV is the oldest commercial network in the UK. Since the passing of the Broadcasting Act 1990, it has been legally known as Channel 3 to distinguish it from the other analogue channels at the time: BBC One, BBC Two, and Channel 4.

PG Tips

PG Tips

PG Tips is a brand of tea in the United Kingdom manufactured by Ekaterra.

Source: "Marquis Chimps", Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, (2023, March 14th), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marquis_Chimps.

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References
  1. ^ a b c d "David Wood: Monkeying around", Island Life, 1 August 2015. Retrieved 13 November 2020
  2. ^ a b c "Swingin' with the Red Rose Tea Chimps", Detroit Kids Show. Retrieved 13 November 2020
  3. ^ Richard Anthony Baker, Old Time Variety: an illustrated history, Pen & Sword, 2011, ISBN 978-1-78340-066-9, p.77
  4. ^ a b Ken Beck and Jim Clark, The Encyclopedia of TV Pets: A Complete History of Television's Greatest Animal Stars, Thomas Nelson, 30 Mar 2002, pp.
  5. ^ Lee Towersey, "Introduction to Brooke Bond", Brooke Bond Collectables. Retrieved 13 November 2020
  6. ^ a b "The Marquis Chimps", TV.com. Retrieved 13 November 2020
  7. ^ Andrew Carrieri, "Movie Review: Toby Tyler", The Mouse for Less, July 25, 2017. Retrieved 13 November 2020
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