FILM STARS WEEP

Wairarapa Times-Age, 25 August 1938, Page 5

FILM STARS WEEP

SPECTACULAR SENTIMENT IN HOLLYWOOD DEATH OF NINE-YEAR-OLD CHIMPANZEE. CORTEGE ONE MILE LONG. i / Glamorous film stars wept at one of Hollywood’s most spectacularly sentimental and greatly boasted funerals for years. It was Hollywood on show, doing (according to the “Daily Mirror’” correspondent) the thing in style, as only the film colony can. They were burying a chimpanzee in the “Pets’ Corner” of Hollywood Cemetery, laying him to rest in a silver-handled coffin lined with purple satin. Jiggs, whose funeral Bing Crosby, glamorous Dorothy Lamour and exGuards Officer film star, Ray Milland attended had more “It” than any other fan-mail animal star. It earned him .£2O a day, and a funeral that brought back memories of the gilded gangsterchief days. Stars earning £20,000 a year sobbed as Jiggs was buried. The committal was read from a gold-bound prayer book. Scores of stars sent wreaths and crosses and flowers costing £5 a bunch. The cortege was a mile long. Out.-of- 1 work extras lined the route, paying their last respects to one who had

made good—to the only film chimpanzee who could express, emotion. Nine-year-old Jiggs was able to laugh, cry and show rage at the command of his owner, Mrs Jacqueline Gentry, who trained him. She made him one of the family. He ate with a knife and fork at her table. He used her bathroom. His greatest delight was playing gaily with her bath shower. It was this that cost Jiggs his life. It gave his pneumonia. His owner stayed up for nights beside his bedside. until he died. Now she cannot be comforted. (Jiggs was the animal star of “Her Jungle Love” the Paramount technicolour film, which was screened recently in Masterton. He also appears in the latest Bing Crosby production, “Dr. Rhvthm.”)