The Press: O'Malley of the Sun

• Share

(2 of 2)

Typical were his stories of the fabulous S. S. Wobble. A competing paper had mistaken the code word "wobble" ("cable instructions") for the name of the vessel in a marine mishap and had concocted an elaborate description of the ship. For years after Reporter O'Malley hammered out stories of the strange misadventures of the Wobble, her cargoes of subways and artesian wells, his discovering her one day at anchor in the Hippodrome tank.

Typical was his creation of ''The Duke of Essex Street" out of an obscure East Side criminal lawyer named Joe Levy. Wrote Reporter O'Malley of the Duke on the feast of Passover:

"It was difficult for a time to get the details of the duke's Passover garb owing to the fact that the interior of his Nile green limousine has recently been fitted up with bookshelves, so that the duke can be surrounded with his law library even when motoring to and from his office. . . . Besides Ittchee, the duke's Jap valet & chauffeur, was a large rubber plant . . . the Easter gift of Solomon, Solomon, Solomon. Solomon, Solomon & Solomon, who learned all their law in the office of the duke. . . ."

But Reporter O'Malley was not limited to such "Mr. Dooley'' humor. He was a thoroughgoing newshawk with entrée to the underworld as well as to his good friend Theodore Roosevelt out on Long Island. He knew his Broadway thoroughly. He was a copious drinker.

Most famed of O'Malley's human interest stories, familiar to college students of journalism, is his interview with the mother of the murdered policeman, "Happy Gene" Sheehan. Its simplicity and restraint removed it far from the category of "sob stories." It ended with the mother's account of her visit to the police station where her son's body lay:

". . . The policemen all stopped talking when I came in, and then one of them told me it was against the rules to show Gene at that time; but I knew the policeman only thought I'd break down. I promised him I wouldn't carry on, and he took me into a room to let me see Gene. It was Gene."