--- title: James Thurber: A Portrait of the Artist Who Invented Walter Mitty description: Remembering the great New Yorker magazine humorist and cartoonist, and the man who invented Walter Mitty, in a series of pictures from 1945. canonical: https://time.com/3878571/james-thurber-photos-of-the-man-who-invented-walter-mitty/ author: Liz Ronk article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2013-12-23T00:13:49.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-05-11T05:03:48.346Z og:title: James Thurber: A Portrait of the Artist Who Invented Walter Mitty og:description: Remembering the great New Yorker magazine humorist and cartoonist, and the man who invented Walter Mitty, in a series of pictures from 1945. og:url: https://time.com/3878571/james-thurber-photos-of-the-man-who-invented-walter-mitty/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt88d6434d9c3e0d71/69884b07f887dc6aaee8fe49/131219-james-thurber-1945-01.jpg?branch=production&width=965&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 965 og:image:height: 543 og:image:alt: James Thurber og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: James Thurber: A Portrait of the Artist Who Invented Walter Mitty twitter:description: Remembering the great New Yorker magazine humorist and cartoonist, and the man who invented Walter Mitty, in a series of pictures from 1945. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt88d6434d9c3e0d71/69884b07f887dc6aaee8fe49/131219-james-thurber-1945-01.jpg?branch=production&width=965&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # James Thurber: Portrait of the Man Who Invented Walter Mitty > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. by [Liz Ronk](https://time.com/author/liz-ronk/) ## Liz Ronk Dec 23, 2013 12:13 AM UTC  Caption from LIFE. "James Thurber draws with a tremulous hand on large sheets of yellow paper. Powerful watchmaker's magnifier helps his good eye to see what he is doing." Caption from LIFE. "James Thurber draws with a tremulous hand on large sheets of yellow paper. Powerful watchmaker's magnifier helps his good eye to see what he is doing."Bob Landry—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images by [Liz Ronk](https://time.com/author/liz-ronk/) ## Liz Ronk Dec 23, 2013 12:13 AM UTC The man LIFE magazine once called “the most disturbingly funny humorist in the U.S.” was both a marvelous writer and a sharp, wry cartoonist. “His characters,” LIFE noted (and this was as true of his writings as it was of his deceptively simple drawings), “inhabit a world of permanent desperation.” Three new, acclaimed films explore the dark stories and tangled loyalties that make up Israel's network of Palestinian informants Today, as the [movie adaptation](http://insidemovies.ew.com/2013/11/25/secret-life-of-walter-mitty-trailer-2/) of one of his most famous stories, “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” lands in theaters all over the world, Thurber is remembered as a 20th-century cultural force on a par with other famous [_New Yorker_](http://www.newyorker.com/) contributors like E.B. White, Charles Addams and John Cheever. For countless readers, though, it was Thurber — perhaps more than any other writer or cartoonist — who most reliably defined that fabled magazine’s tone and its visual style in the 1930s and ’40s. Here, as James Thurber’s imaginative brilliance again enlivens the pop-culture landscape, this time in a film starring Ben Stiller and set in, among other places, LIFE magazine’s New York offices, LIFE.com remembers the great humorist in a series of pictures from 1945\. Here he is, compensating for his famously poor eyesight — he lost one eye as a child when his brother shot him with an arrow — while creating a cartoon (below). The lines are a little wobbly, and the caption is written in just-legible handwriting, but the classic battle-of-the-sexes tension that Thurber made his particular area of study and parody for decades survive undimmed. Thurber portrait: Bob Landry—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Caption from LIFE. "James Thurber draws with a tremulous hand on large sheets of yellow paper. Powerful watchmaker's magnifier helps his good eye to see what he is doing." Bob Landry—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Caption from LIFE. "Thurber draws a cartoon in 6 minutes, did this one for LIFE to show his speed." Bob Landry—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Not published in LIFE. James Thurber, 1945. 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