Columnists v. Columnist

Oscar Odd McIntyre of Gallipolis, Ohio is probably the most widely read columnist in the U.S. His "New York Day By Day," in which for 23 years he has maintained the attitude of an overgrown and somewhat elfin country boy viewing the Big City's glitter with vague mistrust, is gospel to countless millions of credulous readers in nearly every town big enough to have a daily newspaper. But of all the 400-odd places receiving "New York Day By Day," Manhattan shows least interest. Likewise, the vast army of O. O. McIntyre's admirers includes very few members of his own profession. Last week and the week before Columnist McIntyre was dealt two hard jolts by two fellow journalists in Manhattan.

Last week burly, whimsical, pipe-sucking Christopher Morley popped O. O. McIntyre onto the front pages with the cry of "plagiarism." The cry was raised over the latest McIntyre book, The Big Town, a collection of "New York Day By Day" columns. In his own "Bowling Green" column in the Saturday Review of Literature Mr. Morley ironically recalled that McIntyre had long been a Morley enthusiast. (Sample McIntyre column note: "The most perfect verbal silversmith, to my notion, is Christopher Morley.") Morley went on to say that McIntyre had been so carried away by his enthusiasm that for 15 years he consistently cribbed Morleyisms in his daily columns, now in book form. Wrote "Chris" Morley:

"I don't want to seem selfish if Mr. McIntyre needs to divot the Green now and then for his newspaper syndicate; I've run a daily column myself and I know it's a tough job. But when he gets into the bookshops then I feel a certain sense of trade honor involved. ... I work hard over my stuff, and if people are going to read it I'd prefer them to get it in the Saturday Review . . . under my own name than in the Hearst papers under his."

Verbal Silversmith Morley thereupon tabulated 30 examples of similarities between McIntyre phrases and excerpts from his own works written several years earlier. Samples:

Morley: . . . Floats an instant in the mind like a smoke-ring, then spreads and thins and sifts apart.

McIntyre: . . . Floating for an instant in the public eye like a smoke ring and sifting apart.

Morley: ... A sweet and dangerous opiate is Memory ... the bliss of anxious thought.

McIntyre: ... No opiate is so deadening as memory . . ; the despair of anxious thought.

Morley: Her hand flying merrily over the keys like a white hen picking up corn.

McIntyre: Watch my fingers fly over the keyboard like a hen pecking up corn.

Confronted by newshawks, Columnist McIntyre reiterated his fondness for "Chris'" but, as for quoting without credit, "If it did happen it happened unintentionally." Mr. McIntyre's syndicate (McNaught) was more articulate. Said Editor Charles Driscoll:

"In no instance were large gobs of similar copy quoted. . . . And after all, why should 'the most successful columnist in the business take the copy of the most unsuccessful--copy that long ago was proved unsalable. I should say that Mr. Morley, whose 'Bowling Green' column is perhaps the least read in the history of journalism, is capitalizing on Mr. McIntyre's popularity."

Unanswerable was the previous week's thrust at Columnist McIntyre when sardonic Westbrook Pegler made his entire syndicated column a stinging parody of "New York Day By Day." Excerpts:

"Thoughts While Strolling-- "The faint nostalgic nosegay of the Old World ateliers always assails me when my evening stroll takes me in the neighborhood of Le Chat Malade, that swank rendezvous of the cognoscenti in New York's Montparnasse. There the other evening, over my simple dish of aperitif aux rognons I saw Irvin S. Cobb. Fannie Hurst, Will Hays, Charlie McArthur. Will Hays and Irvin S. Cobb. Sometimes too, while browsing through my Petit Parisienne, lingering over my Pour Boire, I spy Gene Tunney, Irvin S. Cobb, Will Hays and Irvin S. Cobb engaged in a sharp play of wit, bantering bon mots in an evanescent shimmer of nascent nostalgia. . . .

"Incident on Park Ave.:--A puffy old gallant with a pince-nez cocked at a jaunty angle in his buttonhole stopped at the Ritz Tower, for a fillip of rhon chaude avec champignons aux nuts. ...

"Sinister shadows slithering sibilantly through the threadable mews of Chinatown always remind me of the Nick Carter stories I used to read with Butch Klutch in the haymow of his father's livery stable. A nostalgic patina permeates the poignant metier which broods over the pervading mouchoir. Last night in Pell St. a faint, silent shriek attracted my attention and an opium eater fell dead at my feet, shot with a platinum bullet set with Oriental sapphires. . . . Charles M. Schwab, Fannie Hurst, and Irvin S. Cobb often go down to Chinatown to see the murders, sometimes accompanied by Irvin S. Cobb and Will Hays.

"Lookalikes: Will Hays and Irvin S. Cobb. Fannie Hurst and Charles M. Schwab. Irving Berlin and Gene Tunney.

"Small town boys who made good:-- Will Hays and Irvin S. Cobb."

The regularity with which Stroller McIntyre encounters the sinister and blood-curdling in his daily rounds is one reason why many New Yorkers refuse to take him seriously. Sample experience: "A motor accident held a group of us in its moonlit glow for more than an hour the other night. Faintly in silhouette across the way was the ghostly gray Tombs, illuminated solely by a pin prick of light in a bleak tower. Twice we heard the rise of a despairing moan and the rattle of bars. Then, too, somewhere out of the void, a sustained and racking cough followed by a terrible blasphemy. A figure, muffled to the eyes in an ulster, slouched out of the blur. He wanted money, frankly, for 'a bust in the arm.' ... A police whistle and swift pursuit. . . . Above 14th Street another tragedy of night. A couple on a doorstep saying goodnight, and suddenly a form appeared out of the darkness. An outraged woman--likely a wife. In the cold moonlight we thought we saw the flash of a knife. Anyway we heard a scream."

Often Columnist McIntyre confides his personal tastes: "One-word description of Amelia Earhart--exciting. . . . Personal nomination for the ace self-effacing husband--George Palmer Putnam. . . . One of my favorite people--Lowell Thomas. . . . Odor of burning leaves afflicts me with a nostalgic pang for the small town."

Least of Oscar Odd McIntyre's worries is what Manhattan readers and his contemporaries think of his column. Outside New York, editors gladly pay anywhere from $2 to $200 a week for the privilege of printing "New York Day By Day." McIntyre at 51 receives an income which has been guessed as high as $2,000 a week--a guess which McNaught says is too low. He lives with his wife, the former Maybelle Hope Small, who embarrasses him before company by asking "How's my itty mans?" They occupy an expensive co-operative apartment at No. 290 Park Ave., in which McIntyre's favorite room is his "den," festooned with pictures of dogs, relatives, friends--"a cosy higgledy-piggledy."

Two factors in his career McIntyre does not let his readers forget. One is that he and his wife suffered the harshest privations when they first arrived in Manhattan 23 years ago, after a knockabout newspaper career in the Midwest. At that time his problem was to get editors to print his column for nothing, so he might collect an occasional meal or the price of room rent from some restaurant or hotel whose name he had insinuated into print. His wife patiently worked the mimeograph machine, licked the stamps, kept what records there were. The other point is that his wife for years has been his business manager, arranging and dictating the terms of all his contracts. Childless, deeply fond of his Boston Bull and Sealyham, he has simplified his life so that his daily column can be, and is, his consuming interest. He has rejected radio offers as fat as $5,000 for a few-minute broadcast because he feared his column might suffer. He quit drinking long ago, likes lots of candy and indulges a passion for loud clothes which first manifested itself at the age of 8 when he pedaled a velocipede down the streets of Gallipolis,* wearing a plug hat. He once brought 16 bottles of perfume from France for his friends, kept them all.

-In Gallipolis hangs a wrought-iron sign, silhouetting a likeness of McIntyre at a typewriter. A legend beneath reads: "Boyhood home of O. O. McIntyre. Famous newspaperman and now writer of New York Day By Day." The Gallipolis Tribune proudly runs his column on the front page.

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