In Popular Culture
The character was played by Danny Kaye in the 1947 film version. Thurber opposed the 1947 production. A new Walter Mitty remake is scheduled for release in 2013, directed by and starring Ben Stiller. Samuel Goldwyn Jr. and John Goldwyn produced the picture, while John Bard Manulis and Richard Vane served as executive producers.
Walter Mitty is referenced in the lyrics to the songs "T&P Combo" by 311, "Vacation" by Alabama, "Sex and Drugs and Rock 'n' Roll" by Ian Dury, "Kitty Ricketts" by Radiator, "In The City" by Madness, "Dreams" by The Descendents, "Walter Mitty Blues" by The Meteors, "All Dressed Up For San Francisco" by The Philosopher Kings, "Silver Bird" by Mark Lindsay, and "Sammy Davis City" by Joe Strummer and Brian Setzer. In 2008, the popular band Walter Mitty and His Makeshift Orchestra emerged; they have released two albums.
The official Peanuts website describes the character of Snoopy as "... an extroverted Beagle with a Walter Mitty complex", a reference to the many fantasy segments in which Snoopy imagines he is a World War I flying ace battling the Red Baron. The children's television programme The Secret Lives of Waldo Kitty parodied the story as well as many others, with a mix of live footage and animation featuring anthropomorphic animals.
Author William Gibson in his novel Zero History uses the term "Mitty demographic" to describe young men that want to dress like soldiers and have an "equipment fetishism" for products that are derived from police and military equipment.
Read more about this topic: Walter Mitty
Famous quotes containing the words popular and/or culture:
“I do not see why, since America and her autumn woods have been discovered, our leaves should not compete with the precious stones in giving names to colors; and, indeed, I believe that in course of time the names of some of our trees and shrubs, as well as flowers, will get into our popular chromatic nomenclature.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“... there are some who, believing that all is for the best in the best of possible worlds, and that to-morrow is necessarily better than to-day, may think that if culture is a good thing we shall infallibly be found to have more of it that we had a generation since; and that if we can be shown not to have more of it, it can be shown not to be worth seeking.”
—Katharine Fullerton Gerould (1879–1944)