Walter Mitty
| Walter James Mitty | |
|---|---|
| First appearance | "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" The New Yorker, March 18, 1939 |
| Created by | James Thurber |
| Portrayed by |
Danny Kaye (1947) Ben Stiller (2013) |
| Information | |
| Nickname(s) | "The Old Man" (in one fantasy) |
| Occupation | unknown; various fantasy occupations |
| Title | Commander, Doctor (in fantasies) |
| Spouse(s) | unnamed except as "Mrs. Mitty" |
Walter Mitty is a fictional character in James Thurber's short story "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty", first published in The New Yorker on March 18, 1939, and in book form in My World and Welcome to It in 1942. Thurber loosely based the character, a daydreamer, on his friend Walter Mithoff. It was made into a film in 1947 starring Danny Kaye, with a remake directed by and starring Ben Stiller released in 2013.
Mitty is a meek, mild man with a vivid fantasy life. In a few dozen paragraphs he imagines himself a wartime pilot, an emergency-room surgeon, and a devil-may-care killer. Although the story has humorous elements, there is a darker and more significant message underlying the text, leading to a more tragic interpretation of the Mitty character. Even in his heroic daydreams, Mitty does not triumph, several fantasies being interrupted before the final one sees Mitty dying bravely in front of a firing squad. In the brief snatches of reality that punctuate Mitty's fantasies the audience meets well-meaning but insensitive strangers who inadvertently rob Mitty of some of his remaining dignity.
The character's name has come into more general use to refer to an ineffectual dreamer and appears in several dictionaries.The American Heritage Dictionary defines a Walter Mitty as "an ordinary often ineffectual person who indulges in fantastic daydreams of personal triumphs". The most famous of Thurber's inept male protagonists, the character is considered "the archetype for dreamy, hapless, Thurber Man".
When referencing actor Errol Flynn, Warner Brothers studio head, Jack L. Warner, noted in his autobiography, My First Hundred Years in Hollywood, "To the Walter Mittys of the world he [Flynn] was all the heroes in one magnificent, sexy, animal package".
...
Wikipedia