I was familiar with the character but not as familiar as I thought I was. For some reason I mixed up Danny Kaye and Don Knotts in my head. So Walter was a fish.
Go figure.
Or maybe he was Wally Cox.
I’m under 40 (although not by much), and I read the story about him in high school.
I would be inclined to assume that most other people read the story when they were in high school.
That said, I wouldn’t call Walter Mitty a well known character in US culture, because prior to this movie coming out, I don’t know of anything other than the original story which referenced Walter Mitty.
Although there probably are dozens of things referencing him, and I just don’t remember them, because I’m bad at remembering pop culture stuff.
43 years old here. I had to read the story in school, but don’t remember what grade. I believe that we also watched the Danny Kaye movie. My wife, however, is 38 and loves all things 40’s and 50’s (she had White Christmas on repeat last week) never heard of it.
Never heard of it til I started seeing ads for the new movie
I enjoyed reading the original short story at school.
Loved the Danny Kaye movie too.
The character sounds vaguely familiar. I never heard of the author before. The book was not a reading requirement for me in school.
I’m 33, and had never heard the name until I caught an ad for the recent film.
OK, good to know. I was in honors and then AP English, and I even ended up with a bachelor’s in English Literature (although I concentrated on the Romantic era of poets) yet somehow never came across the name. I vaguely know who James Thurber was (I knew he was a writer or journalist of some sort; I had no idea he was also a cartoonist, though), but looking through a list of his works, I don’t recall ever reading any of them.
40, was assigned some Thurber over the years in school but don’t believe this was among them. Familiar with the Danny Kaye movie.
Maybe his name has faded with time. In the 1970s, a children’s program on network TV (not PBS) was called “The Secret Life of Waldo Kitty” The Secret Lives of Waldo Kitty - Wikipedia, presumably with the expectation that the kids would recognize the reference (I did).
Thurber in his heyday was the Great American Humorist. His collections of short pieces, his cartoons, and his children’s books all sold like crazy. He died in 1961, and the 50s weren’t his best work in any case. He hated everything new and he would really have been out of place in the 60s, when humor suddenly was radically different outside of the pages of the New Yorker, which hung on to the past in a deathgrip.
I can’t think of any good reason why younger people should remember him. I was already an oddball in college in the late 60s for knowing and caring about the older humorists. If he was going out of style then, he’s a historic curio today.
I wasn’t assigned this particular story, but I did read it in high school because I’d enjoyed a Thurber story I was assigned, “The Night the Bed Fell”. Earlier, I’d read a story with essentially the same plot about a character named Sylvia Smith-Smith. (Coincidentally, both her parents were named Smith, and her mother insisted that their daughter use “both” their names.) I can’t remember the author, and can’t find it on Google.
I remember the series, read him in school and read him out of school - my parents had a few books with stories by Thurber in them and a couple of books by Thurber.
And the old American Movie Classics used to play the Danny Kaye movie fairly frequently, as did regular non cable TV stations in the 60s and 70s. I think that I have seen the movie at least 3 or 4 dozen times over the years [born in 1961, and I can remember seeing a LOT of Danny Kaye movies on TV in the 70s.]
Just remembered a Saturday morning TV series called The Secret Life of Waldo Kitty, about a daydreaming cat. (He was Captain Kirk, once.) I only got the joke after reading Thurber’s story.
Here’s the Google Ngram for Walter Mitty Google Ngram Viewer: Walter Mitty - the name is still referenced fairly commonly, but less so than in previous decades…
52 years old and very familiar with the story. Until I read this thread, I assumed it was a pretty iconic story and character, and that anyone reasonably well-read would be familiar with the name.
Anyway, I love Thurber. He is in the select group of writers that I actually laugh out loud reading. “The Dog that Bit People.” “The Night the Bed Fell.” “If Grant Had Been Drinking at Appomattox.” Great stuff. I still occasionally chide my Basset and Labrador Retriever by saying, “Ba-a-a-ad Scotty dogs!” They never get the reference, though it always amuses me.
I thought that Walter Mitty the character had long since transcended the story, so that people knew what it meant to call a person Walter Mitty whether they had read the story or not. (Just like everyone–I think?-- knows what a Horatio Alger story is, even though damned few people nowadays read Alger.) Perhaps I was wrong.
I’m 38 and not even American, but this. Knew of the character and the general idea of his story, including the firing squad. Not sure from where in the ether I plucked the knowledge.
Not really quixotic, since Walter Mitty only dreams of being heroic. His life remains mundane and colorless.
What about those of us between forty and fifty? I read the story in school and possibly others by him. Perhaps I remember it partly for being set in Connecticut?
Well, I doubt it was originally published on a website.