(Some Spoilers) Trying to prove that environment and parenting is the key to what we become in life Sheridan Collage psychology professor Peter Boyd, Ronald Reagan, takes on a Herculean task in showing that the cute but somewhat neurotic chimp Bonzo can be straightened out in a good and loving home.
Not having any male or female chimps around to adopt Bonzo Prof. Boyd decides to act as Bonzo's dad and hires 23 year-old baby-sitter Jane Linden, Diana Lynn, as the chimps surrogate mom. Prof. Boyd has himself beaten the odds by becoming an upstanding citizen and collage professor despite his dad being the legendary con artist "Silky" Boyd who spent the last twenty years of his life behind bars. To Prof. Boyd Bonzo getting over his anxieties with his and Jane's guidance would be a lead pipe cinch but it just didn't turn out the way that he expected.
Together with his friend at the collage Prof. Neumann, Walter Slezak, Boyd secretly gets Bonzo to stay with him at his home but his animal instincts are far more stronger then both professors ever expected. Tearing the place apart Bonzo just does what he wants until Jane's understanding and nurturing of the wild and uncontrollable primate gets him to act about as human and responsible as most of us.
While all this is happening Boyd's engagement to the head of Sheridan Collage Dean Tillinghast, Herbert Hayes, daughter Valerie, Lucille Barkley, goes downhill with her suspecting that he's involved with another woman. Boyd's spends so much time with Bonzo that he neglects Valerie to the point where she comes over to his home and finds Bonzo's governess a 23 year old blond not an elderly farm girl, or woman, who raised five children that her soon to be fiancée Boyd told her.
As you would expect Bonzo saves the day and Peter Boyd from serving a stretch in the pen for jewel robbery by both taking a diamond necklace and then returning it showing the police that Boyd, who had the jewels on him, wasn't the culprit. Bonzo of course had no idea that he committed a crime by breaking into the Dewitt Jewelry Store and taking the necklace thinking that it was as innocent an act as picking a stack of bananas off a banana tree. It was in fact Jane who taught Bonzo not to take what's not his and she, after running out of Boyd, came back to get Bonzo to prove Boyds innocence by returning the necklace to it's proper owner.
Everything turns out all right at the end of the movie with Bonzo not only getting Peter Boyd off the hook but also being saved from ending up as an animal experiment at Yale University where Dean Tillinghast had him slated to be shipped. Peter Boyd also was saved from marrying the very stuck up Valerie, who saw that she wasn't right for him, and ending up heading to the altar with his new and true love Jane Linen.
Ronald Reagan took a lot of flack about his acting in the movie were he played a second banana to the lovable and mischievous chimp Bonzo. Reagan was in fact as good as any actor could have been under the circumstances and came across both funny and dramatic in all the scenes that he was in. Chimps like Bonzo are notorious scene stealer's and have a reputation of making their human co-stars look second rate which is why so many top actors and actresses avoid doing movies with them. You'll never see an actor of the caliber of a Laurence Olivier John Barrymore or Marlon Brando in a film with a chimp knowing that they'll, more then the chimp, not only end up looking like a monkeys uncle but be made to look more like a monkey by the monkey that their co-staring with.
Not having any male or female chimps around to adopt Bonzo Prof. Boyd decides to act as Bonzo's dad and hires 23 year-old baby-sitter Jane Linden, Diana Lynn, as the chimps surrogate mom. Prof. Boyd has himself beaten the odds by becoming an upstanding citizen and collage professor despite his dad being the legendary con artist "Silky" Boyd who spent the last twenty years of his life behind bars. To Prof. Boyd Bonzo getting over his anxieties with his and Jane's guidance would be a lead pipe cinch but it just didn't turn out the way that he expected.
Together with his friend at the collage Prof. Neumann, Walter Slezak, Boyd secretly gets Bonzo to stay with him at his home but his animal instincts are far more stronger then both professors ever expected. Tearing the place apart Bonzo just does what he wants until Jane's understanding and nurturing of the wild and uncontrollable primate gets him to act about as human and responsible as most of us.
While all this is happening Boyd's engagement to the head of Sheridan Collage Dean Tillinghast, Herbert Hayes, daughter Valerie, Lucille Barkley, goes downhill with her suspecting that he's involved with another woman. Boyd's spends so much time with Bonzo that he neglects Valerie to the point where she comes over to his home and finds Bonzo's governess a 23 year old blond not an elderly farm girl, or woman, who raised five children that her soon to be fiancée Boyd told her.
As you would expect Bonzo saves the day and Peter Boyd from serving a stretch in the pen for jewel robbery by both taking a diamond necklace and then returning it showing the police that Boyd, who had the jewels on him, wasn't the culprit. Bonzo of course had no idea that he committed a crime by breaking into the Dewitt Jewelry Store and taking the necklace thinking that it was as innocent an act as picking a stack of bananas off a banana tree. It was in fact Jane who taught Bonzo not to take what's not his and she, after running out of Boyd, came back to get Bonzo to prove Boyds innocence by returning the necklace to it's proper owner.
Everything turns out all right at the end of the movie with Bonzo not only getting Peter Boyd off the hook but also being saved from ending up as an animal experiment at Yale University where Dean Tillinghast had him slated to be shipped. Peter Boyd also was saved from marrying the very stuck up Valerie, who saw that she wasn't right for him, and ending up heading to the altar with his new and true love Jane Linen.
Ronald Reagan took a lot of flack about his acting in the movie were he played a second banana to the lovable and mischievous chimp Bonzo. Reagan was in fact as good as any actor could have been under the circumstances and came across both funny and dramatic in all the scenes that he was in. Chimps like Bonzo are notorious scene stealer's and have a reputation of making their human co-stars look second rate which is why so many top actors and actresses avoid doing movies with them. You'll never see an actor of the caliber of a Laurence Olivier John Barrymore or Marlon Brando in a film with a chimp knowing that they'll, more then the chimp, not only end up looking like a monkeys uncle but be made to look more like a monkey by the monkey that their co-staring with.