Back To The $1,000,000 Bigfoot Hoax!

OK, back to the story...

"Well, in a week or so, I recieved a postal money order for $435 plus shipping. In another ten days or so, he called and said he had the suit and was happy, but had some questions. He said, 'I can see a zipper in the back; I told him, 'You're the first to ask about this, because in the Girl to Gorilla shows the audience only sees the gorilla from the front. Just use a hairbrush and softly brush the fur down over the zipper to cover it.' Then he wanted to know how to make the arms longer. I told him, 'Find a shovel handle or a stick and slip it in the sleeves, then attach the gorilla gloves to the stick! That's how you extend the arms of the costume.' (OK, so the dude knows how to extend the arms. But, would it REALLY look realistic? What if the gloves fall off?) Then he said he wanted to make the shoulders more massive. I told him to go to a high school and get some old football pads- the coaches would probably be happy to get rid of their old, cracked ones- and stick them in the shoulders.

"In October of that same year, I was watching televison in my living room when low and behold, there was my gorilla suit walking across the screen! And the announcer was telling that this is film of a real Bigfoot, shot in the forests of Northern California. The film ran again, and I called to my wife in the kitchen, 'Hurry! There's our gorilla suit on TV!' Amy immediately recongized it. (How could Amy and her husband recongize the suit? Things had been added on to it, and the film wasn't focused.) She is the one who had sewn the suit. The amazing thing is I kept thinking that Patterson would come forward in the next few weeks or months and make a confession that it was all a big joke, a hoax. But when I found out he had sold the usage rights of the film for $50,000, I knew that would never happen. Keep in mind that $50,000 was the equivalent of $300,000 to half-a-million dollars today."

"That one minute out-of-focus clip of someone in a fake gorilla costume wearing football shoulder pads and sticks in the arms striding through a woodland grossed upwards of one million dollars in Cinemas Beginning in late 1968."

So why didn't Phillip Morris blow the whistle when he realized the film was a hoax?

"Keep in mind that I'm in the business of making special effects props for stage shows and professional magicians. There were not only the 100 or so touring magicians using our gorilla suits at that time for the Girl to Gorilla show, there were others using the costume. And I would not think of exposing their illusion. I remember when Harry Blackstone Jr reproduced his father's full-evening show and he commissioned us to make two matching real-fur gorilla suits for the 'Who Wears the Whiskers' illusion, an effect that requires the use of two matching gorilla suits. Well, I would never divulge that to the public back then. So, it was the same in 1967 and still holds true today- a costume-maker and special-effects person doesn't tell the public how the buyer of the product performs the trick or illusion. Even today I have some reservations about exposing the Bigfoot hoax." (So, at the time, you didn't tell everybody, "Hey! The most famous Bigfoot film in history is fake!" and didn't get famous because you didn't want to let a secret out, which is happening on this website which tons of people are seeing? Just saying! Also, the film isn't a fake.)

Despite the fact that Morris has told his true (NOT!) story about the Bigfoot hoax in presentations at magic and costume conventions, it continued to be an open secret among professionals. So why is he willing to talk about it now? (Yeah! If you say that the Bigfoot video is a hoax after the film becomes famous, people might just know what they're talking about when they say it's a real Bigfoot, they don't believe you, or they just think you're trying to get famous yourself by saying, "HEY! I made that famous Bigfoot film possible with my gorilla suit!")

OK, everybody! That's enough for today. Bye for now, Bigfooters!