That monkey…

So you know how it goes, you are watching a movie for the umpteenth time and suddenly it strikes you that you have seen a bit part actor before, and recently at that. This time though, I was watching Harold Lloyd in The Kid Brother (1927) having just seen Keaton’s The Cameraman (1928) a day or two earlier, when I was struck by the similar appearance of the monkey in the two movies. In both cases the creature was wearing a sailor suit, and that certainly helped the recognition process. But were they really the same monkey?

An uncredited monkey in Lloyd’s The Kid Brother (1927) often called “Josephine”, but called “Jocko” by IMDB.

Uncredited monkey firing a Maxim gun in The Cameraman (1928). Look familiar?

According to IMDB, The Kid Brother featured a monkey called Jocko in an uncredited role. He, Jocko, sometimes given the full title, “Jocko the Monkey” was properly credited in several other films of the period, including Flat Broke (1920), Tight Shoes (1923), Travellin’ On (1922), The Lost World (1925). He was apparently a frequent sight on the MGM lot. Other sources have preferred to call the little show-stealer of The Kid Brother, Josephine. That name has certainly been attached to the co-star of The Cameraman, and so today, they are generally regarded as one and the same, and not two monkeys in similar-looking suits. An article from Picture Play magazine from February 1929 confirms this, but refers to this animal as “Chicago”. I guess it is not such a jump from “Chicago” to the abbreviated corruption “Jocko”. But how did we get to “Josephine”? And what sex was this monkey?

Certainly there was more than one monkey working in the film industry at the time, as Chaplin used several in The Circus, released in 1928 (see below). It is believed that Keaton included Josephine in The Cameraman as a tribute to Chaplin. The fact that a monkey called Josephine existed, and had a thriving and long career in Hollywood, is not in doubt. Below she is seen celebrating her 35^th birthday on the set of Arabian Nights in 1942. So Josephine seems to have been a later name.

Chaplin with Josephine on his head in The Circus.

Jon Hall, Maria Montez, Sabu, and Josephine while filming Arabian Nights at Universal.

I can find no details on how it was that a monkey called Jocko, referred to in a contemporary source as Chicago, came to be known instead as Josephine. This is only a guess, but did Jocko finally pull off a trick that only a Josephine could. Was there the patter of tiny feet? Or did someone just look a little more closely?

If someone has any further details of Jocko, Chicago, Josephine, please let me know.

Acknowledgements

Huge thanks go to Kevin Brownlow for his comments about the monkey and a photocopy of Picture Play magazine from his archive.

 Sources

1. IMDB http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0018051/ (accessed November 3^rd 2017)
2. Paul Merton “Silent Comedy” Random House Books (2007) pp 270-1.
3. LA Daily Mirror, posted Feb 16^th, 2015
4. “The Temperamental Dumb” Ruth M. Tildsley. Picture Play Feb 1929 pp 89,90, 112. (Information and photocopy from Kevin Brownlow)
5. From the Los Angeles Public Library collection https://calisphere.org/item/8105f8612bf38a65085349e0773b2d07/ (accessed 3^rd November 2017)

[All the ideas are mine. Researched and written with help from Richard & Emma Nelson]