Odd and Broun of the dailies

HARRY SALPETER

Another pair of portraits from the growing gallery of Manhattan's diurnally busy newspaper columnists

Many persons hearing Hey wood Broun for the first time are tricked into believing

that there's a Southern accent in his drawl, but that is only his love of lost causes coining out, for he was horn in Brooklyn and spent four years at Harvard acquiring what is called an education.

Broun is the only New York columnist who has an exacting social conscience, a conscience large enough to cover the world, spirited enough to resent every form of injustice and stupidity that is presented to the newspaper-reading intelligence. Are the Japanese slaughtering Chinese at Shanghai? Has the sheriff of some Kentucky coal county beaten up a striker? Has Benito Mussolini made a jingo threat, or a Nebraska politician been found out in a shady deal? The social conscience of Heywood Broun gets up on its hind legs and growls.

• He's the Great Dane among columnists. Physically, he's the largest, and his generosity is as obvious as his commanding bulk. He calls himself lazy and he looks it, with unshaven face, unbrushed clothes, a tangled mop of hair and unbuttoned vest, but bis generosity always exercises the whip hand over his inclination to dawdle. For a man as ambitious as he is, and for one who loses as heavily at poker, Broun engages in more nitwit enterprises that butter no parsnips than anyone who is not a professional philanthropist. Excepting Alexander Woollcott, Broun has the greatest variety of capacities, even if each one of them is not so highly polished as is each of Woollcott's. Whatever Woollcott does seems to be the work of a professional; Broun still has some of the boyish elan of the experimenting amateur. It is almost impossible to imagine Woollcott confessing to—much less taking pride in—the kind of paintings of which Broun is guilty.

Maybe there's circulation in his radicalism; maybe that sensitivity to social wrong is a fillip to his column, another string to his bow, an invitation to the middle class mugwumps to come buy the paper in which Broun writes; for it is plain that social indignation, consistently exercised for more than a dozen years, hasn't soured him, hasn't spoiled his appetite or taken the taste out of his poker sessions. The fact is, however, that he fights because he has to: he's made that way and he fights without getting soured, because he enjoys fighting. Everyone knows how his indignation about Sacco and Vanzetti lost him his job on The World at a time when he needed it and wasn't sure of getting another. And twice, at least, he wras badly beaten up for chivalric intrusions into what was not, technically, his business. There are St. George and Eugene Debs, H. L. Mencken, Don Quixote. Punchinello and a Middle Western mooncalf all mixed up in his composition. Because he is so loveable, he is privileged, privileged to opinions and to eccentricities which, expressed in others less gifted with personality, would provoke a cry for the village constable.

He does the things he does because he can't help himself. His sloppiness, for example, may be an inverted form of self-exhibitionism, but lie's sloppy naturally and not by premeditation. No one column could be wide enough to be the all-containing channel for Broun's energies, fancies and opinions. "A column written around yourself impels you to do things," he said to me, "so's you'll have more to write about."

Except for the four years he spent at Harvard (1906-10), a brief period spent in France as correspondent with the A. E. F., and an occasional tour through the Middle West, Broun has spent approximately every one of his forty-four years in and around New York. All the papers for which he has reported, read copy, edited, been dramatic and literary reviewer, special correspondent and columnist, have been New York papers. He was a cub reporter on the Morning Telegraph while he was still a Harvard undergraduate, and when he left college they took him on again and kept him for two years. From 1912 to 1921, he was on the New York Tribune, where he blossomed variously as reporter, rewrite man, copy reader, Sunday magazine editor, sports writer, dramatic critic and, finally, columnist. In 1921 he went to The World, entrenching himself so deeply in the loyalties of his public that when he left The World it was estimated that he brought an additional 11,000 of daily circulation to The Evening Telegram.

It was on The Tribune that the impress of the Brounian personality modified the nature of his assignment. It was in 1919 that the then managing editor, Garet Garrett, gave him a quasi-literary column to fill. It was called Books and Other Things. The second half of the title was designed to cover those occasions when the columnist hadn't read a book. With Broun those lapses were very frequent. It was so much easier to write about such unbookish things as his dog and the adventures of buying a farm, and his young son. Woody—who, for a time, threatened to monopolize the column. One day the Boss called him in for what Broun thought was to be a proper talking-to, but, instead, the Boss told Broun to go ahead and write about the things that interested him. And that is how the column became It Seems To Me.

He is an author several times over. Two of his books, Seeing Things at Night and Pieces of Hate, contain selections from bis column and magazine contributions. He has published three novels, The Boy Grew Older, The Sun Field and Gandle Follows His Nose, and he has felt more than peeved because the reviewers and the public missed the point and meaning and pathos of Gandle, He looks as if he had a chip on his shoulder when he tells you he's going to write another novel; he must do it. he says; he feels it as an ''imaginary obligation." With Margaret Leech he wrote Anthony Comstock and with George Britt Christians Only. Ages ago, he was advance agent for Loti's Daughter of Heaven company and once upon a time he was assistant press agent for a fake Chinese prince. He lectured on the drama at Columbia University and at the Rand School and lectured his way through the Middle West once. He ran for Congress on the Socialist ticket in a silk stocking district, and worked so hard for election that he almost wept when he learned that he had been beaten, and badly beaten. He then tried to get into the Board of Aider-men, campaigned less strenuously, and was less disappointed when he was defeated. As a painter his experience has been a little less disastrous, for although he has not, up to the present, sold a painting, he received a set of Casanova's Memoirs in return for a painting which he had given. Having covered a large number of canvases with pigments, he believes that some day, maybe, be will go abroad to study painting.

His adventures in the theatre have been more happy than those in Art. He appeared as monologist in Round the Town and filled a week's engagement at the Palace. He organized, cast and appeared in the co-operative musical, Shoot the Works. This ran for eleven weeks in New York and cleared a little less than $60,000, which was divided among principals, chorus, stage hands and musicians. He would like to put on another co-operative show, but angels' money is scarce. As a radio speaker, he has enjoyed comparative success. He is a good deal of a hypochondriac and has been tinkered with by a large crowd of physicians, including neurologists and psychoanalysts. He takes most things seriously, including his humor. He is an uplifter rather than a cynic and although never a coward he feels most courageous when seated, seething at the proper heat of indignation, before a well-oiled typewriter.

The vogue of Broadway columning is so recent, comparatively, that the dean of Broadway columnists is a grey-headed sage of forty-eight. Oscar Odd McIntyre is four years older than Broun, by three years Woollcott's senior and older enough than Winchell to pat him on the head with a There! There! or pat him, more summarily, on the backside as a nuisance. When McIntyre was blazing the trail for Broadway gossip-columning, W inS chell was a boy tenor on the stage of a Harlem nickelodeon, Broun was a bright reporter on the New York Tribune and Woollcott had begun his devotions to the theatre, for the New York Times.

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O. O. McIntyre has not the rich personality and the endearing eccentricities of Broun; he has not the generous variety of talents and the wide intelligence possessed by Woollcott; and he is not one-fifth as indefatigable as is Winchell in the exploitation of a narrow talent; but he has this distinction: he reports New York and its gossip to more men and women outside of New York than all other New York columnists combined. The syndication of his New York Pay by Day has practically reached the saturation point. There is no American city, with a population of 100,000 (or more) and a newspaper, that has not an opportunity of reading McIntyre. Three hundred and five American daily papers print the column six or seven times a week; one hundred and twenty-seven dailies and from sixty-five to seventy weeklies print the weekly column. To say that, over the week, McIntyre has a potential reading public of five millions is to incline to caution.

McIntyre's success is explained by the fact that he satisfies a great deal of the hinterland's curiosity about New York and New Yorkers, and also by the fact that he was there first, long before there were ten Broadway columnists to each tabloid—long before there was a tabloid. He doesn't believe he's a writer; he doubts that he has even one novel in him. Had he not blazed the trail of gossip columning he would have been, he believes, an obscure copy reader on some sheet in New York, or perhaps a managing editor in the Middle West. He isn't in the habit of telling you how much money he banks every week, but it is possible to get a vague notion of the size of his income from the fact that one of the papers in a town of middling size pays S100 a week for the use of his column. There are, remember, 305 papers in that approximate category, to say nothing about other sources of income.

And in the first week of columning he earned $16. As a matter of fact, he became a New York columnist by sheer blundering accident, when a Connecticut paper sent him an unexpected gratuity of $5. That paper is now paying SI00 a week. This is how it happened:

McIntyre's early career had followed rather closely in the wake of Ray Long's. After going through his apprenticeship period on the Gallipolis (0.) Journal, the East Liverpool (0.) Tribune and the Dayton (0.) Herald, McIntyre was invited by Long—who has always believed in him—to come to work for the Cincinnati Post, of which he was then managing editor. From 1907 through 1911, McIntyre was, successively, telegraph editor, city editor and assistant managing editor. One of the things Long allowed McIntyre to do was to conduct a semi-humorous column, something probably somewhat like the kind of column II. I. Phillips runs today in The Sun. In 1912. Long was asked to come on to New York to edit Hampton's Magazine, and McIntyre, then twenty-eight, went along. But in the same year, 1912, Hampton's suspended publication and some of the glow left New York.

The McIntyres—there has been a Mrs. McIntyre since 1908—had some uncomfortable months. The following year, life was a little brighter for the period that McIntyre was drawing pay from the New York Evening Mail as news editor. But it was in 1912 that McIntyre, unknowingly, began paving the way to affluence, independence and reputation. As a port in a storm, with meals, he moved into the Majestic Hotel; that is, in return for the publicity he could obtain for the hotel, he received free room rent, with board. His favorite publicity device consisted in sending out a column of ostensible gossip, insinuating publicity for the hotel. With this work as a lever, lie obtained several other accounts and. following the same strategy, insinuated their publicity in this syndicated column, for which publication was the highest form of pay he expected. It did not occur to him that newspapers might be made to pay for a straight gossip column from New York until a Connecticut paper sent him that $5 check. It was from that time that McIntyre became a conscious New York columnist. While McIntyre gathered his material, wrote the column and tried to sell it. Mrs. McIntyre operated the mimeographing machine, addressed the envelopes and licked the stamps. At the end of the first week they had made $16.

That sum increased with irritating slowness. No New York paper wanted the column. For seven years McIntyre cultivated what seemed, at times, such stony ground. For seven years he wore out the thresholds of New York newspaper syndicates, but none wished to take over New York Day by Day. Finally, when he had built up an impressive list of customers throughout the country, one of these syndicates took over the detail of promoting, distributing and selling the column.

With the possible exception of exMayor Walker. 0. 0. McIntyre is the best-dressed man in New York. His wardrobe is a most ostentatious display of wealth, until we remember that it is his only extravagance and his only vice. His first idol was E. Berry Wall, who had 250 suits and 75 overcoats; he. himself, has only forty suits. Blazingly colorful silk pajamas, dressing gowns and vests are among his chief weaknesses. He is extremely fond of color, likes perfume, has a collection of 200 canes, each a memento of a city he's visited, and would wear the monocle that he keeps under his lapel, if he had the courage.

He works hard and follows a rigid routine. He wakes at noon, works until five, then dresses and dines. Although only an occasional first-nighter, he loves the theatre and after the show he likes to drive through Central Park. Returning home, he works until 2 or 3 in the morning. His most engaging quality is being able to make light of himself before anyone else does so.