CREATED BY: James Thurber
FIRST APPEARANCE: The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1939)
AREAS OF INFLUENCE: The mild-mannered hero of humorist James Thurber’s much-loved (and widely anthologized) short story finds escape from a domineering wife and other bullying figures through wild daydreams in which he imagines himself as a brave Navy pilot, a dashing surgeon and a cold-blooded killer taking the stand in a courtroom. There’s a comic, if uneasy, disconnect between the milquetoast protagonist (on whom even a parking-lot attendant heaps insults) and his wildly heroic flights of fancy — glossed over, in typical Hollywood fashion, in the 1947 Danny Kaye (pictured) film based on the story. Whether delusional or harmless, a “Walter Mitty” is any meek or ineffectual type who retreats to a world of the imagined and contrived.
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