Thurber's World - & Welcome to It

The other day I was doing a little rearranging of some things in my bedroom when I came across a book by 1 of my favorite authors, James Thurber. I began to thumb through it & as I did it began to bring back many great memories of how wonderful, imaginative & funny a storyteller & cartoonist he was. I also began to think of how little you hear about him these days. & what a shame that is.

I became a fan of James Thurber back in about 1969 arround the time when the TV series My World & Welcome To It starring William Windom ran on KWWL-TV. The show which was loosely based on Thurber's books, drawings & life. I am not sure if I discovered Thurber's books 1st (more likely) or the TV Series awoke a desire to read his works. The Oelwein Public Library soon saw me checking out everything of his I could. In college I came across the Broadway Cast album of A Thurber Carnival which I naturally bought. The musical revue was adapted from several of his short stories & even used some of his drawings. (Later the musical was done at Loras.)

Some years later when I was working at Zayre they got in some stuffed hippopotami that looked exactly like the hippo in 1 of my favorite Thurber cartoons. The cartoon showed a typical Thurberian woman looking at a hippo. On the ground nearby was a man's hat & shoe. The caption read: "What have you done with Dr. Millmoss?" Naturally I bought 1 of them. It still sits on my dresser.

Thurber was born 8 December 1894 in Columbus, OH to Charles L. Thurber and Mary Agnes (Mame) Fisher Thurber. He had 2 brothers, William and Robert. An accident while playing William Tell with his brothers resulted in the loss of an eye. As time went on he began to loss sight in the other eye. By the 1950s he was legally blind.

Beginning in 1913 he attended Ohio State University. He didn't graduate because he was unable to complete the ROTC requirement due to his poor eyesight. Ohio State corrected by that posthumously awarding him a degree. He worked for the Columbus Dispatch from 1920 to 1926 when he moved to New York City. There he worked for the Evening Post until he was hired in 1927 by The New Yorker as an editor. In 1930 his friend E. B. White discovered some drawings of his & submitted them for publication. He left The New Yorker in 1933 but continued to submit articles & drawings to them. In 1929 he published his 1st book, Is Sex Necessary? or, Why You Feel The Way You Do. It was a spoof of psychological books of the time co-written with E. B. White. Over the years his works & drawings were collected into book for. In 1939 he co-wrote a play, The Male Animal, with Elliot Nugent. He actually appeared on Broadway in 1960 playing himself in a few performances of A Thurber Carnival.

He was married twice. His 1st marriage was in 1922 to Althea Adams. They had 1 daughter, Rosemary. They were divorced in 1935. That same year he married Helen Wismer. The marriage lasted until his death in 1961. On 10 September 1994 the US Postal Service issued a stamp (shown above) in his honor based on a self-portrait.

He was such a prolific writer & cartoonist that it is hard to decide what to focus on. (Sadly not all his books are still in print but they should still be available at the library or from used book sources.) My Life & Hard Times (1933) tells of his childhood in Columbus. Some of his family weren't too happy with the liberties he took, just as some people weren't happy with how he presented some of the events in The Years With Ross (1959). That book was about his years at The New Yorker & esp its creator Harold Ross. There is a webpage with an interactive list of Books by James Thurber. You can find out what is available for purchase, new or used. & The New Yorker Store has over 180 of his drawings available for purchase.

I have so many favorites that I won't even try to mention them all. The Night the Bed Fell, If Grant Had Been Drinking at Appomatox, The Unicorn in the Garden, File & Forget, The Day the Dam Burst, A Final Note on Chanda Bell, etc are just a sampling. He also adds his illustrations to poems like Excelsior, Barbara Frietchie, & Curfew Must Not Ring Tonite. To list his drawings I love & explain them would take too long.

Surprizingly very few of his works have been made into films. In 1942 The Male Animal was made into a film. Danny Kaye starred in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1946). The movie was loosely based on the story & Thurber was disappointed by the results. His short story, A Unicorn in the Garden, was made into an animated short based on his drawings in 1953. In 1959 his short story, The Catbird Seat, was made into a movie, The Battle of the Sexes, starring Peter Sellers, Robert Morley & Constance Cummings. Jack Lemmon played a character loosely modeled on Thurber as found in his writings in The War Between Men & Women (1972). The movie ends with an animated version of The Last Flower.

As I mentioned earlier NBC made a TV series based on his writings & drawings. My World & Welcome to It starred William Windom as John Monroe. Monroe was a Thurberesque cartoonist/writer for a New York magazine called, The Manhattenite, who was married with 1 daughter. The action took place at work & home. The show usually openned with Monroe coming home to an animated adaptation of Thurber's drawing Home. (An example is shown with this paragraph.) Many of the story lines were adapted from Thurber's short stories & many of his drawings were animated & interspersed throughout the show often advancing the plot. Sadly the series is not yet available on DVD.

Thurber considered himself the chronicler of the war between men & women. In fact he did a series of draws entitled just that. While many people will view Thurber's writings as mysogonistic, they accurately reflect the cultural view of men & women at that time. & that doesn't make them any less funny or worth reading today. The era may be different, the times simpler, but people are people. & in the end that is what his stories & drawings are about, us.

& that is why the are still so much fun to read. So spend some time in "the land of coots & hern." Don't worry about "your Horsie" where those seals & dogs came from, what you know about Bryn Mawr or the bed falling down. You'll be too busy laughing to care.

Note: The Thurber family home during his college years is now a museum called The Thurber House. The house is on the National Register of Historic Places. The house allows people to experience how Thurber's family lived while there from 1913-1917. Next to it is the Thurber Center. Between the 2 buildings is the Centennial Reading Garden, complete with sculptures of five Thurber dogs, a fountain, and three Central Park benches. Check out the website for greater detail.