COBBY is a personal documentary that explores animal rights and popular culture, as it excavates a long forgotten tv show called Cobby's Hobbies, a children’s series made in Kansas City in the 60s that featured celebrity chimpanzee Cobby, who became the catalyst for the film. Australian filmmaker Donna McRae was fascinated by the show as child and explores her own personal obsession with COBBY - the chimp himself and the TV show. Interviewed are the people that made the show, zoo friends, zoo keepers and animal rights activists that piece together a story of an animal that was stolen from his natural habitat to work on TV before being retired into the San Francisco zoo at age 7. Cobby had it lucky - most chimps in entertainment suffered horrifically, becoming research animals or caged in roadside zoos. The film examines the truths behind the world of animals trained to work in showbiz, and the changing attitudes to the treatment of animals in entertainment over the last fifty years. 50 years later Donna travels to the US to meet her childhood obsession, still alive in a San Francisco zoo.
