Yesterday, I posted a 20-minute video of an interview with the great humorist James Thurber, the only video I’ve ever seen of him. In a social media exchange afterwards, I noted that our family had a couple of Thurber books, but what probably most pushed me to reading him was something else entirely. The classical music station WFMT has had a wonderful show every Saturday night for over 50 years, The Midnight Special, (which was created by its then-staff announcer Mike Nichols) which was folk music, comedy, Broadway and odds-and-ends. And they would periodically play selections from the 1960 stage revue, A Thurber Carnival, which was adaptations of a wide range of Thurber short stories. It had a great cast of character actors including Tom Ewell (who most famously starred in the movie The Seven Year Itch, opposite Marilyn Monroe), Peggy Cass, two of my faves Paul Ford and John McGiver, Alice Ghostley, and others. One of my favorite scenes from the show that The Midnight Special played a lot is also one of my favorite Thurber stories, “File and Forget,” a first-person story about a hellish time that Thurber supposedly had trying to correct with his publisher about a delivery problem of one of his books. On stage, the role of 'James Thurber' was played by Tom Ewell. Discussing this with a friend who grew up in New York, he said that he actually saw the show when it ran there. Lucky him. (By the way, as I noted yesterday, the real Thurber was a bit of a ham, and into the run it turned out that for a month the Broadway production had James Thurber himself play himself in that one scene! There was one particular challenge: Thurber was legally blind. Because of this, he couldn’t make the entrances and exits properly. What they did was build a sort of conveyor belt with a chair on it. Thurber simply sat in the chair and it would roll on and off the stage. I’ve tried to find video or even just audio of this for decades, but so far…alas, nothing. But it seems almost impossible, if not malpractice that no one with the production filmed it, or recorded it, even if just off the sound board. So, I live in hope.) Anyway, I thought that it was only proper to play “File and Forget” here. I’ve found a few video versions of it from small productions, but I’m going to go with this great truly cast here, even if audio only. They're just too good. And the whimsical background music is spot-on perfect.
1 Comment
Nell Minow
8/30/2022 07:10:00 am
Delightful!
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AuthorRobert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. Feedspot Badge of Honor
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