Catbird seat

"The catbird seat" is an American English idiomatic phrase used to describe an enviable position, often in terms of having the upper hand or greater advantage in all types of dealings among parties. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first recorded usage occurred in a 1942 humorous short story by James Thurber titled "The Catbird Seat," which features a character, Mrs. Barrows, who likes to use the phrase. Another character, Joey Hart, explains that Mrs. Barrows must have picked up the expression from Red Barber, a baseball broadcaster, and that to Barber "sitting in the catbird seat" meant "'sitting pretty,' like a batter with three balls and no strikes on him."

The phrase "In the catbird seat" was among the numerous folksy expressions used by Barber. According to Barber's daughter, after her father read Thurber's story, he began using the phrase "in the catbird seat." This seems to reverse events, however, as the passage of story quoted above clearly references Barber himself. According to "Colonel" Bob Edwards's book Fridays with Red, Barber claimed that Thurber got this and many other expressions from him, and that Barber had first heard the term used during a poker game in Cincinnati during the Great Depression. Barber himself also put forth this version of events in his 1968 autobiography, Rhubarb in the Catbird Seat.

The Battle of the Sexes (1959 film)

The Battle of the Sexes is a 1959 British black and white comedy film starring Peter Sellers and directed by Charles Crichton, based on the short story The Catbird Seat, by James Thurber. The story was adapted by Monja Danischewsky.

Plot

A timid accountant in a Scottish Tweed weaving company (Sellers) cleverly bests the brash modern American efficiency expert (Cummings) whose ideas threaten his way of life. The film opens with Martin (Sellers) in Edinburgh buying whisky and cigarettes on the Royal Mile. We then see him at work as a head accountant in a very old-fashioned firm in the New Town. The Justerini & Brooks premises on George Street serves as their shop in the film.

Martin is called to the death-bed of the owner, old MacPherson, at Moray Place. He is offered a whisky and declines. Old MacPherson drinks both and promptly dies.

The new owner of the Tweed company, played by Robert Morley, is enamoured with a zealous American woman who is an efficiency expert and who wants to turn her hand to revolutionise the very traditional company. She insists on visiting "the factory" on the island, only to discover the task is done by old couples, on crofts where they spin the wool. She plans to replace the 700 weavers, dotted across the islands, with a single large factory. Whilst being driven through the city she even says the company should change to synthetic fibres, causing the chauffeur to drive into the back of a brewer's dray in the Grassmarket.