--- description: Remembering the great New Yorker magazine humorist and cartoonist, and the man who invented Walter Mitty, in a series of pictures from 1945. title: James Thurber: A Portrait of the Artist Who Invented Walter Mitty image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt88d6434d9c3e0d71/69884b07f887dc6aaee8fe49/131219-james-thurber-1945-01.jpg?branch=production&width=2400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # James Thurber: Portrait of the Man Who Invented Walter Mitty by [Liz Ronk](/author/liz-ronk/) ## Liz Ronk Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Dec 23, 2013 12:13 AM CUT  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](/author/liz-ronk/) ## Liz Ronk Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Dec 23, 2013 12:13 AM CUT 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/ "undefined") 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/ "undefined") 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. Bob Landry—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3878571/james-thurber-photos-of-the-man-who-invented-walter-mitty/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3878571/james-thurber-photos-of-the-man-who-invented-walter-mitty/"},"headline":"James Thurber: Portrait of the Man Who Invented Walter Mitty","datePublished":"2013-12-23T00:13:49.000Z","dateModified":"2026-05-11T05:03:48.346Z","description":"As James Thurber's imaginative brilliance enlivens the pop-culture landscape in 'The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,' LIFE.com remembers the great humorist in a series of pictures from 1945.","url":"https://time.com/3878571/james-thurber-photos-of-the-man-who-invented-walter-mitty/","keywords":["Cartoons","1945"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt88d6434d9c3e0d71/69884b07f887dc6aaee8fe49/131219-james-thurber-1945-01.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Liz Ronk","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/liz-ronk/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt88d6434d9c3e0d71/69884b07f887dc6aaee8fe49/131219-james-thurber-1945-01.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"James Thurber","caption":"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.","creditText":"Bob Landry—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3878571/james-thurber-photos-of-the-man-who-invented-walter-mitty/","name":"James Thurber: Portrait of the Man Who Invented Walter Mitty"}}]}] ```