More Thurber From Stage Magazine
What you’re seeing are James Thurber’s illustrations for his December 1936 Stage Magazine review of Noel Coward’s “Tonight At 8:30.”
(cover below by Abe Birnbaum)*
Harrison Kinney, in his massive and terrific Thurber biography, James Thurber: His Life And Times (Henry Holt, 1995), tells us this brief story about Thurber driving to Boston to see Coward’s play:
“In the fall of 1936 Stage magazine accepted Thurber’s offer to review Noel Coward’s Tonight At 8:30 in Boston, a hundred and forty-five mile drive from Litchfield [Thurber’s home at the time]. Thurber was at the wheel. He and Helen dined with Coward; Thurber found him a ‘swell fellow,’…
They started back that night, when Thurber supposed the traffic would not be that heavy…Yet, it was still Thurber driving at night. When Helen thought they had passed a turn they should have made, Thurber put the Ford in reverse and backed up to see a road sign in his headlights, went off the highway and got stuck. It took a road crew to pry out the Ford after a long interval…”
My thanks to Thurber’s granddaughter, Sara Sauers for sending these drawings (and more from Stage — you’ll see them in coming weeks). In an email back-and-forth with Sara, I wondered about Stage‘s use of flat color backgrounds on her grandfather’s drawings. Surely Thurber himself didn’t provide his drawings with (in the case above) the green field you see. Sara responded: “I expect they (the designers) might have been trying to separate Thurber in Stage from Thurber in the New Yorker.”
The short history of Stage is so intertwined with The New Yorker, it sounds highly likely that’s the case. Former New Yorker folks peopled its masthead, and the magazine received financial backing — about a million dollars — from Raoul Fleischmann, the fellow who put up the majority of cash to start-up The New Yorker. (Kinney’s book goes into detail about all this).
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Thurber’s A-Z Entry:
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
*Abe Birnbaum’s A-Z Entry:
Abe Birnbaum Born, New York City, 1899. Died June 19, 1966, New York City. New Yorker work: 1929 -1974. Mr. Birnbaum began at the New Yorker as a cartoonist, contributing a handful before switching to cover work, of which he produced 141. He also provided spot drawings and illustrations. According to Mr. Birnbaum’s New York Times obit, his work was exhibited at The Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Carnegie Institute.