One of the most subversively brilliant TV shows was the children's program "Lancelot Link/Secret Chimp," in which costumed chimps were put through their paces in skits whose plot lines they would hijack to hilarious effect, forcing the voice-over actors to improvise dialogue. In tune with everything else going on - the flourishing of alternative lifestyles, the return to nature, the quest for authenticity - popular culture was filled with lovable primates, from Ronald Reagan's Bonzo to Clint Eastwood's "Every Which Way but Loose" orangutan and countless sitcom monkeys in between - adorable comic relievers who mocked the absurdity of the human condition. Southern California in the 1960s and '70s was a place where it was perhaps not beyond the pale to welcome a chimpanzee into your family. Maybe I was one of the select blessed few." She adds: "I don't know if you could do this today. As news of the incident rocketed around the world, Davis fears some people may have come to assume that the chimp who mauled her hand and attacked her husband with such a frenzy that he remains in critical condition two months later, struggling for his life, his face forever disfigured - was Moe. "You couldn't turn it off," all that charm, all that love.Īs Davis tells her story in the sleek conference room of a Los Angeles attorney's office, she gingerly moves her left hand, swaddled in the cotton gauze and tape that protect what remains of her thumb, a reminder that this train of sweet memories and funny stories is not going to end well.įor Davis is here to talk about a terrible thing that happened to her, an event so traumatic, so bitterly ironic, she would be forgiven for not wishing to talk about it at all. "He would reach his hands out and put them around your neck," says Davis, a sun-creased blonde of 64. This wasn't just any chimp, they explain patiently.
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