PERSONAL RECORD. STRICKLAND, MORRIE. [LAST OF XMAS HOLIDAYS & MARCH 1967]

Rights Information
Year
1967
Reference
F48886
Media type
Moving image
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Rights Information
Year
1967
Reference
F48886
Media type
Moving image
Place of production
New Zealand/Aotearoa
Categories
Amateur
Duration
0:04:25
Credits
Photography: Morrie [Maurice] Strickland

Two boys unloading car and checking equipment outside hut. Scenic view. Vauxhall Velux car fording river. Cars at gate of Omahaki farm, panning across to show homestead, gardens and farmland. Men and boys coming out of house and loading car [with game birds]. Roadside views from hill. Men and boys looking at sign: Scene of surprise attack’ [Opepe]. Boys looking at thermal pools, views of geothermal landscape. Views from hill of small craft crossing lake. Small girl and her father at the beach [Jacqui]. Small girl sitting on garden swing seat with both her parents.

Cataloguer’s note: Morris Strickland was a world top 10 heavyweight for several years in the late 1930s. He was born in Wairoa in 1913, and won the Wellington amateur titles in 1930 and 1931, and the national heavyweight crown in 1932. He then turned pro and moved to Australia. After a year he returned to NZ and there won the professional heavyweight title. Then his manager Billy Crawford arranged for him to go to England, and he left with his new wife Eileen. After mixed results, he was bought by manager Bill Daly who organised his US campaign, and also fights at Wembley. Notable opponents in his career include Tommy Loughran and Bob Pastor. Strickland features as himself in the British boxing drama film Excuse My Glove’ (1936). He returned to NZ ca1939 and had a handful more fights, the last in 1942. Strickland took an anti-war stance in the early 1940s, then bought a chicken farm in Hawke’s Bay to escape conscription. He took his family to Canada and returned to Auckland in 1950. He worked as a wharfie and was involved in the 1951 lockout’. He later worked as a taxi driver. He lived in Devonport with his wife Eileen and four sons.