Margaret Tennant

The Mouse in the Museum

It looks distinctly creepy. Separated from the rest of its costume, the head could be a decapitated rabbit rather than the mouse it supposedly portrays.

The fluffy head and accompanying tracksuit were part of a costume originally thought to represent Palmerston North’s most famous rodent, Morrie the Mouse, but this version was actually associated with Morrie’s ‘son’ Monty. These items, and other Morrie/Monty memorabilia held at Te Manawa Museum, stem from Radio 2ZA’s highly successful promotion of a fictional on-air character from 1969 into the 1980s. They link into the history of childhood in Manawatū, as well as the rise and fall of community radio.

Rodent Remnants

The grey fake fur head has a pointy nose and round eye holes, and shows signs of having been glued as well as stitched. It seems a little worse for wear. The ears droop forward more than in photos from Monty’s heyday, and the fur around mouth is a little marked – maybe the wearers ate while still in the costume?

The red tracksuit top is a standard medium-size version produced by Canterbury Apparel, except that it has ‘Monty’ on the back and a 2ZA logo on the right side. The polyester/cotton trackpants have a racing stripe each side, as well as the 2ZA logo, but are made by ‘Moto X Fox, Ca’, a trendy American brand of motorcross gear at the time. The two parts were probably not bought together as different people, possibly of different sizes, wore the costume over time.

Donated by former 2ZA rural reporter Graeme Bates, the tracksuit costume had one of its last outings for a children’s birthday party at Bledisloe Park. Graeme’s daughter Charlotte delighted those present by popping out of the bushes as ‘the Mouse’.¹

Other collection items associated with the 2ZA mouse storyline are a badge from the massively-attended ‘wedding’ of Morrie the Mouse in 1980 and a 1975 book by Patricia Dunmore. Dunmore’s Morrie Mouse’s Birthday Treat has Morrie the Mouse being carried high above a place that is recognisably Palmerston North, with landmarks such as the Grand Hotel, Hopwood clock tower and Catholic cathedral drawn in.

The book has a story of its own. Described as ‘New Zealand’s youngest publisher’ at the age of 22, Patricia Dunmore was the daughter of Palmerston North city councillor Joyce Dunmore and Massey Professor of French John Dunmore. Best known for his scholarly works on French explorers of the Pacific, the multi-talented John Dunmore contributed to the text of Morrie Mouse’s Birthday Treat,  though Pat Dunmore did all the delicate drawings.

The little story book provides a glimpse into industrial relations during the 1970s, for it nearly didn’t make it into bookshops. When the newly-printed copies arrived in New Zealand from Hong Kong, they languished on a wharf. Keen to preserve jobs for New Zealanders under the Muldoon government, the Federation of Labour boycotted them because they had been printed overseas. Deciding to ‘beard the dragon’ directly, Pat Dunmore went down to Wellington to approach Federation of Labour president Jim Knox. The day after the meeting the book was released, in time for the Christmas market.² The Dunmores’ strong links with the Labour Party may have helped here; John Dunmore had written many of Norm Kirk’s speeches, and was also his biographer.³ The publicity probably did Morrie Mouse’s Birthday Treat no harm. The copy at Te Manawa was donated in 2021 and has the name of six-year-old Ken Satherley carefully inscribed inside.

Also part of the Satherley donation, the badge was one of many distributed at Morrie the Mouse’s ‘wedding’ at Easter 1980. It is yellow with red lettering and the image of a mouse wearing a school cap and a scarf – probably the best-remembered version of Morrie the Mouse.

Other items related to Morrie and Monty Mouse have surfaced in the process of doing this research. Apart from photographs, there is a mouse drawing coloured in by a resident of Kimberley Hospital, near Levin, and judged by Morrie during one of his outings beyond the studio.

There is correspondence with the New Zealand Ballet’s properties department regarding the design of the 1978 costume. It comes with various drawings showing options around mouse representations – short or long-faced, ‘naturalistic’, or bug-eyed with buck teeth; dressed as a rural gentleman; casual in a striped tee-shirt and cap; or in a waist-coat, bow-tie and wearing a fob watch, the version which eventuated.⁴ Morrie became more casual over time, perhaps foreshadowing ‘Monty’, the younger track-suited version.

These are the physical manifestations of Morrie (or Monty) mania, but the ‘The Mouse’, as he is simply referred to by former 2ZA staff, remains in popular memory. Queries on the ‘Old Manawatū’ Facebook page resulted in a huge number of responses, testifying to the past engagement of many children, and not a few adults, with the phenomenon that was Morrie the Mouse, his wife Molly, and offspring Monty and Muffy.

The children who responded to Morrie and Monty were an important part of the 2ZA constituency. Juvenile listeners were future consumers and advertisers, and it was vital for the station that they shared in a sense of connectedness with its programmes and the personalities involved (real and otherwise).

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Footnotes

1. Graeme Bates and family, conversation with Margaret Tennant, 10 December 2023. ↩︎
2. Patricia Dunmore, conversation with Margaret Tennant, 13 November 2023. ↩︎
3. Manawatu Standard, 12 December 1975, p. 3. ↩︎
4. Paul Fairless, conversation with Margaret Tennant, 4 September 2023; Email from Paul Fairless to Margaret Tennant, 17 July 2023: Properties Department, Ballet Opera Workshop to P.C. Parker, Radio 2ZA, received 27 January 1978. ↩︎