The Hathaways

This is from Vicky Raab’s post on The New Yorker Book Club blog:

 

When I started “The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore,” I began to have worrisome Proustian flashbacks of being a chimp in a weird but normal family of very cute chimps in very cute outfits who lived in my house and ate coveted breakfast cereals with me—Wheat Chex, Corn Chex, and Rice Chex—who are maybe on “The Ed Sullivan Show” around the time of the Beatles?

Flash. Gnaw. Niggle….
Google.
Ah-ha!Thanks to mass connectivity, I am able to figure out fairly quickly that I’m flashing on possibly the first TV show I ever saw, a short-lived flop I never knew the name of, but, apparently, admitted entirely into my evolving consciousness, as Bruno does “Sesame Street,” peaches, Lydia, and much else. Sponsored by Ralston Purina, the show was called “The Hathaways,” and it featured the Marquis Chimps: Candy, Enoch, and Charlie (who, I think, may be Hale’s models for Hilarious Lily, Hilarious Larry, and Clever Hands).

I had never heard of that TV show before.  Like she said, it was apparently a complete flop.  I wonder why:

In fact, the model for the former chimp-actor characters she mentions was more this bullshit:

In any event, I’m strongly against the use of chimps in entertainment.  Putting them in movies psychologically fucks them up, probably even worse than it fucks up child actors, and they don’t even get trust funds they can later turn into mountains of coke and roomfuls of Jimmy Choos.