Editing James Thurber (section)

==Career==
Thurber also became well known for his simple, outlandish drawings and cartoons. Both his literary and his drawing skills were helped along by the support of, and collaboration with, fellow ''New Yorker'' staff member [[E. B. White]], who insisted that Thurber's sketches could stand on their own as artistic expressions. Thurber drew six covers and numerous classic illustrations for ''The New Yorker''.<ref>{{cite web | url=http://writersalmanac.org/note/dec-8-2015-birthday-james-thurber/ | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170307132414/http://writersalmanac.org/note/dec-8-2015-birthday-james-thurber/ | url-status=dead | archive-date=March 7, 2017 | title=Dec. 8, 2015: birthday: James Thurber | publisher=The Writer’s Almanac }}</ref>

===Writer===
Many of Thurber's short stories are humorous fictional memoirs from his life, but he also wrote darker material, such as "The Whip-Poor-Will", a story of madness and murder. His best-known short stories are "The Dog That Bit People" and "[[The Night the Bed Fell]]"; they can be found in ''[[My Life and Hard Times]]'', which was his "break-out" book. Among his other classics are "[[The Secret Life of Walter Mitty]]", "[[The Catbird Seat]]", "The Night the Ghost Got In", "[[A Couple of Hamburgers]]", "The Greatest Man in the World", and "If [[Ulysses S. Grant|Grant]] Had Been Drinking at [[Appomattox Court House National Historical Park|Appomattox]]". ''The Middle-Aged Man on the Flying Trapeze'' has several short stories with a tense undercurrent of marital discord. The book was published the year of his divorce and remarriage.

{{anchor|look it up}}Although his 1941 story "You Could Look It Up",<ref>Thurber, James, [http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/james_thurber.pdf "You Could Look It Up"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110720200106/http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/james_thurber.pdf |date=July 20, 2011 }}, ''[[The Saturday Evening Post]]'', April 5, 1941, pp. 9–11, 114, 116.</ref> about a three-foot adult being brought in to take a walk in a baseball game, has been said<ref>Kinney, Harrison (1995). ''James Thurber: His Life and Times''. Henry Holt & Co., p. 672. ISBN 9780805039665 </ref> to have inspired [[Bill Veeck]]'s stunt with [[Eddie Gaedel]] with the [[St. Louis Browns]] in 1951, Veeck claimed an older provenance for the stunt.<ref>{{cite book|last=Veeck|first=Bill|author-link=Bill Veeck|author2=Ed Linn|title="A Can of Beer, a Slice of Cake—and Thou, Eddie Gaedel", from ''Veeck – As In Wreck: The Autobiography of Bill Veeck''|publisher=The University of Chicago Press|year=1962|location=Chicago, IL|pages=11–23|url=http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/852180.html|isbn=978-0-226-85218-8|access-date=February 1, 2007|archive-date=February 6, 2007|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070206140823/http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/852180.html|url-status=live}}</ref>

In addition to his other fiction, Thurber wrote more than seventy-five [[fable]]s, some of which were first published in ''The New Yorker'' (1939), then collected in ''[[Fables for Our Time and Famous Poems Illustrated]]'' (1940) and ''Further Fables for Our Time'' (1956). These were short stories that featured anthropomorphic animals (e.g. "The Little Girl and the Wolf", his version of [[Little Red Riding Hood]]) as main characters, and ended with a moral as a tagline. An exception to this format was his most famous fable, "[[The Unicorn in the Garden]]", which featured an all-human cast except for the unicorn, which does not speak. Thurber's fables were [[satire|satirical]], and the morals served as [[punch line]]s as well as advice to the reader, demonstrating "the complexity of life by depicting the world as an uncertain, precarious place, where few reliable guidelines exist."<ref>Maharg, Ruth A. (Summer 1984), [http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/chq/summary/v009/9.2.maharg.html "The Modern Fable: James Thurber's Social Criticisms"]; {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160202040617/http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/chq/summary/v009/9.2.maharg.html |date=February 2, 2016 }}, ''[[Children's Literature Association Quarterly]]'', Volume 9, Number 2, pp. 72–73.</ref> His stories also 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 among several of Thurber's works illustrated by [[Marc Simont]]. 

Thurber's prose for ''The New Yorker'' and other venues included numerous humorous essays. A favorite subject, especially toward the end of his life, was the English language. Pieces on this subject included "The Spreading 'You Know'," which decried the overuse of that pair of words in conversation, "The New Vocabularianism", and "What Do You Mean It ''Was'' Brillig?". His short pieces – whether stories, essays or something in between – were referred to as "casuals" by Thurber and the staff of ''The New Yorker''.<ref>{{cite news|last=Sorel|first=Edward|title=The Business of Being Funny|work=The New York Times|date=November 5, 1989|url=https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950DE5D9113CF936A35752C1A96F948260|access-date=August 17, 2007|archive-date=August 31, 2024|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240831020343/https://www.nytimes.com/1989/11/05/books/the-business-of-beeing-funny.html|url-status=live}}</ref>

Thurber wrote a five-part ''New Yorker'' series, between 1947 and 1948, examining in depth the radio soap opera phenomenon, based on near-constant listening and researching over the same period. Leaving nearly no element of these programs unexamined, including their writers, producers, sponsors, performers, and listeners alike, Thurber republished the series in his anthology, ''The Beast in Me and Other Animals'' (1948), under the section title "Soapland." The series was one of the first to examine such a pop-culture phenomenon in depth.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Grauer |first1=Neil A. |title=Remember Laughter: A Life of James Thurber |date=1994 |publisher=University of Nebraska Press |page=101 |url=https://archive.org/details/rememberlaughter0000grau/page/100/mode/2up |access-date=April 8, 2024}}</ref>

The last twenty years of Thurber's life were filled with material and professional success in spite of his blindness. He published at least fourteen books in that era, including ''The Thurber Carnival'' (1945), ''Thurber Country'' (1953), and the extremely popular book about ''New Yorker'' founder/editor [[Harold Ross]], ''The Years with Ross'' (1959). A number of Thurber's short stories were made into movies, including ''[[The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947 film)|The Secret Life of Walter Mitty]]'' in 1947.

===Cartoonist===
While Thurber drew his cartoons in the usual fashion in the 1920s and 1930s, his failing eyesight later required changes. He drew them on very large sheets of paper using a thick black crayon (or on black paper using white chalk, from which they were photographed and the colors reversed for publication). Regardless of method, his cartoons became as noted as his writings; they possessed an eerie, wobbly feel that seems to mirror his idiosyncratic view on life. He once wrote that people said it looked like he drew them under water. [[Dorothy Parker]], a contemporary and friend of Thurber, referred to his cartoons as having the "semblance of unbaked cookies". The last drawing Thurber completed was a self-portrait in yellow crayon on black paper, which was featured as the cover of ''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]'' magazine on July 9, 1951.<ref>{{cite news|title=Time Magazine Cover: James Thurber – July 9, 1951|work=Time Archive: 1923 to the Present|publisher=Time Inc.|date=July 9, 1951|url=http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19510709,00.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061207070014/http://www.time.com/time/covers/0%2C16641%2C19510709%2C00.html|url-status=dead|archive-date=December 7, 2006|access-date=January 31, 2007}}</ref> The same drawing was used for the dust jacket of ''The Thurber Album'' ([[1952 in literature|1952]]).

===Adaptations===
* Thurber teamed with college schoolmate (and actor/director) [[Elliott Nugent]] to write ''[[The Male Animal]]'', a comic drama that became a major Broadway hit in 1939. The play was adapted as a film by the same name in 1942, starring [[Henry Fonda]], [[Olivia de Havilland]] and [[Jack Carson]].
* In 1947 his short story "[[The Secret Life of Walter Mitty]]", was loosely adapted as a [[The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947 film)|film by the same name]]. [[Danny Kaye]] played the title character.
* In 1951 [[United Productions of America]] announced an animated feature to be based on Thurber's work, titled ''Men, Women and Dogs''.<ref name="Priceless">{{cite news|title=Priceless Gift of Laughter|work=Time Archive: 1923 to the Present|publisher=Time Inc.|date=July 9, 1951|url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,806164-1,00.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071016211832/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,806164-1,00.html|url-status=dead|archive-date=October 16, 2007|access-date=January 31, 2007}}</ref> The only part of the ambitious project that was eventually released was the UPA cartoon ''[[The Unicorn in the Garden (film)|The Unicorn in the Garden]]'' (1953).<ref name="Unicorn">{{cite web|title=The Unicorn in the Garden|website=The Big Cartoon Database|url=http://www.bcdb.com/cartoon/725-Unicorn_In_The_Garden.html|archive-url=https://archive.today/20120719100731/http://www.bcdb.com/cartoon/725-Unicorn_In_The_Garden.html|url-status=dead|archive-date=July 19, 2012|access-date=January 31, 2007}}</ref>
* In 1958, Thurber's short story "One Is a Wanderer" was adapted for [[General Electric Theatre]],<ref>Kovner, Leo (1958). [https://www.proquest.com/docview/2338165247/994DF8D53C40493BPQ/28 "Television Reviews: One Is a Wanderer"]; {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240831020510/https://www.proquest.com/docview/2338165247/994DF8D53C40493BPQ/28 |date=August 31, 2024 }}. ''The Hollywood Reporter''. p.&nbsp;9. "A moving tale of lonely despair in a big city, admittedly it's not everybody's meat. Yet the atmosphere of gentle melancholy was compelling, and the sensitive, intelligent performance of Fred MacMurray and the direction of Herschel Daugherty command attention and respect." Retrieved March 14, 2022.</ref> resulting in Emmy nominations for writer [[Samuel A. Taylor|Samuel Taylor]] and director [[Herschel Daugherty]].<ref>[https://www.proquest.com/docview/2338172232/2DC7F3C7FB0444C2PQ/2?&imgSeq=2 "CBS Noses Out NBC in Emmy Nominations Race"]. ''The Hollywood Reporter''. April 14, 1959. p.&nbsp;6. Retrieved March 14, 2022.</ref>
* The 1959 film ''[[The Battle of the Sexes (1959 film)|The Battle of the Sexes]]'' was based on Thurber's 1942 short story "[[The Catbird Seat]]".
* In 1960, Thurber fulfilled a long-standing desire to be on the professional stage and played himself in 88 performances of the revue ''[[A Thurber Carnival]]'' (which echoes the title of his 1945 book, ''The Thurber Carnival''). It was based on a selection of Thurber's stories and cartoon captions. Thurber appeared in the sketch "File and Forget". The sketch consists of Thurber dictating a series of letters in a vain attempt to keep one of his publishers from sending him books he did not order, and the escalating confusion of the replies.<ref name="Bernstein 477">{{cite book|last=Bernstein|first=Burton|title=Thurber|publisher=[[Dodd, Mead & Company]]|year=1975|location=New York|page=[https://archive.org/details/thurberbiography00bern/page/477 477]|isbn=978-0-396-07027-6|url=https://archive.org/details/thurberbiography00bern|url-access=registration}}</ref> Thurber received a [[Special Tony Award]] for the adapted script of the ''Carnival''.<ref name="IBDB">{{cite web|title=A Thurber Carnival|website=Internet Broadway Database|publisher=The Broadway League|url=http://www.ibdb.com/production.asp?ID=2101|access-date=March 1, 2008|archive-date=October 12, 2007|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071012155252/http://ibdb.com/production.asp?ID=2101|url-status=live}}</ref>
* In 1961, "The Secret Life of James Thurber" aired on ''[[The DuPont Show with June Allyson]]''. [[Adolphe Menjou]] appeared in the program as Fitch, and [[Orson Bean]] and [[Sue Randall]] portrayed John and Ellen Monroe.
* In 1969–70, a full series based on Thurber's writings and life, titled ''[[My World and Welcome to It|My World{{nbsp}}... and Welcome to It]],'' was broadcast on [[NBC]]. It starred [[William Windom (actor)|William Windom]] as the Thurber figure, John Monroe. Featuring animated portions in addition to live actors, the show won a 1970 [[Emmy Award]] as the year's best comedy series. Windom won an Emmy as well. He went on to perform Thurber material in a one-man stage show.
* In 1972 another film adaptation, ''[[The War Between Men and Women]]'', starring [[Jack Lemmon]], concludes with an animated version of Thurber's classic anti-war work "The Last Flower".
* In 2013, a new [[The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013 film)|adaptation]] of ''[[The Secret Life of Walter Mitty]]'' was produced, starring [[Ben Stiller]] as the title character.