My World and Welcome to It

Usually I don't put up comments when somebody has already said what I wanted to say, but "My World and Welcome to It" was such a good show and I agree so completely with everyone here, that I simply couldn't resist joining this small but enthusiastic chorus. As soon as I get finished here I'm going to email my local PBS station, mention the show, and refer them back to here.

I was only 3 when I watched this according to the air date...wow! I remember it fondly and for a long time wondered if it was a product of my imagination. Mostly I remembered William Windom and the interspersed drawn segments, then the girl who played his daughter (I think....memory is funny that way, and I was only 3). Can anyone tell me if this show is available on DVD or anything? I would LOVE to see it again.I really hope it is. So rarely these days do I remember a show so fondly. From what I do remember, this is/was a definite one of a kind show. William Windom was also an excellent actor in this show too, he has to have been...since he was burned into my memory at such a young age. Thankfully it was his appearance as Woody on a rerun of Mama's Family that jogged my mind and made me rush to IMDb to see if he was listed. Thanks to this wonderful site I now know I didn't make it all up...and my memory isn't THAT bad.

This show was a pure joy from the first moment--of course, when you have as your source the great James Thurber, how can you go wrong. Sweet and funny, rich in characterization. Years after it went to that great burial ground of cancelled shows (The Name of the Game, Adam's Rib, Nothing Sacred), William Windom toured the country doing Thurber. I saw him (for free) in Hopkins Plaza in downtown Baltimore. After the show, he hung around talking to all the people who wanted to tell him what the show had meant to them. Nice to find that the man who played John Monroe and James Thurber was as sweet and funny in reality as on tv.

Shown on NBC in 1969-70 and and re-run on CBS ca. 1972. "My World and Welcome to It" was a sharp, sophisticated comedy that a curmudgeonly grandfather and an elementary schoolboy could enjoy together. This is *the* show William Windom ought to be remembered for.

The animation of the Thurber cartoons was fantastic. There was an especially funny episode based on the Thurber story "If Grant Had Been Drinking at Appomattox." The cartoonist sits on his young daughter's bed, starting to tell her about the end of the Civil War. "Suppose General Grant had been drinking, uh...." "Cough medicine?!" the girl chirps up. "Uh, yes, cough medicine." And then he goes on to tell the tale....

Suddenly you see William Windom in rumpled dress blues as General Grant, disgracefully drunk by the surrender table, chomping on his cigar, as a distinguished, gray bearded General Lee introduces himself. "General Robert E. Lee of the Army of Northern Virginia."

"Well go on, go ahead!" General Grant snaps as he proffers his sword to an astonished Lee, "Ya darn near licked us!"

(Luckily things didn't quite turn out that way in real life.)

Thurber is timeless, and so is this show. If only reruns of "My World" were run on cable, or at least sold on DVD -- it would hook a whole new generation on the wonderful imagination of James Thurber!

I looked up this show because I was watching a video of "Attack of the 50 Foot Woman" and recognized William Windom. In fact I have always recognized him whenever I have seen him, thinking "There's that guy who was in the show with the cartoons when I was little."

For some reason scenes from the show have always stuck in my mind, and I've always had an awareness that the show was something special, even though I was only 6 when it was on and haven't seen it since. Finally I figured I had to know what it was (since no one I know even remembers that such a show existed). So I came on here and looked up William Windom, and read with interest the description of it from Mr. Leone. I, too, wish it were possible to see the show again now.