James Thurber’s wondrously imaginative tale of Walter Mitty was first published as a short story in The New Yorker as “The Secret life of Walter Mitty.” The brief story, soon to be on the big screen starring and directed by Ben Stiller, shows us a few hours of Mr. Mitty’s life while on a shopping trip to Waterbury, Connecticut. His imagination takes him (and us readers) to a heroic world while he shops for rubbers and dog biscuits.
For this motion picture, a laundromat in New York City on Tiemann Place and Broadway in Morningside Heights near Riverside Park is transformed into Clark’s Barber Shop. In the short story, this is where Walter drops his wife off at the barber shop. In Stiller’s re-imagining, Mitty is single so we will see how the shop is incorporated.
In the adaption from the 1939 piece to present day, the story now includes more corporate downsizing and less of a focus on male prerogative. The film, which will be in theaters December 25, also stars Shirley Maclaine and Kristen Wiig.
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