The Mouse That Roared
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| The Mouse That Roared | |
 DVD cover of the 1959 film |
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| Directed by | Jack Arnold |
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| Produced by | Walter Shenson Jon Penington |
| Written by | Roger MacDougall Stanley Mann |
| Starring | Peter Sellers Jean Seberg Leo McKern |
| Music by | Edwin Astley |
| Cinematography | John Wilcox |
| Editing by | Raymond Poulton |
| Distributed by | Columbia Pictures |
| Release date(s) | October 26, 1959 |
| Running time | 83 min. |
| Country |  United Kingdom |
The Mouse that Roared is a 1955 novel by Irish writer Leonard Wibberley that launched a series of satirical books about an imaginary country in Europe called the Duchy of Grand Fenwick. Wibberley goes beyond the merely comic, using the situation to make commentary about modern politics and world situations.
Released in February 1955 by Little, Brown, the novel first appeared under the title The Day New York Was Invaded as a Saturday Evening Post serial in six consecutive weeks, from Christmas Day, 1954 through 29 January 1955. The English edition (London: Robert Hale, 1955) bore the author's original title idea, "The Wrath of Grapes", a pun on John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath.
Wibberley published four sequels — Beware of the Mouse (1958), The Mouse on the Moon (1962), The Mouse on Wall Street (1969), and The Mouse that Saved the West (1981).
The phrase "mouse that roared" proved a durable meme over half a century, and is still current. Wibberley places Fenwick in a series of absurd situations, where it goes up against superpowers and wins.
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[edit] Plot summary
The tiny (3 miles by 5 miles) European Duchy of Grand Fenwick, nestled in the Alps between Switzerland and France, proudly retains a pre-industrial economy, dependent almost entirely on making Pinot Grand Fenwick wine.
When an American winery makes a knockoff version, "Pinot Grand Enwick," it quickly puts the tiny country on the verge of bankruptcy. The Prime Minister decides that their only course of action is to declare war on the United States. Expecting a quick and total defeat (since their standing army is tiny and equipped with bows and arrows), the country confidently expects to rebuild itself through the generous largesse that the United States bestows on all its vanquished enemies (as it did for Nazi Germany through the Marshall Plan at the end of World War II.)
Instead, the Duchy defeats the mighty superpower, purely by accident: landing in New York City, almost completely deserted aboveground because of a city-wide disaster drill, the Duchy's invading "army" wanders to a top secret government lab and unintentionally captures the "Q-bomb", a prototype doomsday device that could destroy the world if triggered.
[edit] Film adaptation
The Mouse That Roared was made into a 1959 film starring Peter Sellers in three different roles (Duchess Gloriana XII; Count Rupert Mountjoy, the Prime Minister; and Tully Bascomb, the military leader), and co-starring Jean Seberg (as Helen Kokintz, his love interest). Other cast members included: William Hartnell (as Will Buckley), David Kossoff (as Professor Alfred Kokintz), Leo McKern (as Benter, the Opposition Leader), MacDonald Parke (as General Snippet), and Austin Willis (as the United States Secretary of Defense). A 1963 sequel was released, based on The Mouse on the Moon.
Some liberties were taken in the film. The lead character of all the books is the Duchess Gloriana XII who is an attractive young royal in the manner of the young Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Grace of Monaco. In the film Peter Sellers plays the role as a parody of an elderly Queen Victoria with his Mountjoy as a takeoff on Benjamin Disraeli. The Marseilles and New York harbor sequences were filmed in Southampton, UK. The presence of the RMS Queen Elizabeth ocean liner there was a lucky coincidence. In addition, in the book, an encounter with the New York Police Department leads to bloodshed.
Title designer Maurice Binder provided a mouse in a classic opening gag with the Columbia Pictures logo and a return of the mouse in the last scene. In addition to the film's titles, Binder also provided the map in the film.
One scene has various diplomats playing a game similar to Monopoly called "Diplomacy". Duchess Gloriana still thinks the President is Calvin Coolidge.
[edit] Television pilot
In 1964 Jack Arnold obtained exclusive television rights for The Mouse that Roared from Leonard Wibberly.[1] He produced[2] an unsucessful colour television pilot with ABC Television and Screen Gems called The Mouse that Roared starring Sid Caesar as the Duchess, Mountjoy and Tully. It also starred Joyce Jameson, Sigrid Valdis and Richard Deacon.[3] It was photographed by Richard H. Kline.[4]
[edit] Stage adaptation
The Mouse That Roared was adapted for the stage by Christopher Sergel in 1963. The play has been popular for amateur and school productions. The play features Duchess Gloriana XII as a twenty two year old as in Wibberly's original book.[5]
[edit] References
- ^ p.140 Reemes, Dana M. Directed by Jack Arnold 1988 McFarland
- ^ http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000791/otherworks
- ^ http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0212586/otherworks
- ^ http://www.cinematographers.nl/PaginasDoPh/kline.htm
- ^ http://books.google.com.au/books?id=ThCJz9jjqhAC&pg=PA3&lpg=PA3&dq=%22the+mouse+that+roared%22+%22christopher+sergel%22+play&source=bl&ots=9RJKNBibSd&sig=eJl8pBs2zlrvD272-TRbcIw6WWw&hl=en&ei=LRAZSor-HJa8swOhg83nDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3#PPA3,M1
[edit] External links
- The Mouse That Roared at the Internet Movie Database
- The Mouse on the Moon at the Internet Movie Database
- The Mouse That Roared at Allmovie
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