''My World ... and Welcome to It'' is an American half-hour television

sitcom A sitcom, a portmanteau of situation comedy, or situational comedy, is a genre of comedy centered on a fixed set of characters who mostly carry over from episode to episode. Sitcoms can be contrasted with sketch comedy, where a troupe may use ...

based on the humor and

cartoons A cartoon is a type of visual art that is typically drawn, frequently animated, in an unrealistic or semi-realistic style. The specific meaning has evolved over time, but the modern usage usually refers to either: an image or series of images ...

James Thurber James Grover Thurber (December 8, 1894 – November 2, 1961) was an American cartoonist, writer, humorist, journalist and playwright. He was best known for his cartoons and short stories, published mainly in ''The New Yorker'' and collected ...

.Tim Brooks & Earle Marsh, ''The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network TV Shows 1946 - Present'', pages 430-431, Ballantine, 1979 It starred

William Windom William Windom (May 10, 1827January 29, 1891) was an American politician from Minnesota. He served as U.S. Representative from 1859 to 1869, and as U.S. Senator from 1870 to January 1871, from March 1871 to March 1881, and from November 1881 ...

as John Monroe, a Thurber-like writer and cartoonist who works for a magazine closely resembling ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...

'' called ''The Manhattanite''. Wry, fanciful and curmudgeonly, Monroe observes and comments on life, to the bemusement of his wife Ellen ( Joan Hotchkis) and daughter Lydia ( Lisa Gerritsen). Monroe's frequent daydreams and fantasies are usually based on Thurber material. The series, which ran for one season during the 1969–70 season on

NBC The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters are l ...

, was created by Mel Shavelson, who wrote and directed the pilot episode and was one of its principal writers.

Sheldon Leonard Sheldon Leonard Bershad (February 22, 1907 – January 11, 1997) was an American film and television actor, producer, director, and screenwriter. Early life Sheldon Leonard Bershad was born in Manhattan, New York City, the son of middle-clas ...

was executive producer. The show's producer,

Danny Arnold Danny Arnold (born Arnold Rothmann; January 23, 1925 – August 19, 1995) was an American producer, writer, comedian, actor and director known for producing '' Barney Miller'', '' That Girl'', and '' Bewitched''. Early life Born in New York ...

, co-wrote or directed numerous episodes, and appeared as Santa Claus in "Rally Round the Flag."

Series description

Most episodes open with Monroe arriving in front of the house from the Thurber cartoon "Home," which in the original cartoon has a woman's face on one side of it. In the show, the house is initially house-shaped. The woman's face is often animated to appear, as Ellen says something to John. The "Home" house, without the face, is used as an

establishing shot An establishing shot in filmmaking and television production sets up, or establishes, the context for a scene by showing the relationship between its important figures and objects. It is generally a long or extreme-long shot at the beginning of ...

throughout the episodes. Other Thurber cartoons are similarly animated over the course of the series—sometimes in the opening sequence, sometimes later in the episode. The episode "Cristabel" begins with Monroe lying on top of a cartoon doghouse, a reference to the non-Thurber cartoon character

Snoopy Snoopy is an anthropomorphic beagle in the comic strip ''Peanuts'' by Charles M. Schulz. He can also be found in all of the ''Peanuts'' films and television specials. Since his debut on October 4, 1950, Snoopy has become one of the most recog ...

. Animation for the series was by DePatie-Freleng Enterprises.

Henry Morgan Sir Henry Morgan ( cy, Harri Morgan; – 25 August 1688) was a privateer, plantation owner, and, later, Lieutenant Governor of Jamaica. From his base in Port Royal, Jamaica, he raided settlements and shipping on the Spanish Main, becoming we ...

had a recurring role as Philip Jensen, a writer for '' The Manhattanite'', who was based on humorist

Robert Benchley Robert Charles Benchley (September 15, 1889 – November 21, 1945) was an American humorist best known for his work as a newspaper columnist and film actor. From his beginnings at ''The Harvard Lampoon'' while attending Harvard University, thro ...

. Harold J. Stone played the editor, with whom Monroe is often at odds about the cartoon content. A female writer who appeared in one episode was also loosely based on

Dorothy Parker Dorothy Parker (née Rothschild; August 22, 1893 – June 7, 1967) was an American poet, writer, critic, and satirist based in New York; she was known for her wit, wisecracks, and eye for 20th-century urban foibles. From a conflicted and unhap ...

. Guest-stars included

Lee Meriwether Lee Ann Meriwether (born May 27, 1935) is an American actress, former model, and the winner of the Miss America 1955 pageant. She has appeared in many films and television shows, notably as Betty Jones, the title character's secretary and daught ...

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, Craig Stevens,

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(as Talia Coppola),

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, James Gregory and Noam Pitlik. Live action adaptations of Thurber's writing were another show staple. For example, "Rally Round the Flag," in which Monroe purchases a very large flag as a gift, is loosely based on a Thurber piece called "There's a Time for Flags." An incident with a policeman in "Cristabel" is an almost verbatim transcription of the Thurber story "The Topaz Cufflinks Mystery." ''Fables for Our Time'' is another source, as when John Monroe sees a

unicorn The unicorn is a legendary creature that has been described since antiquity as a beast with a single large, pointed, spiraling horn projecting from its forehead. In European literature and art, the unicorn has for the last thousand years o ...

in the back yard, a reference to " The Unicorn in the Garden." Many of the episode titles are taken from Thurber's ''Fables for Our Time'' (e.g., "The Shrike and the Chipmunks") and other writings ("Rules for a Happy Marriage" and many more). The character name of John Monroe is Thurber’s alter-ego in his book ''Owl in the Attic''.Edgar Penton, Preview: Gentle World Of Thurber On TV, ''The Times Herald'' (Port Huron, MI), July 18, 1969, page 35
/ref> Monroe and his family first came to television in a 1959 ''

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'' production called "Cristabel (The Secret Life of John Monroe)." also written by Mel Shavelson. The dog Cristabel was named after a dog Thurber gave to his daughter. John Monroe also appears in a 1961 episode of '' The DuPont Show with June Allyson'' called "The Country Mouse", starring

Orson Bean Orson Bean (born Dallas Frederick Burrows; July 22, 1928 – February 7, 2020) was an American film, television, and stage actor, comedian, writer, and producer. He was a game show and talk show host and a "mainstay of Los Angeles’ small ...

. This also uses animated versions of Thurber's cartoons, and the story - cartoonist Monroe struggles to finish his work under the pressures of home and office - that could be regarded as an unofficial pilot for the My World series. Despite the use of "drawings, stories, inspirational pieces and things that go bump in the night by James Thurber" (as stated in the opening credits), the show also contains character and story elements that owe little or nothing to Thurber's work. For example, there is no Thurber basis for Monroe and daughter Lydia playing chess throughout "Little Girls Are Sugar & Spice - And Not Always Nice!" Although Thurber material is woven around it, the episode's storyline itself is fairly conventional situation comedy. William Windom, though, was a tournament chess player, so he most likely added that to the storyline as a personal touch. Despite many positive reviews, moderate Nielsen ratings led NBC to cancel the series after one season. It then went on to win the Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series and Outstanding Continued Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Comedy Series. CBS reran ''My World and Welcome to It'' in the summer of 1972.

Episodes

Awards

''My World and Welcome to It'' won two Emmy Awards in 1970: * Outstanding Continued Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Comedy Series (William Windom) * Outstanding Comedy Series It was also nominated for: *Outstanding Achievement in any area of Creative Arts ("Rally 'Round the Flag Boys" - special photographic effects).

Book

The similarly titled book by James Thurber, ''My World — And Welcome to It'', was published in 1942 by

Harcourt, Brace and Company Harcourt () was an American publishing firm with a long history of publishing fiction and nonfiction for adults and children. The company was last based in San Diego, California, with editorial/sales/marketing/rights offices in New York City an ...

. The current edition is . Part One of this collection contains 22 assorted Thurber

short stories A short story is a piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the oldest t ...

and humorous

essay An essay is, generally, a piece of writing that gives the author's own argument, but the definition is vague, overlapping with those of a letter, a paper, an article, a pamphlet, and a short story. Essays have been sub-classified as formal a ...

s, many of them illustrated with his cartoons. Part Two consists of an eight-part comic memoir about France, written in 1937 and 1938, about twenty years after Thurber first arrived there near the conclusion of

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

. None of these stories, however, feature any of Thurber's "Monroe Family" characters. The tone of these pieces ranges from lighthearted wordplay and dialect ("What Do You Mean It ''Was'' Brillig?") to literary satire ("The Macbeth Murder Mystery") to psychological horror ("The Whip-Poor-Will" and "A Friend to Alexander"). The most famous story is "

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" (1939) is a short story by James Thurber. The most famous of Thurber's stories, it first appeared in ''The New Yorker'' on March 18, 1939, and was first collected in his book '' My World and Welcome to It'' ( Ha ...

," which bears little resemblance to the 1947 film of the same name.

References

External links

* *
TVParty.com's ''My World and Welcome to It'' page

Flying Dreams' ''My World and Welcome to It'' page

''My World and Welcome To It''
at Television Obscurities {{DEFAULTSORT:My World And Welcome To It 1960s American sitcoms 1970s American sitcoms 1969 American television series debuts 1970 American television series endings NBC original programming Television series by CBS Studios Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series winners Television series about families Television shows about writers Television shows about comics Television shows set in Connecticut Works by James Thurber