This was posted in another unrelated thread in Cafe Society, and I wanted to run it past people here in GQ for clarification. (Emphasis mine.)
Is this really true? I did a little Googling on the topic, and found some claims to the effect, but most of them were on anti-animal cruelty sites and other PETA offshoots.
For one thing, IMDB.com shows that the name of the orangutan is Manis, not Buddha.
For another, the “Cyde died” sites I found through Google never listed the name of the orangutan as “Manis”. It was invariably “Clyde the orangutan died a few months after shooting. Etc. etc.”
Googling “Manis, orangutan, Clyde” brings up a few sites, none of which mention the orangutan’s demise.
I suspect urban legend, unless I see better information.
Some of the confusion is because apparently more than one orangutan played Clyde. Manis is credited with Every Which Way But Loose (1978), but not Any Which Way You Can (1980). This site says Manis was replaced in the sequel because he had grown too big, but did not name his successor.
The interesting thing is that all the sites that refer to Clyde as Buddha all have the same paragraph about the supposed beating, and appear to have been submitted by the same person:
I also suspect a disinformation campaign by a single animal rights activist.