James Thurber and E.B. White were first introduced by mutual friends in 1927. White, a staff writer at The New Yorker, enthusiastically championed the newly hired Thurber’s “doodling” and went on to collaborate with him. Here, Thurber addresses Katherine Angell, White’s wife, lambasting a production of The Male Animal, a play he co-wrote with Elliott Nugent. At the time, Thurber was “preoccupied” with writing a play based on his experience working at The New Yorker with his late boss, Harold Ross.
West Cornwall, Connecticut
August 1, 1952
My dear Katharine:
Helen and I getting envious of you two, because you have more wrong than we have, in spite of our low RBC, her rash, and my hyperthyroid which was around plus 60 two months ago, but was down to 24 two weeks ago. Also, I cut my eyeball with a handkerchief and it was a near thing for a while. I got Bruce out of Englewood on Sunday, in spite of his bursitis, and he doused me with Cortisone. Then you have to turn up with a fancy virus of the liver. Helen and I both hope it is bearable in that hospital and that you won’t have to take glucose as long as I did in the railroad hospital in Virginia. Do you remember when we all we worried about was love?…
We took Helen’s sister and Janey Williams to “The Male Animal” Sunday, and it was a lousy performance and a basket supper audience. You could smell the Juicy Fruit and the popcorn. Elliot left out lines and missed an important cue because he was thinking about my piece in the TIMES. I have got two letters about it favorable, and maybe ten favorable comments. People are too preoccupied to bother, but a few professional conversationalists will take me apart, and I am told that one named Schlamm already has. Writes in Freedom or New Freedom. A few hysterical and crazy women write me about the stereotype maid in the play or the obvious fact as shown by Harvey Breit’s interview that I think dead or mangled soldiers are funny, but 99% of our women go on listening to soap operas and reading movie magazines.
I had lunch with Gus in New York one day, and with Honey the next. Helen says Honey’s face has become kindly and this is almost too much for me. I’ve always dreamed of hitting her with a heavy glass ashtray in my seventies and here she is on her way to becoming sainted. Rosie is in summer school and so is her best beau. She will be twenty-one in nine weeks and rejoices that she can then bypass her mother, who constantly wants to have little talks…
Malcolm Cowley is going to do a piece about me for the REPORTER, we didn’t think the Unguentine caption was funny; my book has sold 25,000 copies; the play is only grossing ten thousand, but that’s comparatively good and it will pick up.
Helen and I send you all our love and best wishes. Get out of that place and back home.
As ever,
James Thurber
From The Thurber Letters: The Wit, Wisdom, and Surprising Life of James Thurber. Edited by Harrison Kinney, with Rosemary Thurber. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003. Print.
FURTHER READING
Watch a clip of the film adaptation of Thurber and Nugent’s The Male Animal.
A sample of Thurber and White’s collaboration, Is Sex Necessary?
Read White’s contribution to the Bryn Mawr Alumnae Bulletin, inspired by alumna Angell.