Q: Was there more than one Willie B. at Zoo Atlanta?
A: Let's not monkey around with this one.
The famous silverback gorilla, who died on this date in 2000, arrived at what was then known as Grant Park Zoo in 1961.
He was named for Atlanta Mayor William B. Hartsfield and quickly became a popular attraction and media darling.
Life was lonely for Willie B.
He spent 27 years in a large glass-and-bars cage with only a television set and a tire swing for entertainment, but in 1988 the zoo created an outdoor gorilla habitat, where Willie B. was introduced to female gorillas.
Buckhead apparently wasn’t Atlanta’s only singles scene in those days.
Willie B. initially hit it off with Kinyani and later made a love connection with Choomba, who gave birth to his first child, a female named Kudzoo.
Willie B. went on to father three more daughters — Olympia, Sukari and Lulu — and a son named Kidogo.
As Willie B.’s only male child, Kidogo eventually became known as Willie B. Jr. and still resides at Zoo Atlanta, which has grown to have one of the country’s largest gorilla populations.
Q: What year did “The Sound of Music” play in Atlanta, and at which theater?
—Frank Burnette, Decatur
A: This one isn't as easy as it sounds.
“The Sound of Music” played at theaters all around town, beginning with its release in 1965, but one in particular made the movie one of its favorite things.
The Martin Cinerama, which was at 583 Peachtree St., had several other names during its time – Erlanger, Atlanta, Tower and Columbia – and showed “The Sound of Music” for nearly two years.
“It opened March 24, 1965, and ran for 90 weeks, ending just before Christmas 1966,” Stan Malone, an Atlanta movie theater historian, told me in an email.
There’s no word if they changed the lyrics of “Sixteen Going on Seventeen” to “Eighteen Going on Nineteen” by the end of that run.
Don’t try to find the Martin Cinerama.
It was demolished in 1995, Malone wrote on Cinematreasures.org, and became a parking lot.
The “Sound of Music” continued to be shown around Atlanta until 1969.
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