"James Grover Thurber, Doctor of Humane Letters," intoned the president of Williams College, "cartoonist, playwright, foremost humorist of our day and nation, he has brought to a troubled America the priceless gift of laughter."
The priceless gift for which James Thurber was honored in Williamstown on Commencement Day, 1951, may soon be made available to half the world. United Productions of America, which last year made the Oscar-winning cartoon comedy short, Gerald McBoing-Boing, has announced a forthcoming eight-reel, 80-minute color film—partly animated, partly live—that will be derived solely from Thurber's writings and drawings. U.P.A. crosses its heart & hopes to die that the picture, tentatively titled Men, Women and Dogs, will be not only all Thurber but true Thurber. Shooting will start this year; release is scheduled for next year.
Men, Women and Dogs will open with Thurber himself giving an illustrated lecture on a theme that brought him fame both as a writer and an artist—the Domination of the American Male by the American Female. The fact that Thurber will talk throughout the entire first reel should leave him with a decided histrionic edge over Somerset Maugham, who merely introduced Quartet and Trio, the films made from his own stories.
Is It Really Art? Although Maugham may have made a dressier screen appearance than Thurber presumably will (on Thurber's gaunt frame his expensive clothes give an unfurled effect), several ardent Thurberites have already pointed out that Maugham cannot draw. But, as the question has often been phrased in his home town, Columbus, Ohio: "Can Thurber, either?" For some time now, a psychiatrist has been writing Thurber, offering to cure him of his drawing.
Whether Thurber's drawing requires psychiatry or not, a great many people, including New Yorker Editor Harold Ross, cannot get enough of it. A series of murals, executed by Thurber years ago in Manhattan for Tim Costello's Third Avenue saloon (known to its clientele as "The Chop House of Broken Dreams"), is one of the extracurricular features of the establishment. The late Paul Nash, British painter and art critic, once declared Thurber "a master of impressionistic line," comparing him to the early Matisse.
That enraged most of the professional artists Thurber knew, and sent him into delighted guffaws; not only has he never had a lesson, but he has never taken his drawing seriously. He loves to tell of the time Ross was asked why he ran such a fifth-rate artist as Thurber in his magazine. "Thurber's a third-rate artist," Ross snapped loyally.
Of Thurber's work, which comprises 17 volumes of prose and pictures, Nobel Prizeman T. S. Eliot said last year: "It is a form of humor which is also a way of saying something serious. There is a criticism of life at the bottom of it. It is serious and even somber. Unlike so much humor, it is not merely a criticism of manners—that is, of the superficial aspects of society at a given moment—but something more profound. His writings and also his illustrations are capable of surviving the immediate environment and time out of which they spring. To some extent, they will be a document of the age they belong to."