Following a six city tryout, during which Thurber continued to rewrite the show,[2] it premiered on Broadway on February 26, 1960, and ran for 223 performances, with a break from June 25 to September 5.

[4] The nine member cast played roles generically designated as First Man, First Woman, etc., as listed in the published script.

The punchlines were primarily derived from the captions of Thurber cartoons, including "Where did you get those big brown eyes and that tiny mind?"

Thurber's "what if" story about Grant and Lee at the Appomattox surrender first appeared in The New Yorker on December 6, 1930; and was first collected in his book The Middle-Aged Man on the Flying Trapeze (Harper and Brothers, 1935).

The sketch consists of Thurber dictating a series of letters in a vain attempt to keep one of his publishers from sending him books he did not order, and the escalating confusion of the replies.

The real Thurber, who was completely blind at the time and nearing the end of his life, played himself in later performances of the show.

The original casual appeared in the New Yorker on January 8, 1949,[10] and was reprinted in Thurber Country: The Classic Collection About Males, and Females, Mainly of Our Own Species (Simon & Schuster, 1953).

[12] The prose version of the piece, which was a humorous essay rather than a short story, originally appeared in The Bermudian, and was collected in Thurber Country.

The stage version features a slightly more upbeat ending than the short story, with Mitty outwitting a firing squad.

The original short story first appeared in The New Yorker on March 18, 1939;[10] and was first collected in his book My World and Welcome to It (Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1942).

"Word Dance (Part 2) " - Originally staged by James Starbuck, this is the continuation of the sketch that begins the show.

It concludes with a request, taken from the last line of "The Ladies of Orlon" (from Alarms & Diversions, 1957), for the women in the audience to keep their seats until the men have left the theater.

Adapted by James Costigan from eleven of Thurber's Fables for Our Time, it starred Kaye Ballard and Bert Convy, with music by Don Elliott.