Joe Martin (born circa 1910 – died after 1931) was a captive orangutan who appeared in at least 50 American films of the silent era, including approximately 20 comedy shorts, several serials, two Tarzan movies, Rex Ingram's melodrama Black Orchid and its remake Trifling Women, the Max Linder feature comedy Seven Years Bad Luck, and the Irving Thalberg-produced Merry-Go-Round.
Joe Martin was human-acculturated and was characterized as human-like during his life. Upon entering adolescence, Joe Martin began to physically attack humans and other animals, including studio staff, director Al Santell, his trainers, and actors including Dorothy Phillips and Edward Connelly. At least three of these cases were apparent defenses of a woman, child, or animal. He staged major zoo escapes at least twice, once releasing the wolves and the elephant on the way out, and, separately, while evading recapture, relieving a police officer of his gun.
In 1924, Universal Pictures deemed Joe Martin too dangerous to work in film and sold him to the Al G. Barnes Circus, where he remained until approximately 1931. Although the circumstances of his death are unknown, Joe Martin had a long lifespan for a captive orangutan of his era.
Background
Prior to 1924, there were no legal prohibitions against killing, capturing, or selling orangutans. In the 19th and early 20th century, selling orangutans was profitable for an elaborate network of hunters, middlemen, and dealers. Orangutan hunting and trapping has been illegal in Indonesia since 1931, but trading remained widespread until the mid-20th century and provincial hunting and trading persists in the 21st century.
According to zoologists, captive orangutan survival rates were dismal and lifespans short. Death rates were high in part because members of the Pongo genus are highly susceptible to human-transmitted respiratory infections. An estimated 60 percent of trafficked orangutans died in passage, and the majority of the survivors died within their first year in overseas captivity. In the first decades of the 20th century, it was uncommon for orangutans to survive more than 18 months in captivity. Prior to the 1920s, the longest an orangutan had ever survived in captivity was six years; the mean lifespan for all captive orangutans was three-and-a-half years.
In the United States, exotic animal dealers provided a steady supply of captured wild animals in response to a robust demand from wealthy private collectors, traveling circuses, roadside zoos, vaudeville shows, and the burgeoning international film industry. As one historical review of stunt performers and lion tamers described it, "Filmmakers were drawn to wild animals as a practical means of creating cinematic spectacle."
In the early years of the 20th century, and as the film industry moved west to Los Angeles, the city simultaneously became "the national center for wild animals and their trainers". Joe Martin likely spent most of his life in two Los Angeles settlements—Universal City and Barnes City—that were established specifically to sell spectacle.
Biography Transoceanic shipment and first owners
Various contemporaneous news stories suggested he was born between 1912 and 1914, and several, but not all, say he came from Borneo, homeland of the Bornean orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus). Research into the history of primate trafficking has found that "while the orangutan was most closely associated with the island of Borneo, by the early 1900s a majority of orangutans on the global market were captured in, and exported from, northern Sumatra." Sumatra is the homeland of the surviving populations of Sumatran orangutans (Pongo abelii) and Tapanuli orangutans (Pongo tapanuliensis).
Joe Martin's primary trainer told several reporters that Joe Martin could have been as young as five or six months old when he arrived. As with all primates, the mother-child dyad is foundational to infant survival, and young orangutans are heavily dependent on maternal care until at least age eight, "thus obtaining infants requires mothers to be killed in nearly all instances".
According to Camera! and the San Antonio Express, Joe Martin first arrived to the United States in 1911 in San Francisco via Singapore in "aconsignment of animals" to the animal dealer Robison of San Francisco. Robison then sold Joe Martin for to a Los Angeles insurance company owner named Sam Behrendt. Behrendt put Joe Martin in an exhibit at Venice Pier called The Missing Link, where he was under the care of animal trainer "Pop" Saunders. Saunders had "trained hundreds of animals for the circus arena and for the movies." (Journalist Emma-Lindsay Squier referred to Martin's first American trainer as Red Gallagher, though that was likely a pseudonym for Saunders.)
After a fire at the pier, Saunders relocated with Joe Martin to Universal's "Old Ranch". At that time, Universal was leasing several animals from the Sells Floto Circus for a film, and someone suggested including an orangutan. Charles B. Murphy is said to have prepared Joe Martin for his first picture, a one-reel comedy directed by Allen Turner, after which Universal bought Joe Martin from Behrendt for an undisclosed sum. A third source, the posthumously published memoir of circus operator Alpheus George Barnes Stonehouse, states, "Joe Martin, the famous orang-utan movie star, was bought by my brother Jerry M. Barnes for the Universal Motion Picture Company. My brother started training him for the movies and his training was finished by Mr. Murphy, who worked for the Universal."
1915–1917: Breakout film and early work
With few exceptions, Joe Martin's short comedies are all believed to be lost films. As such, most of Joe Martin's film work, like many silent films, is known to film historians only through marketing materials, production stills, and media mentions. A portion of the Universal lot in the San Fernando Valley housed a wide array of performing animals; many silent-era animal scenes were shot in a central area of the Universal City Zoo called the arena. Joe Martin's breakout role was a two-reel short called Joe Martin Turns 'Em Loose "produced at the famous Universal City Zoo" and released in 1915. In the film, Martin opens the animal cages at a local circus, sending a stampede after bystanding humans. Prior to the success of this film, Joe Martin was known as "Chimpanzee Charlie".
Around 1915, an animal trainer named Curley Stecker began taking care of Joe Martin. Curley is sometimes credited with "discovering" Joe Martin; they worked as a team for the next eight years. Stecker's family would sometimes appear alongside Joe Martin in films. The Stecker family rented a house across the road from the studio zoo, the zoo having been created in part as a "point of interest" at Universal City. The keepers were responsible for introducing the animals to visiting dignitaries; one such visit was made by Bishop Hanna of San Francisco in 1915. Later, one of Joe Martin's directors wrote of the visit: "A famous old prelate came out to Universal City to see Joe. Joe listened while the old gentleman commented on the wonders of nature. 'You wouldn't catch a monkey taking a drink of vile liquor,' he observed. Joe reached in the hip pocket of his little pantaloons and came out with a pint of liquor, which he offered to the bishop with fine courtesy."
In the first three years of his career, Joe Martin appeared in at least 20 films, including Rex Ingram's vampy feature melodrama Black Orchids. (Five years later, Joe Martin later played the same part in the retitled remake Trifling Women, which turned out to be one of his last on-screen credits.) According Universal's in-house magazine Moving Picture Weekly, Joe Martin may have costarred with Wallace Beery in one or more shorts called The Janitor, directed by Beery and released in 1916. The article about Beery's films noted that Joe Martin was "absolutely devoted" to zoo superintendent Rex De Rosselli and never let De Rosselli pass by without a hug; Joe Martin was not as affectionate with Beery. A news item about a Joe Martin one-reel directed by De Rosselli noted, "The simian seems to understand what his director tells him, and he is doing some wonderful work."
A 1916 magazine feature on "Making Pictures in California" reported of the recently opened Universal zoo: "Here we find Joe, the chimpanzee, who sleeps in a regular brass bed, uses a toothpick after meals, etc." Joe Martin was taught to wear clothes and given a weekly shave, and seemed to enjoy the latter, although if the razor was dull, he was known to throw things at the barber. On the occasions when he was allowed to roam the lot and was thirsty, he knew to put his thumb over the faucet spigot to direct the stream of water into his mouth. Joe Martin reportedly attempted to escape the Universal lot in the summer of 1917, but his child costar Lena Baskette lured him back to his enclosure. Meanwhile, human-interest blurbs about Joe Martin were being placed in regional newspapers: "Joe recently received a letter...reading as follows: 'Dear Joe Martin: I wish you would send me your picture. My papa says you are only a monkey, but I think you are an actor."
1918: Night-watchman incident
Joe Martin worked with child actors frequently, including in the 1918 film Man and Beast, where his child costar was likely Curley Stecker's two-year-old son.
In late 1918, Universal security guard Thomas G. Cockings made the first public allegation that Joe Martin had assaulted a human in a lawsuit. Cockings claimed that Joe Martin had bitten him 40 times on the legs. The studio claimed at the Superior Court hearing that Joe Martin was "lovable," sharing photos of him walking with and embracing women, holding a baby, and wearing a flu mask, while one witness for the company testified that Joe Martin had hugged and kissed him at their first meeting. The outcome of the case was not publicized, but in 1920 actor-director Al Santell told Photoplay, "There was a night watchman at the menagerie for a while who always carried a bottle with him on his rounds and now and then he'd give Joe a drink. But one night when he was three sheets to the wind he put red pepper in the whisky and oh boy! Joe nearly went crazy trying to get at the man...But he never hurts a woman or a child. When we use babies in the animal comedies they are absolutely safe with him."
1919: Escapes and Al Santell incident Business-wise, in 1919, when other film companies wanted to use him, Joe Martin's rental rate was said to be a day. Universal thought he was worth to . In his personal life, he had the frequent company of a small monkey called Skipper, and was said to "get along alright" with children, kittens, and lion cubs. An advertisement in a Canadian newspaper for Universal's two-reeler Jazz Monkey included a humorous essay about Joe Martin's diet which stated that Joe Martin consumed a vegetarian diet of carrots, turnips, onions, corn on the ears, alligator pears, "root beer, ice-cream soda, coco-cola, or malted milk, to any extent a friend is able to buy," and "tobacco in moderation, preferring the smokeless variety." A later report said that Joe Martin's diet usually consisted of vegetables and a mixture of malted milk and warm water, sometimes supplemented with eggs "to give it more body and flavor." Sunday was a day of fasting for the zoo, followed by a richer meal than usual on Monday morning.
In June, Universal bought a full-page ad in Wid's Filmdom for an open letter to the industry. The letter, signed by Universal's founding mogul, Carl Laemmle, called Joe Martin "the only guaranteed star on the screen" and stated: