Latest Addition To The Spill Archive: “A Thurber Carnival” Program
Last Spring, while visiting the Thurber House, I ran into the poster shown below for A Thurber Carnival.
It immediately brought to mind Burton Bernstein‘s passage about Thurber returning to Columbus for the play’s premier:
“On January 7, 1960, A Thurber Carnival opened at the Hartman Theater in Columbus, Ohio…Of all his homecomings, this one was by far the most spectacular. Governor Mike de Salle proclaimed ‘James Thurber Week’ in Ohio…Mayor W. Ralston Westlake presented him with Columbus’s first Distinguished Son citation. Thurber ate it all up…”*
Recently a program from the premiere (shown below) popped up on Ebay — I’d never seen one before. An added extra: the holder of this particular program pencilled out “The Godfather and His Godchild” and noted, “- Out”
It’s fun to think about this program being handed out back then in Columbus, during that exciting moment for Thurber in his hometown, before the play went on to a successful run on Broadway.
_______________________________________________________________________________
*the passage appears on page 472 of Burton Bernstein’s Thurber: A Biography (Dodd Mead, 1975)
_______________________________________________________________________________
Thurber’s Entry on the Spill‘s A-Z:
James Thurber Born, Columbus, Ohio, December 8, 1894. Died 1961, New York City. New Yorker work: 1927 -1961, with several pieces run posthumously. According to the New Yorker’s legendary editor, William Shawn, “In the early days, a small company of writers, artists, and editors — E.B. White, James Thurber, Peter Arno, and Katharine White among them — did more to make the magazine what it is than can be measured.”
Key cartoon collection: The Seal in the Bedroom and Other Predicaments (Harper & Bros., 1932). Key anthology (writings & drawings): The Thurber Carnival (Harper & Row, 1945). There have been a number of Thurber biographies. Burton Bernstein’s Thurber (Dodd, Mead, 1975) and Harrison Kinney’s James Thurber: His Life and Times (Henry Holt & Co., 1995) are essential. Website