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

The thrilling true story of a reporter who achieved great fame and fortune writing about New York and Hollywood in the early decades of the twentieth century.
INCLUDING 130 PHOTOS, MANY PUBLISHED FOR THE FIRST TIME!
As the highest-paid and most-read columnist of his era, Odd McIntyre achieved great fame and fortune in the early decades of the twentieth century. In his daily column about New York, he recorded what was happening backstage and behind the scenes with popular culture in the city and around the world.
He was close friends with many of the 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 triumphed over a debilitating mental illness and years of professional failure to become the nation’s preeminent pop culture writer. He was there as the telegraph changed the news business, and then as radio changed everything. He covered live entertainment as it shifted from vaudeville to something new and exciting on Broadway, and had a literal front-row seat as moving pictures evolved from nickelodeons, to silent films, and finally to talkies.
Buried under a century of change, what Odd wrote about entertainment, media, and politics nearly one hundred years ago still provides a unique glimpse into one of the most fascinating periods in American popular culture.
“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

R. Scott Williams is chief operating officer and senior vice president of sales and marketing at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. Williams earned his degree in journalism from the University of Memphis. He then held positions at several advertising agencies and organizations, including Elvis Presley Enterprises, Inc. He currently serves as president on the board of the D.C. chapter of the American Advertising Federation and on the board of the Historical Society of Washington, D.C. Williams serves on the board of the Washington D.C. chapter of the American Advertising Federation and on the board of the Historical Society of Washington, D.C. He lives with his wife and daughters in historic Arlington, Va. Passionate about discovering and sharing forgotten stories from the past, in his spare time he explores the history of the American south, especially around his home in West Tennessee.