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’s Wilderness, and the novels of Ben Hecht.
One of the cleverest of George Putnam’s literary coups was Bobbed 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 in Colliers, 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’s David Goes to Greenland was a tremendously successful boys’ book. It was a successor to his equally famous David 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 published We. In June of 1928 Amelia M. Earhart flew across the Atlantic, as passenger, and it was again Putnam’s that released 20 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 read The 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.”