The Mouse That Roared is a 1955 Cold War satirical novel by Irish-American writer Leonard Wibberley, which launched a series of satirical books about an imaginary country in Europe called the Duchy of Grand Fenwick. Wibberley went beyond the merely comic, using the premise to make still-quoted commentaries about modern politics and world situations.
Released in February 1955 by Little, Brown,[1] 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) had the author's original title, "The Wrath of Grapes", a play on John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath.
Wibberley wrote 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). Each placed Fenwick in a series of absurd situations in which it faced superpowers and won.
The book takes a satirical look at themes including the nuclear arms race, nuclear weapons in general, and the politics of the United States. The phrase "mouse that roared" has proved a durable meme.
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The tiny (three miles by five miles) European Duchy of Grand Fenwick, supposedly located in the Alps between Switzerland and France, proudly retains a pre-industrial economy, dependent almost entirely on making Pinot Grand Fenwick wine. However, an American winery makes a knockoff version, "Pinot Grand Enwick", putting the 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 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 above ground because of a city-wide disaster drill, the Duchy's invading "army" (composed of the Field Marshal Tully Bascomb, three men-at-arms, and twenty longbowmen) wanders to a top secret government lab and unintentionally captures the "Q-bomb" (a prototype doomsday device that could destroy the world if triggered) and its maker, Dr. Kokintz.
The invaders from Fenwick are sighted by a Civil Defense Squad and are immediately taken to be "men from Mars" when their mail armor is mistaken for reptilian skin. The Secretary of Defense pieces together what has happened (with help from the five lines in his encyclopedia on Grand Fenwick and the Fenwickian flag left behind on a flagpole) and is both ashamed and astonished that the United States was unaware that it had been at war for two months.
With the most powerful bomb in the world now in the smallest country in the world, other countries are quick to react, with the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom offering their support. With the world at the tiny country's mercy, Duchess Gloriana, the leader of Grand Fenwick, lists her terms: all the nuclear weapons of the powerful nations must go through an inspection by impartial scientists and the "Tiny Twenty" (a joke about the "Big Three" Nations) should be formed, a group of twenty small nations so that small nations can get their voices heard as well as large ones. Soon Duchess Gloriana and Tully Bascomb get married, and during the wedding Dr. Kokintz discovers that the bomb is a dud and that the bomb Grand Fenwick used to threaten the world into obedience never had any power whatsoever. However, Dr. Kokintz decides to keep that fact to himself considering that the pretense still furthers the cause of world peace.
Anthony Boucher praised the novel as "utterly delightful . . . a very nearly perfect book, on no account to be missed."[2]
| The Mouse That Roared | |
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DVD cover of the 1959 film |
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| Directed by | Jack Arnold |
| 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) | 26 October 1959 |
| Running time | 83 min. |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
The Mouse That Roared was made into a 1959 film starring Peter Sellers in three roles — (Duchess Gloriana XII; Count Rupert Mountjoy, the Prime Minister; and Tully Bascomb, the military leader). It co-starred Jean Seberg (as Helen Kokintz, as an added love interest). Other cast members included: William Hartnell (as Sergeant-at-Arms 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.
Liberties were taken in the film adaptation to display Peter Sellers' versatile comedic talents. The lead character of all the books is the Duchess Gloriana XII, an attractive young royal in the manner of the young Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Grace of Monaco. In the film version, however, Peter Sellers plays the role as a parody of an elderly Queen Victoria, whilst his Mountjoy is a takeoff on Benjamin Disraeli. The Marseilles and New York harbour sequences were filmed in Southampton, England. The presence of the RMS Queen Elizabeth ocean liner there was a lucky coincidence. In addition, in the novel an encounter with the New York Police Department leads to bloodshed. This does not appear in the movie. In addition, both Tully and Helen are with Dr. Kokintz when he discovers the bomb is a dud and it is Tully who suggests that they keep that fact a secret. However, a mouse emerges from the bomb's casing and it apparently resumes its normal function as an active weapon. At this, the film displays the title, "The End... We hope."
As there is no actual mouse in the film, title designer Maurice Binder added one in a classic opening joke with the Columbia Pictures logo and a return of the mouse in the last scene.
One scene has diplomats playing a board game called Diplomacy, although the game more resembles Monopoly rather than the game Diplomacy. Duchess Gloriana still thinks the president of the United States is Calvin Coolidge.
A satire was the film showing American television commercials for the fake "Grand Enwick" wine with the characters wearing eyepatches as in the David Ogilvy-designed C. F. Hathaway Company campaign of the time.
In 1964 Jack Arnold obtained exclusive television rights for The Mouse That Roared from Leonard Wibberley.[3] He produced[4] a colour television pilot with ABC Television and Screen Gems called The Mouse That Roared, starring Sid Caesar as the Duchess, Mountjoy and Tully. It co-starred Joyce Jameson, Sigrid Valdis and Richard Deacon. However, the pilot was not chosen for production.[5] It was filmed by Richard H. Kline.[6]
BBC Radio 4 broadcast a one-hour adaptation on 22 May 2010 as part of their Saturday Play series.[7] The production was directed by Patrick Rayner and starred Julie Austin as Gloriana, Mark McDonnell (who co-adapted the book for radio) as Tully, Crawford Logan as Count Montjoy, Simon Tait as Dr. Kokintz and Steven McNicholl (who also co-adapted the book) as Mr. Benter.
The Mouse That Roared was adapted for the stage by Christopher Sergel in 1963. The play portrays Duchess Gloriana XII as twenty-two years old, as in Wibberly's novel. In this version, Dr. Kokintz is a physics professor at Columbia University and the arrival of Tully Bascomb's invasion force coincides with a campus student protest. Thus, the Fenwick soldiers are mistaken for being eccentric protesters rather than as foreign invaders.[8]
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