Word: thurberism
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During the war years, Laughton was restless. He tried to lose himself in his collection of art (Renoir, Cezanne, Utrillo), and in organizing classical jam sessions. Then he began dropping into U.S. Army hospitals, where he read aloud from Charles Dickens, James Thurber, Aesop, Thomas Wolfe, the Bible. Says Laughton: "The men in the hospital, unlike the people in the theaters, when they didn't understand said so out loud and if I didn't understand either I learned to admit it . . . And when I did understand and they did not, I knew I wasn't doing...
Both the plot and the women of Westward the Women struck me as being ludicrous. The girls belong in a James Thurber story, not in a Western. The plot and dialogue are fit only for female monsters. I therefore recommend this motion picture to all women with amazon aspirations; the boys should stay home...
...reckless barnstorming and adventuring. Editor Jensen has unaccountably omitted the most vivid snapshot of that era, William Faulkner's Death Drag. But he has snagged some other good things: Anne Lindbergh reminisces about a weird Alaskan flight; Antoine de Saint-Exupery describes a Patagonian cyclone; and James Thurber, in his wonderful story, The Greatest Man in the World, draws a satiric profile of Pal Smurch, the cocky little urchin who flew nonstop around the world-the adulation went to his head so badly that he had to be pushed out the window...
...Ross furiously hired & fired, cajoled and cursed, trying to get the kind of magazine he wanted. In the first year and a half alone, about 100 staffers were fired, many with a muttered apology from Ross: "We need geniuses here." Gradually Ross found what he needed: James Thurber, E. B. White, Ogden Nash, John O'Hara, S. J. Perelman, Peter Arno, Helen Hokinson, 0. Soglow...
...Ross himself (who eventually got $50,000 a year) had his salary computed every month, based on earnings. Once, when Ross was explaining things to a new managing editor, he said, "I am surrounded by idiots and children." At that point, a copy boy burst in, shouting: "Mr. Thurber is standing on a ledge outside the window and threatening to commit suicide." (Actually, Thurber was merely sitting on the ledge to get a whiff of fresh air.) Ross turned to the editor. "See?" he said...