7.George Palmer Putnam
George Palmer Putnam II was a man of many accomplishments. Because of his highly active and extroverted nature, people either liked him or disliked him. No one who knew him felt an apathetic indifference toward him.
Newspaperman, mayor, publisher, explorer, author, promoter, manager, publicity man extraordinary, he was tall, good-looking, aggressively masculine, brilliantly informed, and he married some of the most charming women of his day. (GP’s four wives were Dorothy Binney, Amelia Earhart, Jean Marie Cosigny, and Margaret Haviland.) In appearance he was deceptive: he looked like an intellectual, a scholar, a college professor, perhaps because of the rimless glasses that he wore; yet he was very much the manof action, the man of constant activity in many fields at the same time.
“Lens louse,†photographers later dubbed him, as he managed to get into picture after picture with Amelia. He loved the limelight and as much publicity for himself as he could manage, yet he would do many charitable things for people which he would absolutely forbid them to mention. “The meanest,†some called him; others said, “The kindest.â€
Born in 1887 into a family of wealth and position, George Putnam was a gentleman, agentleman, yet was capable of an irritability easily aroused by what he considered stupidity in others. He was capable with the right provocation of changing from a person of charm and grace into one of explosive anger and violent fury.
In his lifetime GP wrote ten books in his spare time. He could produce a book “with his left hand,†while with his right he went about his daily business of publishing and promoting. His books reflected his many interests: four on travel, four biographies, and two novels. With the eye of a close observer he recorded a perceptive understanding of the land and the people of Central America, the Oregon country, the Arctic, and Death Valley. His ability to see through the deceptive surface and into the reality of his own life and the lives of others produced the biographies of Salomon August Andrée, the gallant Swedish aeronaut; of Amelia Earhart, his famous wife; of Captain Bob Bartlett, “the mariner of the northâ€; andWide Margins, the story of his own life. Combining his knowledge of people and places, he wrote the novelsDuration, about an older man and his son, who are both involved in World War II, andHickory Shirt, which is laid in the Death Valley of 1850.
Frequently charming, kind, generous—anything but the tough guy he wanted people to believe he was—George Palmer Putnam would rather be hanged than have anyone discover he was soft behind the hard shell. Typically, he was ever quick to respond to distress in others.
Blanche Noyes, a famous woman flier, who is now chief of the Air Marking Staff, National Aviation Agency, remembers the George Putnam who didn’t want to be found out. She writes:
The thing that I shall always remember of “G.P.†was my first public appearance after my husband’s death, when I was mistress of ceremonies in New York at a large luncheon, at which time I was to introduce these celebrities without benefit of notes. However, this time I felt a little shaky and asked “G.P.†to write my introductions for me, which he did, but swore me to secrecy. It was quite annoying, after the luncheon, to have two people come up and thank me for the lovely things I said about them, but each said that the only thing that spoiled the luncheon was the fact that they sat next to “G.P.,†the man they disliked intensely. I wanted to tell them that all the flattering things I had said about them were “G.P.’s†thoughts and words, not mine, but he had sworn me to secrecy. Someday I am going to tell them how wrong they were in their thoughts of this grand person....
The thing that I shall always remember of “G.P.†was my first public appearance after my husband’s death, when I was mistress of ceremonies in New York at a large luncheon, at which time I was to introduce these celebrities without benefit of notes. However, this time I felt a little shaky and asked “G.P.†to write my introductions for me, which he did, but swore me to secrecy. It was quite annoying, after the luncheon, to have two people come up and thank me for the lovely things I said about them, but each said that the only thing that spoiled the luncheon was the fact that they sat next to “G.P.,†the man they disliked intensely. I wanted to tell them that all the flattering things I had said about them were “G.P.’s†thoughts and words, not mine, but he had sworn me to secrecy. Someday I am going to tell them how wrong they were in their thoughts of this grand person....
Grand indeed. When Mrs. Noyes’ husband Dewey was killed in 1935, AE had insisted that Blanche come with her and GP from New York to the West Coast and stay with them as long as she could at their home near Toluca Lake, California. From time to time on the trip Amelia would see Blanche crying in the back seat. Husband and wife up front would whisper; then they would detour off the main highway, sometimes to see a rodeo, to see a friend whom they thought Blanche might enjoy, or to spend the night at some interesting historical spot. AE was like that, and so was GP.
When George was a boy, his father, Bishop, and his two uncles, Irving and Haven, were the publishing firm of G. P. Putnam’s Sons. In their time, George Palmer, the founder, and George Haven, his successor, were the deans of American publishing. Authors on the Putnam list were famous; they are now required reading in any course in American literature: WashingtonIrving, James Russell Lowell, James Fenimore Cooper, Nathaniel Hawthorne, William Cullen Bryant, Francis Parkman.
GPP II at the time when his father and uncles were running the firm had little interest in the classics of literature, either British or American. He was having a marvelous time growing up.
Like the elder Putnams, GP went to Harvard, but he soon transferred to the University of California at Berkeley; then, like Francis Parkman before him in the 1840’s, he went to the wilds of Oregon. The road was mud, ruts, potholes, and bumps; but up and beyond, as far as his eyes could see, was the most magnificent scenery he had ever seen. Rolling hills to the east, the Cascades on the west, California’s valleys to the south, and rock-rimmed ruggedness all the way to the Columbia River to the north.
Twenty-three years old, and with three hundred dollars in his pockets, GP settled in the valley of the Deschutes River at Bend. He was soon elected mayor of the town. The previous incumbent had died; he had fallen out of a second-story window of a bawdy house and landed on his head. GP had needed the job, for he had prevailed upon a young lady in Connecticut to come out to Oregon and marry him. Dorothy Binney came northwest, and became his bride in October, 1911.
In the seven years that GP continued to live in Bend, he became the father of a son, David Binney, and the editor of the local newspaper,The Bulletin. One of the best stories conjured up by George to fill space in his paper was the tale about Lucy, the tame trout. Lucy had been kept in a shallow pan, until she spilled out all the water and somehow learned to live by breathing air. GP would take her to one of the local bars to perform. One day he forgot to close the door where Lucy was kept; and having walked halfway across the foot-bridge over the Deschutes River, GP looked back to see Lucy flapping along after him. Then, before George could get to the fish to help her across, Lucy lost her balance, fell into the river, and drowned.
After serving in World War I, GP, his father and brother having died, now took his place in G. P. Putnam’s Sons. In the beginning his selections of manuscripts for publication were happy choices. Under the Putnam imprint were issued, among others, Alexander Woollcott’s first books, Rockwell Kent’sWilderness, and the novels of Ben Hecht.
One of the cleverest of George Putnam’s literary coups wasBobbed Hair; it was a novel, and it was victorious on all fronts. The book was a twenty-author production. GP conceived the plot; then, with the help of ten women authors and nine men writers (Putnam was the tenth), each to do one chapter, the mongrel fiction was given birth. The novel was serialized inColliers, published in book form, then made into a movie. Included in the assembly-line production were Louis Bromfield, Sophie Kerr, George Agnew Chamberlin, Bernice Brown, John V. A. Weaver, Alexander Woollcott, George Barr McCutcheon, Carolyn Wells, Rube Goldberg, Edward Streeter, Kermit Roosevelt, and Frank Craven.
For George Putnam these were fabulous times. Franklin P. Adams, Harold Ross, Marc Connelly, Heywood Broun, Herbert Bayard Swope, Ben Hecht, Alexander Woollcott, Maxwell Anderson, Laurence Stallings, Sidney Howard, Louis Shipman, Burton Rascoe, Christopher Morley: all were enjoying the first of their many successes. GP was in their midst, and like cut glass catching and refracting a brilliant light, he shone among them.
During this period George scored smashing results in publishing books on exploration, and he was a publisher who practiced what he preached. In the Putnam stables of authors were Charles Lindbergh, Richard Byrd, Amelia Earhart, Martin Johnson, William Beebe, Roy Chapman Andrews, Knud Rasmussen, Lincoln Ellsworth, Bob Bartlett, Rockwell Kent, Robert Cushman Murphy, Merion Cooper, Larry Gould, William A. Robinson, Fitzhugh Green, Sir Hubert Wilkins. But GP was not content simply to publish books on exploration; he had to be an explorer himself.
In 1925 he organized and led an expedition into Greenland for the American Museum of Natural History. The exploration was also a writing and publishing success that produced books by Knud Rasmussen, Bob Bartlett, and David Binney Putnam, GP’s first son. David Binney’sDavid Goes to Greenlandwas a tremendously successful boys’ book. It was a successor to his equally famousDavid Goes Voyaging, written at the age of twelve after an expedition to the Galápagos with William Beebe. For the boy the Arctic Circle was as full of thrills and adventure as the equator; happily, the son had his father’s talent for recording new, unusual, and exciting experiences.
In May of 1927 Charles A. Lindbergh flew the Atlantic, alone, and it was G. P. Putnam’s Sons that publishedWe. In June of 1928 Amelia M. Earhart flew across the Atlantic, as passenger, and it was again Putnam’s that released20 Hrs., 40 Min.
George Putnam admired Colonel Lindbergh for his accomplishment but accused Lindy of having a “mechanical†brain and a “one-track†mind. Unfortunately, George did not live to readThe Spirit of St. Louis; if he had, he would have changed his mind.
The girl from Kansas who looked like Lindbergh, however, became his wife. “Amelia Earhart,†he wrote later, “knew me better, probably, than anyone else ever can. With her discernment, why she married the man she did was often a matter of wonder to me. And to some others.â€