'Newsreels gave way to cartoon rabbits, theatre announcements and featured pictures, the ticker of the projector lighting the way through an empty sky. And there was Siggy, scene after scene, riding elephants and running from lions, laughing and jumping and swinging through the trees, smiling and kissing, wet lips puckered and arms open wide, his beautiful grey face filling the silver screen and dissolving into the white-hot light of the sun.
'Jozsef Kiss, amateur Hungarian physician and animal trainer, arrives in Hollywood in the summer of 1931 with his African travelling companion, an orphaned chimpanzee. That chimpanzee becomes Siggy the Wonder Chimp, Jungle Man s faithful jungle companion, and a bona fide star.
'Wonderful is the story of a movie star monkey and his hapless, drunken partner. Complete with exploding coconuts and chimpanzee antics, it follows the adventures of a man and his animal sidekick as they encounter the strange and dusty landscape of California, agents and starlets, cowboys and elephants, the Depression and fascism, and the onset of the Second World War. It is a comic and sometimes sad emigrant s tale, a story of the invention and reinvention of people and nations, of history and of dreams. Above all, it is a story of loyalty, friendship and love.' (Synopsis)
