The Last Chimpanzee

A documentary about the last working days of the only Hollywood Chimpanzee Actor, and his retirement transition to the sanctuary system. 

The legacy of Hollywood’s Great Apes has come to a definitive close, yet the end of a nearly eighty-year era in film and television, print and media did not finish to great fanfare, but rather a quiet exit out the backstage door of Hollywood. 

This feature-length documentary follows the final working days of the last working Chimpanzee in Hollywood. Chimpanzees have been a feature of compelling entertainment in as early as the 1930s, when the iconic character of Cheeta first took to the screen in Johnny Weismuller's Tarzan the Ape Man.  Since then, Chimps have been featured in hundreds of hours of film and television.  This legacy ends with Eli, who along with his trainers, travel across the country to perform his final job as an astronaut chimp in the Bollywood feature film, ZERO.