Business & Finance: Lady from Atlas

Long before Floyd Bostwick Odlum started to collect broken-down investment trusts for Atlas Corp., he traveled all over the world using his absolute power-of-attorney to buy hundreds of millions of dollars of utility properties for Electric Bond & Share. Before that he was a $75-per-month law clerk in Salt Lake City. And shortly before that the slight, sandy-haired son of a Methodist minister was married to Hortense (“Tenney”) Mc-Quarrie, daughter of a Mormon elder.

Last week, 18 years after Floyd Odlum arrived in Manhattan, so green that he tried to walk from Grand Central Station to Wall Street (3½ mi.), Mrs. Odlum was 42, mother of two sons, sprightly wife of the head of the biggest investment trust in the U. S. but still a Westerner in speech and manner. And her husband gave her a present. Hortense McQuarrie Odlum was duly elected president of Bonwit Teller, big Manhattan smartshop.

In the process of collecting the investment trusts which swelled Atlas Corp.’s resources from $14,000,000 to $121,000,000 in four Depression years Mr. Odlum of necessity picked up a rag, tag & bobtail assortment of assets along with the stocks & bonds of hundreds of major U. S. corporations. Among the barge lines, furniture factories, Long Island estates, vacant lots, amusement parks and fruit ranches was Bonwit Teller. Founder Paul J. Bonwit borrowed money from Ungerleider Financial Corp. to move up Fifth Avenue from 38th Street to 56th Street in 1930. As times went from bad to worse the store fell into the hands of Ungerleider; from Ungerleider, into the hands of Mr. Odlum. Bonwit Teller differed from the other Odlum odds & ends in that it made about $500,000 annually until 1930. Mr. Odlum differed from most of his Wall Street elders in that he made fortunes while they were losing them. He concluded that the logical person to run a swank women’s specialty shop was a woman. His wife was no swankier than he (they live simply in suburban Forest Hills, prefer Utah to Europe for vacationing), but after she wrote a report for him on the basis of a month’s inspection of the store, “Tenney” Odlum was installed as a special adviser. One of the first things she did was to move the millinery department down to the street floor, with the result that hat sales tripled. New departments were organized, floors remodeled, Grand Duchess Marie of Russia installed to run a photography studio. Last week at the president’s desk in her walnut-paneled office Mrs. Odlum announced her slogan: “High class but not high hat.” Last week Founder Bonwit retired, ostensibly because of ill health. General Manager Walter Bonwit, son of the founder, remains as Mrs. Odlum’s righthand man.

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