gorilla party costume beats them all!

IN 1967 when costume-make Philip Morris got a strange phone call from a man asking for a gorilla costume. “We had been advertising our costumes in several trade mags, so was used to getting unusual phone calls, but this was slightly different,” said Morris.

“The man on the phone, wanted to buy a gorilla suit and asked if it looked like an authentic gorilla,” said Morris, a Kalamazoo Central graduate. “I told him that it was very similar to a Hollywood gorilla, but he said he wanted something that looked more like a Neanderthal. What he wanted was Bigfoot.”

Intrigued, Morris asked Patterson what the costume was for. “He said the costume was for a prank, but I thought that was pretty odd because these were expensive suits,” said Morris. “Our customers were movie studios and famous magicians, the suits cost $450 back then. That is like over $1,000 today. I thought it was odd to spend so much on a prank, but I sent him the costume.”

2 weeks after sending out the costume, Morris received another call. “He asked me to send him some extra fur and asked how to hide the zipper in the back and how to make the person in the costume look bigger,” Morris said. “I told him to brush the fur over the zipper and use hair spray to hold it, and then buy football shoulder pads for the arms to give the impression of being taller..”

Two months later, Patterson was all over the news with a video he “captured” of Bigfoot while hunting in northern California. “I was watching TV when I saw Patterson and his film on the news,” Morris said. “I called my wife from the other room and said, `Look it’s our gorilla costume.”’