Secrets in The Secret Life – the Several Renditions of Walter Mitty

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty was an original short story, very short, in fact, first published in The New Yorker Magazine in March of 1939. It was next part of Thurber’s book published by Harcourt Brace in 1942, My World and Welcome to It. It was first made into a full-length motion picture released in 1947, starring Danny Kaye and Virginia Mayo at the height of Kaye’s comedic, leading-man stardom. The story was again made into a movie released in 2013, starring Ben Stiller, Sean Penn, and Kristen Wiig.

Anyone who read the short story prior to the movies being made might very reasonably have wondered how anyone could see sufficient material for a full-length movie or to justify the expense. A feature film is no small endeavor. Neither one of the movies based on this very short story is a low-budget project. A short film would handle it, including the daydreams and that alone would not be cheap.

For better or worse, I happened to see the Danny Kaye film before having read the Thurber story. I was a big fan of Danny Kaye in the late 1960’s and 1970’s growing up watching television recycle movies to new audiences, which parallels how writers and composers try to get the most out of their work by re-using and re-publishing. Sequels, prequels, different cuts, dance versions, remixes, by any other name, re-using the same or re-edited material is one way to maximize the monetary return on creative effort.

For those unfamiliar, Danny Kaye was a kind of cinema clown, capable of a wide range of performance, including singing and dancing, physical and verbal comedy. Short of Jerry Lewis’s utterly idiotic and over-the-top buffoonish antics, he could dip into zany flights of manic silliness that did not cause my mother and father to stop watching and smiling. He could also play highly sympathetic dramatic moments, especially the kind used to suck the audience into how pathetically unmanly his character was compared to the macho types invariably in his films as character foils and comedic contrast. That was a ploy almost always used at Kaye’s hero’s lowest moment, the dark before the dawn.

Kaye was always presented as the kind of clown who could be a romantic interest for the hottest leading ladies of the screen, even prior to his crossover in the narrative, into traditional acts of heroism. He and Virginia Mayo made at least five movies* for MGM in the 1940’s together. Mayo did for him what Ginger Rogers did for Fred Astaire – gave him sex appeal in the movies.

Funny guys are not cinematically or culturally sexy by default. Intellectuals and sensitive men may be just as manly in the real world in civilized company, maybe more so than actual overtly aggressive guys or “men of action.” But in escapist fantasy and the movies, the archetypical hero is ultimately a man of aggressive action. Even when it is an act of self-sacrifice, the heroic act is almost always violent or at least dangerous. Even the peaceful guy gets beat up or killed, standing up for something.

There are a number of recurring and annoying themes in those concepts, false dichotomies being the most obvious. Any person can in one moment be sensitive and caring, and at another time quite the opposite. Psychopaths are often superficially charming. A big galoot can be both funny and manly.

False dichotomies and arbitrary superficial contrasts come up more frequently in popular thinking to assert ideological truths. In entertainment historically as our world has become more complex, so, too, have the ranges of social behavior in roles accepted in life and in fiction. The arbitrary superficial contrasts too often get taken too seriously both culturally and in personal behavior. Sometimes identified as “feminization,” these developments in respect to male heroes are worth considering on their own, and of course have been. I bring them up here to be sure that aspect of the main topic is not lost.

To complicate matters further, the joke of the little or funny guy, or the wimp, outwitting the big stereotypically heroic man has been subtly crossbred with the bildungsroman concept of an emerging hero. The dirty stable boy who is the only one capable of removing the sword from the stone or using the Force to destroy the Death Star is the same character arc as the nerd or clown who one day strikes back and wins universal admiration and sex. This fairy tale concept comes up much earlier than the Mittyesque iteration in movies, but it is in movies it takes its most overtly pernicious forms.

Jerry Lewis is seldom if ever the sexy guy. That was reserved for Dean Martin, his sexy alter ego. Woody Allen played on the wimp as love interest joke, and then started playing it as if it were not a joke, because in “real life” we all know wimps and ugly guys often get the gorgeous gals; or as our understanding of actual sexuality and roles has expanded to reflect the true range of desire, the less than gorgeous person can attract the gorgeous by hook or by crook for many reasons.

Again, that is a subject well worth wallowing in. Everyone loves to roll around in his or her notions of whys and wherefores of these matters of the heart and social calculation. I bring it up here just to be sure we all have it in our minds. But it is not the main point and, frankly, it is a less intellectually interesting, which is also why it is so readily diverting. The conclusions we jump to about why people are attracted to each other all draw upon the fantasies and speculations of our common Mittyness: “If only I had this or that, did this or that, I would attract a surplus of attention!” We fantasize according to our ideas about what is desirable, what characteristics make a hero heroic, admirable, respected, and sexy.

Thurber’s short story is an abridged revisioning of the classic story of Sinbad the Porter and Sinbad the Sailor. Bruno Bettelheim gives an excellent, worthwhile summary and analysis in The Uses of Enchantment – The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales, pp. 83-86. Published by Knopf in the mid-1970’s, Bettelheim’s book makes no reference to Walter Mitty. The only place a cursory search finds Mitty and Bettelheim referenced together is in The A to Z of Fantasy Literature by Brian Stableford, page 136, published by Scarecrow Press, 2009. Sinbad is not mentioned in this book in this section on “escapism” but does first occur on page 163, interesting perhaps for those who like to make random connections.

For something so obviously popular and universal, there seems to be a remarkable lack of public interest in serious psychological analysis of escapist fantasizing. It seems to me people are seriously running away from thinking about it. They want to engage in it all the time but do not care to understand why or what its actual impact on them is, unless it gets obviously out of control.

Oh sure, yeah, fantasies to help us cope with unpleasant realities, step right up, we know, we know. We all know we should be using our precious time and attention to address the problems in our lives; but everyone can use some downtime, and wouldn’t it be nice to slip into those daydreams, you know, like a cigarette break or a quick click to social media now and then?  

Thurber’s Mitty story though it be short is fiercely attractive to the imagination because it taps into psychological, cultural archetypes. The original story is only a few pages, just enough to read on a quick break. Its form is a byproduct of the hectic tempo of industrial and post-industrial living while also representing the reprieve from a truly slavish grind with little or no expectation of leisure time or the means to enjoy anything but sleep.

The New Yorker itself and the publishing industry is also a byproduct of industrialization. It is an outcome of and income source for creativity and it represents broader trends in history and lifestyle. That a person could make a literary living outside of busking, literally putting a hat down on a street corner and starting to tell stories, is and was a wonderful thing. It was a long road to get there, along with other broader gains for working people and class shifts which allowed extra time and money to indulge in activities not focused on strictly “making a living.”

Indeed, the fact that making a living has come not only to include creative and, frankly, utterly materially useless activities and productions, but also to reward those activities far and away beyond practical industries for the top earners indicates an unbelievable shift in values. Make no mistake here. I am not needlessly denigrating the hard, persistent, and more frequently unrewarded work it takes to become a great athlete, actor, writer, or any of the jobs “the little people” do to create marvelous diversions for the greater good of our all-too-often miserable human condition. I am trying to frame these matters in ways we mostly do not think about usefully.

When someone starts in on how something or other is “not practical,” it is always rhetorically diverting away from the reality that the immediately impractical in fact can pay off in real material terms for reasons of actual values versus lies about what’s important. The uses of escapism are no longer personal and private. They are big business. Walter Mitty’s story is just one example of how big things can have small beginnings.

The original story, however, in the medium of the established, commercialized, printed word, only told the small truth of ordinary personal escapism into imaginary heroics. It was both a product of and an appeal to strictly bourgeois values and a common middle-class understanding of human relationships.

The original story implies that Mitty has a stereotypical middle-class marriage in all respects. The name “Walter Mitty” smacks of middle-class ordinariness. His depicted relationship with his wife defines the major oppression in his otherwise insignificant life. The broader circumstances of him, what he does, how he lives, etc., are left to the audience’s common understanding of mid-twentieth century, relatively stable economic, political, and social relationships. Even as the world was already beginning WWII, we find Mitty and his wife on an ordinary day having ordinary plans for mundane errands.

The actual details of his daydreams are worth close consideration. What constitutes this intentionally boring character’s notions of heroic escapism are culturally revealing. They are of course based on clichés. There is a decided immaturity, a reversion to boyish ideas about what’s exciting. Wikipedia summarizes nicely these heroic notions and the mundane slights in the plot which trigger the escapist fantasies:

• The powering up of the “Navy hydroplane” in the opening scene is followed by Mrs. Mitty’s complaint that Mitty is “driving too fast”.
• Mitty’s turn as a brilliant surgeon immediately follows his taking off and putting on his gloves as a surgeon dons surgical gloves, and driving past a hospital.
• The courtroom drama cliché “Perhaps this will refresh your memory”, which begins the third fantasy, follows Mitty’s attempt to remember what his wife told him to buy, when he hears a newsboy shouting about “the Waterbury Trial”
• Mitty’s fourth daydream comes as he waits for his wife and picks up an old copy of Liberty, reading “Can Germany Conquer the World Through the Air?”, and envisions himself fighting Germany while volunteering to pilot a plane normally piloted by two people.
• The closing firing-squad scene comes when Mitty is standing against a wall, smoking.

In Sinbad, a product of an older, originally oral tradition, the story makes more explicit the toxic character of immature notions of adventure and heroic action. The subconscious emphasis is squarely on the escape storytelling provides. Sinbad the Sailor, a materially successful older man, recounts the exploits of his youth to his alter ego, Sinbad the Porter each night. Like any good fish story or tall tale, these fabulous stories need to be taken with a grain of salt. But at the same time, the storyteller characterizes them as appropriately the stuff of youth and distances his current self from his former “bad” and “carnal” self.

Popularized modern psychology has both generalized and sublimated a great deal of knowledge about how the human mind works, its foibles and follies, as well as its functioning. That allows for audiences to refocus and really get into the fantasy as a desirable outcome in the waking world. It flips the lid on a Pandora’s Box for a great deal of personal and public indulgence, and releases, along with hope at the bottom, a horde of childish fantasies in the worst sense. This is also of course a product of improved margins for survival. The same material and social benefits which have allowed for the monetization of more and more elaborate storytelling also have allowed adults to revert to juvenile behavior without everyone starving to death or killing each other. At least so far and outside of extreme cases where cults, grift, pathological compulsiveness, or substance abuse is involved.

But let’s move on. I know I am touching on many matters I hope will inspire further consideration, particularly in terms of values and what humans want to spend time, attention, and resources on, and how that is made possible, and why.

How intellectual and imaginative activity have gained material value is the great story of human accomplishment. It is also a story of exploitation and suffering. Why else would anyone feel the need to escape? There are actually positive reasons for daydreaming and imaginary exercises other than escaping dull routine. Visualization and forms of meditation have proven influence on behavior and outcomes in all kinds of performance, from athletics to public speaking and even thinking itself.

Unfortunately, brain chemistry can create negative loops that take us away from even wanting to do better. Fear of loss is a stronger motivator than hope for a win. Tendencies towards magical thinking (rather than empirically tested understanding of cause and effect) can provide a mental high, similar to what we get from acting out inappropriately and the adrenaline rush from danger or anger. Those are a few examples of how our minds and brains can prevent us from acting effectively and practically.

Walter Mitty’s little habit for escapism got big very fast in human terms. In less than 10 years, like the proverbial genie let out of the bottle, this mild-mannered short story got blown up on the big screen. Thus, the first escalation is the medium of storytelling itself, from the printed word, a business several hundred years old, to the state-of-the-art collaborative movie industry.

Next, Mitty’s character profile is also elevated in terms of middle-class mid-twentieth century American values. He is no longer a random married everyman. He is an underappreciated editor in the successful business of publishing pulp fiction. He makes money purveying escapism. Ironically, he himself is afflicted with what at first seems to be a debilitating, compulsive tendency to daydream instead of addressing interpersonal conflicts and challenges in his life.

Also the story covers not just one part of one day running errands. The events in the film are a more important microcosm of a pivotal time in Mitty’s life. On the verge of marriage, will he advance or stay stuck in his current subordinate position at work and more significantly in his personal relationships?

The feminine role expands from a wife to include Walter’s mother, his mother-in-law, his fiancée, and the woman of his dreams. Also, the subconscious male aspects of his psychological and fantasy world become characters in the film: His boss, the publisher, an obvious father figure; his friend Tubby, an aggressive, bullying contrast to Walter’s passivity, a rival for attention and daydream villain.

But the original story’s premise needs still more to make a good full-length movie. The real life consequences of our hero’s action or inaction in a plot twist escalate further to involve actual life and death. The advent of a real, live character, his dream woman “Rosalind” personified as an alternative to “Gertrude,” his undesirable fiancée, brings the stuff of daydreams into waking events that at first only the main character and the audience know are not just in Walter’s head.

All the other characters quite reasonably think he’s losing his tenuous grasp on reality when he starts claiming this mysterious woman is real, along with a host of villains. They are after “stolen jewels,” fairytale psychological archetype, and an arch villain, “the Boot,” who masquerades as his dream gal’s uncle (another father figure in fairytale, psychological terms) is behind it all.

The big gag here is the audience sharing Walter’s point of view. We share his earlier daydreams and are able to see the difference when the adventure gets real. This is an obvious invitation to escalate with Walter. We the viewing public are invited to dare to dream, as if such a turn of events would be a welcome development in our lives as opposed to nightmares, pleasant thoughts in passing but unpleasant realities with unwanted consequences. That is Walter’s new challenge and we can go along for the ride, too. Granted, this is a comedy and played as a comedy. Even the violence is for the most part like slapstick and in good humor. But the shift from the short story’s boundaries is unmistakable.

The more recent film shifts further in all aspects of storytelling focus. First, Walter works for Life Magazine, a neat way to keep print media in the picture. Our hero has become a little guy in the bowels (he works in the basement) of Life. His job title, “negative asset manager” makes his plight even more explicit. The magazine name blurs the distinction between life in the narrative and in the published form. Walter is a film editor of still photography. He purveys not escapist fiction, but images of distant, often dangerous and deadly places, exotic to readers. These journalistic photos are frames for a different kind of escape from stable, middle-class life.

The whole story escalates further. This is the final issue. How significant is that? As the last issue, the cover photo is really important. Of course this is a misguided notion of historical significance. It is typical of our current values. Similarly, celebrity substitutes for lasting historical importance. Huge shifts in publishing and other areas of Walter’s world and our own are eliminating economic and social opportunities out from under Walter and his coworkers, but the final cover photo is represented as worth risking everything for. These are stakes beyond the earlier iterations of this tale.

Walter has been looking for years at these photos. They define and feed his escapism even more than for ordinary subscribers. Rather than the stuff of fantasy coming to him, the plot and his character growth force him to make a decision and jump into the world of the photos.

Also in this version, we see a shift in other roles. The women include Walter’s mother and sister. His father died when Walter was still a teenager, leaving him to support the family. This puts the economic situation as drastically more dire than in the original story or the first film. In middle-class values, this portrayal verges on horror and personal tragedy.

Walter’s relationship and role with his family is one that has deprived him of his youth and perceived or imagined potential. It likely curtailed his sexual freedom and chances for a family of his own. In the earlier film Walter is also somewhat the sole supporter of his mother but we get the impression that his mother could do alright materially without him. Not so in the second film. We see him looking at his checkbook (how quaint is that?) and making what are apparently hard decisions about money.

Also in the 1947 film, he is engaged to be married even if the relationship is sexless and his fiancée seems more interested in his more overtly masculine friend, Tubby. Walter’s dream girl here starts out as just that, an imaginary character. In the 2013 version, his dream woman is a coworker he fantasizes about. Instead of walking up to her, however, he tries to connect online on a dating site. That is significant psychologically.

The male antagonist role also changes and expands. Instead of his boss and publisher, a clear fairytale father figure, we have a young executive managing the merger who is shutting down the magazine. He takes over the friend Tubby’s role in the 1947 version as Walter’s bully and also his boss. His interest in Walter’s success is strictly limited to the final cover photo. His male toxicity and manner of picking on Walter are updated nicely and annoyingly. But in context, this portrayal is immediately recognizable to audiences as one that often provokes deadly violence. This is worth elaborating.

Eventually in the first film, Walter does punch his friend Tubby, which impresses his boss positively. At no point does any of the masculine antagonism rise to homicidal levels; even when the fantasy villains come to life and threaten Walter with violence, he is more protective than aggressive. The tone is consistently comedic.

In the more recent film, there is an extended fantasy fight segment between Walter and the dickhead, young, bearded executive. Although over the top, it is played out in a manner familiar to today’s audience in action movies as being closer to real violence. Far from distancing the audience from a violent response, this over-the-top fantasy fight portrays real emotions physically. It actually promotes a greater acceptance of potential violence against this intentionally annoying and consistently unsympathetic authority character.

The 2013 portrayal of subjects, its tone, is more serious and noticeably less comedic. Plot events like the losing a job, running out of money, aging or dead parents all seem very real. The consequences, fantasies and triggers, and reasons for escape seem more serious.

This version also blurs the lines between reality and fantasy with another character. Walter now not only has his fantasy alter ego but also a “photo journalist” alter ego played by Sean Penn. At first this character seems almost mythical. He’s the guy who goes out and does the heroic stuff in order to get the photos Walter processes for publication. He’s the guy everyone admires for his heroic lifestyle. He’s the guy Walter sets out to find and in doing so also find that guy in himself.

Spoiler alerts ought to be unnecessary at this point for all these versions. If anyone is reading this not having seen the films or read the story, that seems odd to me. If such a person’s enjoyment of these films still depends on not knowing what comes next and how things turn out, I can only wonder why that person is reading this at all. I would be very interested in having a conversation with that person.

The 2013 film has a couple of other male roles for contrast with Walter. The dream woman’s ex-husband and her pre-adolescent son offer no comedy but do add verisimilitude. This film is full of psychological landmines. The son highlights Walter’s stunted emotional development. They bond secretly over the older man’s skateboard skills. There are unfortunate predator suggestions in that and in Walter’s later ease with other young boys in Iceland. The ex-husband seems a gratuitous antagonism.** It is like a heavy metal concert of emotional noise to make sure we get the point at every lugubrious turn and tortured twist of the plot how challenged the character is: Fuel for his grievance.

But wait, if that’s not enough, there is also one more male role, the coach from the online dating site, who acts as a kind of virtual fairy godfather, cheering him on, and validating how weak his profile online is before and how cool it becomes after he goes out and risks death for the sake of the cover photo. Now he’s sure to get laid.

Walter is, however, actually the bourgeois hero from beginning to end in this movie. What he has done for his family and what he does in Life we are ultimately supposed to believe are great, if underappreciated even by those who benefit most directly. Ah, but not entirely so! His personified alter ego, the heroic photographer, has admired him all along. It’s too bad these guys don’t push the limits of their love further in this film. Maybe in the next version.

It is not uncommon for persons with complementary or even competing skills to admire each other’s talents in movies. But at some point a balance is always acknowledged. I am not sure the proper distinction is drawn with these characters. Courage of the imagination is not the same as physical risk, but the risk of social rejection can turn lethal. Walter arguably has more on the line, supporting his family, than the rogue male Sean. The movie makes little or no effort to sort these matters out. If anything, it invites confusion, confusing confusion for profundity.

The adventurous photo journalist goes out and shoots the film and sheds blood for it. But the negative asset manager is the one who can process it for the rest of us. He shares the vision even if he’s not out there originally risking his life. He may have the eye for the right shot out of all the negatives. He may be the filter redefining and translating for the blind public. But is this movie trying confuse the roles?

This is like saying an actor is actually more real than the real people portrayed. This is the kind of substitution that takes place easily when we start to indulge in fantasies and the lines with reality get blurry. Just like the funny guy can be the sexy guy even when he’s not frankly sexy, the quintessential photo ends up being the photo editor looking at film in front of the fountain in front of the offices of Life. This is the quintessence of Life and of life, get it?

As a high concept, that is a little too clever. What kills it is how it comes across because of the tone of the film, of the way escapist fantasy bleeds into Mitty’s life, and the way the characters play it. It becomes serious, which is ridiculous! Unintentionally it also shows how our values elevate danger and violence as being more heroic and manly than living ordinary life and fulfilling our responsibilities to others with dignity. Walter’s character never internalizes his ordinary heroism. In the film’s conceit, he has to go out and risk death before he proves himself a man to himself and to the audience. Even if one of his heroic acts is skateboarding, it’s serious skateboarding!

Psychologically more satisfying is how underappreciated Walter feels in this version contrasted with the at times genuinely touching performances of his mother, sister, and coworkers. Even the annoying merger manager could be seen as picking on him because he secretly admires and envies Walter. Ben Stiller also does an amazing job of maintaining a suffering nebbish screen presence throughout. It ruins the film in many ways but also portrays the prototypical mass shooter mentality and behavior set.

There is something else in Stiller-Penn version, perhaps because of a further development in the business of storytelling and of our society. Both actors come from families in the entertainment industry. Both of them have qualities for better and worse in their performances because of that family background. That background for me gives them annoying qualities they cannot help. Are they living their dreams, or only doing what was expected of them?

I have disliked this film version as much as I have enjoyed the Danny Kaye version. Humor is healthy escapism. The closer escapism gets to actual action adventure in the non-daydream events and in tone, the more it tends towards grievance, resentment, entitlement, and repressed rage, and waking madness.

In both film versions, Mitty bests his external oppressors and gains recognition from external, parental authority after successful trial by actual adventures on par with his imaginary escapes. The original story has no such transformation. Like Sinbad, Mitty remains a psychological balance of real, ordinary life made less oppressive by dreams of fortune and heroic fantasies. Ironically, even people who have dangerous jobs fantasize about something else to cope with the stress. Which is funny, when you think about it.

I feel compelled to say my intention was not to pan the 2013 movie version. I actually have watched parts of it as often as I have the 1947 film. I don’t do that so I can hate on the work. I am grateful for it, and for the work the actors and others put in creating this escape for me to make sense of broader waking matters. I intend to watch it again.

I wanted to frame my reflections to highlight what seem to me ways imagination can get out of control. When we start to believe in the importance of living our dreams regardless of outcomes, we devalue what should be precious in ourselves and in our lives, including the dreams themselves in their proper place.

Let me say it again differently. Living ordinary life with dignity and respect for ourselves and others should be valued more than imaginary violent heroics and aggressive masculine fantasies. From a practical perspective, it is just so. Even dangerous productive work when done properly is more mundane than dramatic. Real heroes are very different from fantasies.

In the original story it’s just an ordinary guy with his wife running errands who daydreams of melodramatic deeds. We can imagine if we choose to believe these two characters have a different relationship at other times. I challenge you to fantasize happier, racier relations after they get home.*** Of course, the rules of fiction are that this little snippet is in fact the entire universe, but nothing in the story makes that explicit.

Like our ideas about other people and even ourselves, fictional representations of character are limited. Our notions of actual persons are limited points of view. They are not ultimate truths. Similarly, a character in a story can in another fictional moment become something very different. That is, in fact, more likely than humans behaving in statistically unlikely ways suddenly out of character. It is one of the greatest things about imagination and creativity that we can go wild just for fun without any actual damage being done.

As for pursuing dreams, George Carlin in a radio interview (Fresh Air with Terry Gross) stated that one of the role models for his career was Danny Kaye. His career turned out very different from that, he acknowledged, but he emphasized repeatedly even after he had succeeded in a different way, he kept thinking about doing more movies and acting roles like Danny Kaye.

Carlin is interesting in many ways. He dropped out of school in ninth grade to pursue his dream of being a comedic performer. His main form of creative expression is in the oral tradition. Standup is essentially storytelling in its simplest practice, using only voice and body language. Short of being alone in our own practice of escapism, conversation, sharing stories and reflections on experience including flights of fantasy, is as simple as escape from reality while remaining firmly in it as it gets.

In my own life I often think about Sinbad the Porter and his alter ego, “the old bad man within,” “the carnal man…whose heart is…prone to evil.” I have never read the original from The Arabian Nights, but, spoiler alert, I intend to. Some day.

*Danny Kaye and Virginia Mayo: Up in Arms 1944; Wonder Man 1945; The Kid from Brooklyn 1946; The Secret Life of Walter Mitty 1947; A Song is Born 1948.

**Couldn’t the ex-husband/boy’s father be in prison (“He claimed those people were all already dead when he got there”) or dead himself (The effects of the fire covered up the other mutilations fortunately”) or maybe just permanently disabled but aware in one corner of her bedroom? I mean, there’s a missed comedic opportunity, if the intention is to go dark.

***I like to imagine that Walter and his wife earn their living in a future version of the story as reality media stars, followed by production crews and with webcams in their home. Not that they do anything more than what we see in the first story, except that Walter’s fantasies are also accessible to the audience and so are his wife’s, in the interest of updated representation. I am frankly surprised no one has written The Secret Life of Mrs. Walter Mitty aka Sexxxy Mama or something cleverer, less juvenile.