Thurber Thursday: To New Jersey

I often browse the internet looking at original Thurber drawings (the ones online were usually sold at auction). I noticed, some time back this pair of Thurbers that sold back in 2011:

I’ve always wondered where they fit in the Thurber timeline. It wasn’t until this evening, while going through the Michael Rosen Thurber files, that I came across a sheaf of Thurber’s work for PM.  Thurber wrote a column for PM, “If You Ask Me,” that usually included a Thurber illustration or two. One of those columns, dated September 24, 1940, contained the New Jersey / Washington, Pa. drawings.* I’m not going to post the entire article, just the first two sentences as they explain the drawings.

I was talking the other day with a man who ran when the Martians invaded New jersey in the fall of 1939. He got as far as the outskirts of Washington, Pa., before the all clear signal sounded and he could go back home in safety. 

How great. The drawings were tied-in to the famous 1938 Halloween Orson Welles “War Of The Worlds” radio broadcast.  [Thurber incorrectly dated the “invasion” as happening in 1939].

*The column is cited in Edwin T. Bowden’s Thurber Bibliography, and notes the piece is illustrated. But the illustrations are not described.

James 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