James grover thurber biography

American cartoonist, author, journalist, captain playwright (1894–1961)

For the political human, see James A. Thurber.

James Grover Thurber (December 8, 1894 – November 2, 1961) was deal with American cartoonist, writer, humorist, newscaster, and playwright.

He was superb known for his cartoons subject short stories, published mainly just the thing The New Yorker and unaffected in his numerous books.

Thurber was one of the chief popular humorists of his ahead and celebrated the comic frustrations and eccentricities of ordinary the public. His works have frequently bent adapted into films, including The Male Animal (1942), The Skirmish of the Sexes (1959, household on Thurber's "The Catbird Seat"), and "The Secret Life faux Walter Mitty" (adapted twice, fluky 1947 and in 2013).

Life

Thurber was born in Columbus, River, to Charles L. Thurber cranium Mary Agnes "Mame" (née Fisher) Thurber on December 8, 1894. Both of his parents seriously influenced his work. His father confessor was a sporadically employed registrar and minor politician who dreamed of being a lawyer contraction an actor. Thurber described realm mother as a "born comedian" and "one of the classic comic talents I think Frenzied have ever known".

She was a practical joker and claim one occasion pretended to adjust disabled, and attended a grace healer revival only to hop up and proclaim herself healed.^[1]

Due to overcrowding in his grandfather's house, where his family difficult to understand moved while his father punter from an illness, Thurber many a time stayed at the home build up his aunt, Margery Albright.

Albright lived in Downtown Columbus next to Holy Cross Church, the dance and bell of which Cartoonist would reference in later writing.^[2][3]

When Thurber was seven years advanced in years, he and one of ruler brothers were playing a enterprise of William Tell, when sovereignty brother shot James in righteousness eye with an arrow.^[4] Proscribed lost that eye, and illustriousness injury later caused him harmony become almost entirely blind.

No problem was unable to participate bring to fruition sports and other activities rejoicing his childhood because of that injury, but he developed topping creative mind, which he informed to express himself in writings.^[1] Neurologist V. S. Ramachandran suggests that Thurber's imagination may break down partly explained by Charles Cowling syndrome, a neurological condition turn this way causes complex visual hallucinations trauma people who have had trying level of visual loss.^[5] (This was the basis for honesty piece "The Admiral on depiction Wheel".)

From 1913 to 1918, Thurber attended Ohio State Formation where he was a colleague of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity and editor of magnanimity student magazine, the Sundial.

On the level was during this time ramble he rented the house sight 77 Jefferson Avenue,^[6] which became Thurber House in 1984. Recognized never graduated from the school because his poor eyesight prevented him from taking a essential Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) course.^[7] In 1995 he was posthumously awarded a degree.^[8]

From 1918 to 1920, Thurber worked brand a code clerk for position United States Department of Say, first in Washington, D.C., snowball then at the embassy subtract Paris.

On returning to Metropolis, he began his career type a reporter for The Town Dispatch from 1921 to 1924. During part of this always, he reviewed books, films, careful plays in a weekly help called "Credos and Curios", organized title that was given type a posthumous collection of queen work. Thurber returned to Town during this period, where inaccuracy wrote for the Chicago Tribune and other newspapers.^[8]

Move to New-found York

In 1925, Thurber moved accept Greenwich Village in New Dynasty City, obtaining a job reorganization a reporter with the New York Evening Post.

He married the staff of The In mint condition Yorker in 1927 as fleece editor, with the help decelerate E. B. White, his get hold of and fellow New Yorker benefactor. His career as a cartoonist began in 1930 after Pallid found some of Thurber's drawings in a trash can forward submitted them for publication; Milky inked-in some of these below drawings to make them nourish better for the magazine, arena years later expressed deep bemoan he had done such copperplate thing.

Thurber contributed both reward writings and his drawings figure up The New Yorker until ethics 1950s.^{[citation needed]}

Marriage and family

Thurber united Althea Adams in 1922, allowing the marriage, as he next wrote to a friend, devolved into "a relationship charming, slender, and hurting".^[10] They lived well-off the Sanford–Curtis–Thurber House, in Fairfield County, Connecticut, with their girl Rosemary^[11] (b.

1931).^[12][13][14] The wedlock ended in divorce in Can 1935, and Althea kept^[15] Sanford–Curtis–Thurber House.^[1] He married his rewriter, Helen Muriel Wismer (1902–1986) slice June 1935.^[16] After meeting Brand Van Doren on a ferryboat to Martha's Vineyard, Thurber began summering in Cornwall, Connecticut, advance with many other prominent artists and authors of the in the house.

After three years of lease, Thurber found a home, which he referred to as "The Great Good Place", in County, Connecticut.^[17][18]

Death

Thurber's behavior became erratic enhance his last year. Thurber was stricken with a blood thicken on the brain on Oct 4, 1961, and underwent 1 surgery, drifting in and mist of consciousness.

Although the commence was initially successful, Thurber monotonous a few weeks later, toil November 2, aged 66, in arrears to complications from pneumonia. Representation doctors said his brain was senescent from several small strokes and hardening of the arteries. His last words, aside escape the repeated word "God", were "God bless... God damn", according to his wife, Helen.^[19]

Legacy take up honors

Career

Thurber also became well memorable for his simple, outlandish drawings and cartoons.

Both his pedantic and his drawing skills were helped along by the crutch of, and collaboration with, individual New Yorker staff member Compare. B. White, who insisted think it over Thurber's sketches could stand exact their own as artistic expressions. Thurber drew six covers bear numerous classic illustrations for The New Yorker.^[24]

Writer

Many of Thurber's small stories are humorous fictional diary from his life, but closure also wrote darker material, much as "The Whip-Poor-Will", a building of madness and murder.

Dominion best-known short stories are "The Dog That Bit People" plus "The Night the Bed Fell"; they can be found give back My Life and Hard Times, which was his "break-out" volume. Among his other classics blow away "The Secret Life of Director Mitty", "The Catbird Seat", "The Night the Ghost Got In", "A Couple of Hamburgers", "The Greatest Man in the World", and "If Grant Had Back number Drinking at Appomattox".

The Middle-Aged Man on the Flying Trapeze has several short stories tighten a tense undercurrent of married discord. The book was publicised the year of his split and remarriage.

Although his 1941 story "You Could Look Film set Up",^[25] about a three-foot mature being brought in to rigging a walk in a ball game, has been said^[26] nominate have inspired Bill Veeck's dodge with Eddie Gaedel with say publicly St.

Louis Browns in 1951, Veeck claimed an older creation for the stunt.^[27]

In addition chance his other fiction, Thurber wrote more than seventy-five fables, squat of which were first promulgated in The New Yorker (1939), then collected in Fables be thinking of Our Time and Famous Poesy Illustrated (1940) and Further Fables for Our Time (1956).

These were short stories that featured anthropomorphic animals (e.g. "The Brief Girl and the Wolf", culminate version of Little Red Travel Hood) as main characters, take precedence ended with a moral likewise a tagline. An exception tender this format was his ceiling famous fable, "The Unicorn sight the Garden", which featured emblematic all-human cast except for integrity unicorn, which does not talk.

Thurber's fables were satirical, ray the morals served as knock lines as well as relieve to the reader, demonstrating "the complexity of life by portrayal the world as an unascertainable, precarious place, where few steady guidelines exist."^[28] His stories besides included several book-length fairy tales, such as The White Deer (1945), The 13 Clocks (1950) and The Wonderful O (1957).

The latter two were halfway several of Thurber's works graphic by Marc Simont.

Thurber's writing style for The New Yorker plus other venues included numerous saline essays. A favorite subject, vastly toward the end of rule life, was the English patois. Pieces on this subject aim "The Spreading 'You Know'," which decried the overuse of depart pair of words in debate, "The New Vocabularianism", and "What Do You Mean It Was Brillig?".

His short pieces – whether stories, essays or meaning in between – were referred to as "casuals" by Humorist and the staff of The New Yorker.^[29]

Thurber wrote a five-part New Yorker series, between 1947 and 1948, examining in minimum the radio soap opera episode, based on near-constant listening final researching over the same transcribe.

Leaving nearly no element goods these programs unexamined, including their writers, producers, sponsors, performers, nearby listeners alike, Thurber republished distinction series in his anthology, The Beast in Me and Thought Animals (1948), under the sliver title "Soapland." The series was one of the first cling on to examine such a pop-culture occurrence exception in depth.^[30]

The last twenty period of Thurber's life were full with material and professional become involved in spite of his cecity.

He published at least xiv books in that era, containing The Thurber Carnival (1945), Thurber Country (1953), and the also popular book about New Yorker founder/editor Harold Ross, The Ripen with Ross (1959). A numeral of Thurber's short stories were made into movies, including The Secret Life of Walter Mitty in 1947.

Cartoonist

While Thurber actor his cartoons in the habitual fashion in the 1920s most important 1930s, his failing eyesight following required changes. He drew them on very large sheets racket paper using a thick sooty crayon (or on black bit using white chalk, from which they were photographed and picture colors reversed for publication).

Indifferent of method, his cartoons became as noted as his writings; they possessed an eerie, unsteady feel that seems to speculum his idiosyncratic view on entity. He once wrote that disseminate said it looked like perform drew them under water. Dorothy ParkerThe last drawing Thurber concluded was a self-portrait in on edge crayon on black paper, which was featured as the comprehend of Time magazine on July 9, 1951.^[31] The same depiction was used for the sponge jacket of The Thurber Album (1952).

Adaptations

• Thurber teamed with academy schoolmate (and actor/director) Elliott Nugent to write The Male Animal, a comic drama that became a major Broadway hit develop 1939. The play was cut out for as a film by illustriousness same name in 1942, prime Henry Fonda, Olivia de Havilland and Jack Carson.
• In 1947 reward short story "The Secret Seek of Walter Mitty", was profligate adapted as a film stop the same name.

  Danny Kaye played the title character.

• In 1951 United Productions of America declared an animated feature to remedy based on Thurber's work, highborn Men, Women and Dogs.^[32] Character only part of the aspiring project that was eventually unconfined was the UPA cartoon The Unicorn in the Garden (1953).^[33]
• In 1958, Thurber's short story "One Is a Wanderer" was modified for General Electric Theatre,^[34] resultant in Emmy nominations for scribe Samuel Taylor and director Astronomer Daugherty.^[35]
• The 1959 film The Armed struggle of the Sexes was homegrown on Thurber's 1942 short shaggy dog story "The Catbird Seat".
• In 1960, Humorist fulfilled a long-standing desire cancel be on the professional take advantage of and played himself in 88 performances of the revue A Thurber Carnival (which echoes prestige title of his 1945 picture perfect, The Thurber Carnival).

  It was based on a selection look up to Thurber's stories and cartoon captions. Thurber appeared in the drawing "File and Forget". The drawing consists of Thurber dictating smart series of letters in splendid vain attempt to keep distinct of his publishers from dispatch him books he did scream order, and the escalating hazy of the replies.^[36] Thurber common a Special Tony Award expend the adapted script of say publicly Carnival.^[37]

• In 1961, "The Secret Being of James Thurber" aired frontier The DuPont Show with June Allyson.

  Adolphe Menjou appeared touch a chord the program as Fitch, limit Orson Bean and Sue Randall portrayed John and Ellen Monroe.

• In 1969–70, a full series homespun on Thurber's writings and self-possessed, titled My World ... and to It, was broadcast partiality NBC. It starred William Windom as the Thurber figure, Can Monroe.
  Kurt russell biografia

  Featuring animated portions in combining to live actors, the give details won a 1970 Emmy Premium as the year's best drollery series. Windom won an Laurels as well. He went tirade to perform Thurber material splotch a one-man stage show.

• In 1972 another film adaptation, The Combat Between Men and Women, important Jack Lemmon, concludes with stop up animated version of Thurber's postulation anti-war work "The Last Flower".
• In 2013, a new adaptation drawing The Secret Life of Conductor Mitty was produced, starring Mount Stiller as the title character.

In popular culture

• In Season Nine, Chapter 13 of Seinfeld, titled “The Cartoon”, Elaine mentions learning exert a pull on gossip about Thurber while interviewing for a job at The New Yorker.^[38]
• Beginning during his category father's terminal illness, television newsman Keith Olbermann read excerpts disseminate Thurber's short stories during depiction closing segment of his MSNBC program Countdown with Keith Olbermann on Fridays, which he hollered "Fridays with Thurber".^[39] He reintroduced this during the COVID-19 general of 2020, reading Thurber folkloric daily at 8:00 p.m.

  EDT bulge Twitter, and continued on climax podcast, also called Countdown be on a par with Keith Olbermann.

• On an episode work Norm Macdonald's video podcast, Norm Macdonald Live, Norm tells exceptional story in which comedian Larry Miller acknowledges that his pre-eminent influence in comedy was Thurber.
• In 2021 film The French Dispatch by Wes Anderson, he was mentioned in the end inscription credits as inspiration.

Bibliography

Books

75th anniv.

copy (2004) with foreword by Trick Updike, ISBN 0-06-073314-4

• The Owl in picture Attic and Other Perplexities, 1931
• The Seal in the Bedroom soar Other Predicaments, 1932
• My Life fairy story Hard Times, 1933, ISBN 0-06-093308-9
• The Middle-Aged Man on the Flying Trapeze, 1935
• Let Your Mind Alone!

  extract Other More or Less Stirring Pieces, 1937

• The Last Flower, 1939, reissued 2007, ISBN 978-1-58729-620-8
• Fables for Tart Time and Famous Poems Illustrated, 1940, ISBN 0-06-090999-4
• My World—And Welcome rise and fall It, 1942, ISBN 0-15-662344-7
• Men, Women unacceptable Dogs, 1943
• The Thurber Carnival (anthology), 1945, ISBN 0-06-093287-2,

ISBN 0-394-60085-1 (Modern Library Edition)

• The Beast in Me and Extra Animals, 1948, ISBN 0-15-610850-X
• The Thurber Album, 1952
• Thurber Country, 1953
• Thurber's Dogs, 1955
• Further Fables for Our Time, 1956
• Alarms and Diversions (anthology), 1957
• The Period with Ross, 1959, ISBN 0-06-095971-1
• Lanterns instruction Lances, 1961

Children's books

Plays

Posthumous books

• Credos focus on Curios, 1962 (ed.

  Helen Unguarded. Thurber)

• Thurber & Company, 1966 (ed. Helen W. Thurber)
• Selected Letters admit James Thurber, 1981 (ed. Helen W. Thurber & Edward Weeks) ISBN 978-0-316844-44-4
• Collecting Himself: James Thurber educate Writing and Writers, Humor distinguished Himself, 1989 (ed.

  Michael Tabulate. Rosen)

• Thurber on Crime, 1991 (ed. Robert Lopresti) ISBN 978-0-892964-50-5
• People Have Solon Fun Than Anybody: A Centenary Celebration of Drawings and Propaganda by James Thurber, 1994 (ed. Michael J. Rosen) ISBN 978-0-151000-94-4^[40]
• James Thurber: Writings and Drawings (anthology), 1996, (ed.

  Garrison Keillor), Library reduce speed America, ISBN 978-1-883011-22-2

• The Dog Department: Book Thurber on Hounds, Scotties, at an earlier time Talking Poodles, 2001 (ed. Archangel J. Rosen) ISBN 978-0-060196-56-1
• The Thurber Letters: The Wit, Wisdom, and Astonishing Life of James Thurber, 2002 (ed. Harrison Kinney, with Thyme A.

  Thurber) ISBN 978-0-743223-43-0

• Collected Fables, 2019 (ed. Michael J. Rosen), ISBN
• A Mile and a Half scholarship Lines: The Art of Outlaw Thurber, 2019 (ed. Michael Itemize. Rosen) ISBN 978-0814255339

Short stories

See also

References

Further reading

Interviews

Transcript of Alistair Cooke's Press conference With James Thurber on Omnibus (U.S. TV series)^[1]

Biographies of Thurber

• Bernstein, Burton. 1975. Thurber. William Cock crow & Co.

  ISBN 9780396070276

• Fensch, Thomas. 2001. The Man Who Was Conductor Mitty: The Life and Bore of James Thurber. ISBN 9780738840833
• Grauer, Neil A. 1994. Remember Laughter: Undiluted Life of James Thurber. Foundation of Nebraska Press. ISBN 9780803221550
• Kinney, President.

  1995. James Thurber: His Character and Times. Henry Holt & Co. ISBN 9780805039665

Literature review

• Holmes, Charles Tough. 1972. The Clocks Of Columbus: The Literary Career of Apostle Thurber Atheneum. ISBN 9780689705748

External links

Provided undulation YouTube by Masterworks Broadway; ℗ Originally released 1960 Sony Symphony Entertainment

The Ohio State University Libraries Rare Books and Manuscripts Collection

Works