Word: thurberism
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...James Thurber doubted that Truman has much political future. The President always begins his radio talks at 1:30 p.m. (E.S.T.), Thurber pointed out to an inter viewer, and thus does injustice to housewives : "Needless to say, they would much rather hear Road of Life-and Dr. Malone than President Truman, and his failure to distribute his time will probably lose him the election...
Adams House will start the week's festivities on Friday with a gale Christmas dinner for Gold Coasters and their Indies, followed by a production of Thurber's "Male Animal." Dancing will conclude the evening's celebration. Dunster will be competing with Adams that night as the two Houses present the same bill. Their dramatic falcuts will be concentrated on Outon's "Peace in Our Time," starting Heleu MeCleskey...
...ignoscenti, however, a word or two of explanation may still be necessary. Let it be said, then, that Samuel Goldwyn and Friends have taken a little but justly-famous Thurber short story from a "New Yorker" of a few years back about mild, henpecked Walter Mitty and his daydreams of grandeur--and upon it they have based a full-sized picture, complete with Goldwyn Girls. The original was simple, poignant, and pathetically amusing. The greatly expanded, glamorized, seat-song-studded cinema product is not; as indeed it could never be. But is this kind of comparison a fair one? Does...
Forgetting all about Thurber and the "New Yorker", and considering "Walter Mitty" as just another motion picture, we can measure it by its own individual merits--and we can find it wanting. Perhaps this feeling comes because Danny Kaye cannot seem to exude any of the real Mitty atmosphere; perhaps Kaye's species of facial-contortions-and-mouth-noises humor has begun to be rather tedious; perhaps slapstick is still, as always, a poor substitute for wit. Or perhaps the five dream-episodes, (three from the original story), funny as they may be, just don't completely redeem a routine...
Unseen Harvests: A Treasury of Teaching (Macmillan; $5) covers everything from Confucius' China to James Thurber's U.S.A., in poems, essays, snitches from novels and snatches of conversation ("There is now less flogging in our great schools," complained Sam Johnson, "but then, there is less learned there; so that what the boys get at one end, they lose at the other"). But most of the chapters are rather unhappy reminiscences...