James Thurber [1894-1961] Page at Spirit of America Bookstore

Writer, artist, and humorist James Grover Thurber was born in Columbus, Ohio on 8 December 1894. He entered Ohio State University in 1913 and began his literary career on the staff of the student paper, The Lantern. After leaving O.S.U. in 1918, Thurber moved on to The Columbus Dispatch and, in 1927, his friend E.B. White helped him get a job on the editorial staff of the prestigious New Yorker Magazine. Thurber's career as a cartoonist began in 1930 when White dug some of Thurber's drawings out of the trash and submitted them to be published in the New Yorker.

Thurber married Althea Adams in 1922, producing his only child, Rosemary, born 7 October 1931; the marriage ended in divorce in 1935. Thurber's marriage to Helen Muriel Wismer began the day that the divorce was final, and lasted to his death on 2 November 1961. He received a Special Tony Award for the play "A Thurber Carnival" in 1960, and the U.S. Postal Service commemorated his centennial in November 1994 with a 29-cent stamp {below}.

Thurber: Writings and Drawings [1996]
Edited by Garrison Keillor
Library of America 8x5¼ hardcover [10/96] for $23.10
includes "My Life and Hard Times" [1933], stories "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty"
[1939] & "The Catbird Seat", anti-war parable "The Last Flower" [1939], "Fables For Our Time" [1940], the children's classic "The 13 Clocks" [1950], and selections from "The Owl In The Attic" [1931], "Let Your Mind Alone" [1937], "My World and Welcome To It" [1942], and "The Years With Ross" [1959]

"The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" [1947 feature film]
Directed by Norman Z. McLeod; story by James Thurber; starring Danny Kaye, Virginia Mayo & Boris Karloff
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0039808/

"The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" feature film

[scheduled for 2010 Goldwyn/Fox release]
Co-written by & starring Mike Myers; latest info at IMDb

"The Male Animal" [1940 Broadway play]
Co-written by Elliott Nugent; cast included Leon Ames, Don DeFore, Ruth Matteson, Elliott Nugent, Minna Phillips,
Gene Tierney & Regina Wallace - http://www.ibdb.com/production.asp?ID=13222

"The Male Animal" [1952-53 Broadway revival]
Directed by Michael Gordon; cast included: Elliott Nugent, Robert Preston & Halliwell Hobbes
http://www.ibdb.com/production.asp?ID=2324

"Oh My, Omar" [1921 novel]
"Is Sex Necessary?" [1929]
"The Owl In The Attic and Other Perplexities" [1931]
"The Seal In The Bedroom and Other Predicaments" [1932]
"My Life and Hard Times" [1933]
"The Middle-Aged Man On The Flying Trapeze" [1935]
"Let Your Mind Alone! and Other More Or Less Inspirational Pieces" [1937]
"The Last Flower" [1939]
"The Cream of Thurber" [1939]
"Fables For Our Time and Famous Poems Illustrated" [1940]
"My World – and Welcome To It" [1942]
"Men, Women and Dogs" [1943]
"Many Moons" [1943]
"The Great Quillow" [children 1944]
"The White Deer" [book-length fairytale 1945]
"The Thurber Carnival" [1945]
"The Beast In Me and Other Animals" [1948]

"The 13 Clocks" [1950 children's classic]
"The Motorola Television Hour" episode [1953]
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0651592/

"The Thurber Album" [1952]
"Thurber Country" [1953]
"Thurber's Dogs" [1955]
"A Thurber Garland" [1955]
"Further Fables For Our Time" [1956]
"Alarms and Diversions" [1957]
"The Wonderful O" [book-length fairytale 1957]
"The Years With Ross" [1959 ?]
"Lanterns and Lances" [1961]
"The Vintage Thurber" [1963]
"Thurber and Company" [1966]
"Selected Letters" [Atlantic-Little, Brown 1981] Edited by Helen Thurber & Edward Weeks
"Credos and Curios" [Harper, 1983] Foreword by Helen Thurber
"Better To Have Loafed and Lost: The Best of James Thurber" [2002]

"Rise and Shine" [1941 feature film]
Directed by Allan Dwan; script by Herman J. Mankiewicz, based on a Thurber story;
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0034112/

"Tales For Males: Selected For Man's Enjoyment" [1945]
Edited by Ed Fitzgerald
Cadillac Publng hardcover [1/45] out of print/rare
stories by Konrad Bercovici, James M. Cain, Morley Callaghan, George S. Chappell, John Collier, Clarence Day Jr., John Fante, W.C. Fields, Corey Ford, Benjamin Franklin, C.A. Hamilton, Fred C. Kelly, Arthur Kober, Ring Lardner, Dorothy Parker, William Saroyan, Bernard Sobel, Donald Ogden Stewart, Frank Sullivan, James Thurber, George Weller and others

"She's Working Her Way Through College" [1952 movie based on his play]
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0045144/

"The Greatest Man in the World"
"Stage 7" episode [1955] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708085/
"Armchair Theatre" episode [1958] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051680/
"The Greatest Man in the World" TV movie [1980] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080814/

"The Battle of the Sexes" [1959 feature film]
based on Thurber's short story "The Catbird Seat"; http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052607/

play, A Thurber Carnival, had its world premier in Columbus at the Hartman Theatre in January 1960.

"A Thurber Carnival" [1960 Broadway hit]
Directed by Burgess Meredith; cast included Peggy Cass, Tom Ewell, Paul Ford, Alice Ghostley, John McGiver,
Wynne Miller & Charles Braswell; Thurber received a Special Tony Award, along with Burgess Meredith
http://www.ibdb.com/production.asp?ID=2101

"The Beast In Me" [1963 Broadway failure])
A stage musical based on the Thurber's "Fables in Our Time"; music by Don Elliott, book & lyrics by James Costigan;
directed by John Lehne; choreographed by John Butler; cast included: Kaye Ballard, Bert Convy & Nancy Haywood - http://www.ibdb.com/production.asp?ID=3008

"My World and Welcome To It" [1969 N.B.C. 14-episode TV series]
Produced & co-directed by Sheldon Leonard; starring William Windom, Joan Hotchkis, Lisa Gerritsen, Harold J. Stone &
Henry Morgan; won Emmy Awards for Outstanding Comedy Series & Leading Actor in a Comedy Series {Windom}
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063934/

After the TV series of 1969, William Windom performed Thurber material in a one-man stage show.

"Jabberwock" [1972 play]
A play by Jerome Lawrence & Robert E. Lee based on 'improbabilities lived and imagined by James Thurber
in the fictional city of Columbus, Ohio'; opened the Thurber Theatre at O.S.U. on 18 November 1972

"The Clocks of Columbus: The Literary Career of James Thurber"
[Atheneum, 1972] by Charles S. Holmes ISBN 0-436-20080-5

"Remembering Laughter: A Life of James Thurber" [Nebraska, 1994] by Neil A. Grauer ISBN 0-8032-7056-9

"The Man Who Was Walter Mitty: The Life & Work of James Thurber" [2001] by Thomas Fensch 0-930-75113-2

"The Thurber Letters: The Wit, Wisdom & Surprising Life of James Thurber" [2003]
Edited by Harrison Kinney & {daughter} Rosemary Thurber

	"Collecting Himself: James Thurber On Writing & Writers, Humor & Himself" [1989] Edited by Michael J. Rosen HarperCollins 7¾x5¼ pb [10/90] out of print/many used Harper & Row hardcover [10/89] out of print/many used
	"Thurber On Crime: Stories, Articles, Drawings & Reflections On The Evil Men & Women Do" [36 selections; 1991] Edited by Robert LoPresti Hamish Hamilton pb [10/92] out of print/scarce Grand Central / Mysterious Press 9x6 hardcover [11/91] for $25.00
	"People Have More Fun Than Anybody: A Centennial Celebration of Drawings & Writings by James Thurber" [1994] Edited by Michael J. Rosen Harvest Books 9½x6¾ pb [10/95] for $15.00 Harcourt 9¼x7 hardcover [5/94] out of print/many used
	"The Dog Department: James Thurber On Hounds, Scotties & Talking Poodles" [2001] Edited by Michael J. Rosen HarperCollins 8¼x8¼ hardcover [4/2001] for $23.36
	"The Complete Cartoons of The New Yorker" [2004] Edited by Robert Mankoff The book is a 656-page collection of 2,004 of the best cartoons published in The New Yorker over the last 80 years, and the searchable double CD set includes all 68,647 cartoons ever published in the magazine up to 2004. Black Dog & Leventhal 11½x10 pb book & CDs [10/2006] for $23.10 Black Dog & Leventhal 13¼x11¼ hardcover book and CDs [10/2004] for $37.80

	"The Secret Life of Walter Mitty: A New Musical Based On The Classic Story" [1968] by Joe Manchester Samuel French Ltd. pb [10/68] out of print/scarce
	"The Secret Life of Walter Mitty and Other Tales" [YA 2005] Penguin 7½x5 pb [5/2000] out of print/used Creative Education 10x7 library hardcover [1/2008] for $28.50
	"Secret Lives ... of Walter Mitty and of James Thurber" [2006] includes the classic short story and the autobiographical New Yorker essay "The Secret Life of James Thurber", illustrated by Marc Simont Collins Design 7¾x6½ hardcover [4/2006] for $10.17

Spirit of America BookstoreJames Thurber

Spirit of America Bookstore
James Thurber