O. O. McIntyre

Oscar Odd McIntyre
Portrait of O.O. McIntyre by Jim McDermott.
Born	(1884-02-18)February 18, 1884 Plattsburg, Missouri
Died	February 14, 1938(1938-02-14) (aged 53) Manhattan, New York City, New York
Occupation	newspaper columnist
Spouse(s)	Maybelle Hope Small (m. 1902; his death 1938)
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Oscar Odd McIntyre (February 18, 1884 – February 14, 1938) was a New York newspaper columnist of the 1920s and 1930s, who used the byline O. O. McIntyre. His writings cleverly combined a small town point of view with urban sophistication. The Washington Post once described his column as "the letter from New York read by millions because it never lost the human, homefolk flavor of a letter from a friend." For a quarter of a century, his daily column, “New York Day by Day,” was published in more than 500 newspapers.

Born in Plattsburg, Missouri, McIntyre began his newspaper career in 1902 on the Gallipolis Journal in Gallipolis, Ohio, where he married Maybelle Hope Small. He moved on to East Liverpool, Ohio to become a feature writer on the East Liverpool Morning Tribune. After a period as managing editor of the Dayton Herald (Dayton, Ohio), McIntyre worked as assistant managing editor at the Cincinnati Post. He was 28 years old when he arrived in New York in 1912 as an associate editor at Hampton’s Magazine, which folded shortly after he took the job.

While freelancing and doing public relations work in 1912, he started writing a daily column about New York City life for "the home folks." He circulated these mimeographed columns through the mail, and the Bridgeport Post was the first newspaper to run the column at an annual fee of $8. With his wife handling his business affairs, he soon had syndication contracts with Scripps-Howard and McNaught. Within two years, 26 papers had signed on at an annual fee of $600. In New York, his column appeared in the Journal-American. Back in Gallipolis, the Gallipolis Tribune ran the column on its front page.

His publicity work for the Hotel Majestic gave him free room and board, and syndication made him one of the highest paid newspaper writers with an income of more than $200,000 each year. He lived in style, and his many celebrity friends included Irvin S. Cobb, Gene Fowler, Major Bowes and top talents of Broadway. He was the publicist for Flo Ziegfeld and various comedians and actors.