Walter Mitty is a fictional character in James Thurber's short story The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, published in 1941. Mitty is a meek, mild man with a vivid fantasy life: in a few dozen paragraphs he imagines himself a wartime pilot, an emergency-room surgeon, and a devil-may-care killer. He has become such a standard for the role that his name appears in several dictionaries.

Use of the term as an insult

In 1977, Andrew Roth entitled his biography of former British prime minister Harold Wilson Sir Harold Wilson: the Yorkshire Walter Mitty. Wilson successfully sued Roth for libel arising out of a section of the book referring to Wilson's wife.

In 2003, Tom Kelly, a spokesman for British prime minister Tony Blair, publicly apologised for referring to the late David Kelly as "a Walter Mitty character" during a private discussion with a journalist.

In his book on selection for the Special Air Service, Andy McNab wrote that people who give away the fact that they want to be in the SAS for reasons of personal vanity are labeled as 'Walter Mittys' and quietly sent home.

Film version

A film version of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty was released in 1947, starring Danny Kaye and directed by Norman McLeod. Thurber did not want Samuel Goldwyn and MGM to make this film, and even offered Goldwyn $10,000 not to. He was very unhappy with the final result, largely because Goldwyn had writers customize the film to showcase Kaye's dancing, singing and comic talents, altering the original story.

Miscellaneous

• Mitty was not the first fictional character to escape from intolerable reality into fantasies. British crime-fiction writer Anthony Berkeley Cox included a similar character in his 1931 book Malice Aforethought, which he wrote under the pen name Francis Iles.
• The character served as the model for the Waldo Kitty character of the mid-70s (Filmation).
• Walter Mitty is referenced in the lyrics to the song Sex and Drugs and Rock 'n' Roll by Ian Dury and also in Sammy Davis City written by Joe Strummer and Brian Setzer.

References

Characters in written fiction | Literature protagonists

Walter Mitty | Walter Mitty