Odd McIntyre

An Odd Book: How the First Modern Pop Culture Reporter Conquered New York

This is the thrilling true story of a reporter who achieved remarkable fame and fortune covering New York and Hollywood in the early decades of the 20th century.

As the highest-paid and most-read columnist of his era, Odd McIntyre rose to national prominence during the early 1900s. In his daily New York column, he chronicled what was happening backstage and behind the scenes in popular culture across the city and the world.

“His greatest stock-in-trade was his incarnate rapture at the glories of a New York recognizable to none but himself. To him the towers of Manhattan were studded with minarets and the neon lights of Broadway flickered like jewels.” —The New York Times, 1938

He was close friends with many leading personalities of the day, including writers Edna Ferber, Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald; entertainers Fred Astaire, Florenz Ziegfeld Jr., Billie Burke and Will Rogers; composers George Gershwin and Meredith Willson; actors Rudolph Valentino and Charlie Chaplin and many others.

With the help of his wife, Maybelle, Odd overcame a debilitating mental illness and years of professional failure to become the nation’s preeminent pop culture writer. He witnessed the telegraph transform the news business and then saw radio and film change everything. He covered live entertainment as it shifted from vaudeville to something new on Broadway, and he had a literal front-row seat as moving pictures evolved from nickelodeons to silent films and finally to talkies.

By uncovering Odd’s reporting on entertainment, media and politics buried under a century of change, Williams offers a rare glimpse into one of the most fascinating periods of American popular culture.