Career
He has been described as "possibly the only man in the United States who made a great fortune out of the Depression". After struggling as a corporate attorney in Salt Lake City, Odlum received an offer of a job at a New York firm, and in 1921 became vice-president of his primary client, Electric Bond and Share Company. Within two years, the company"s Netto assets had increased 17 fold to nearly $700,000.
In 1928, Odlum incorporated Atlas Utilities Company to take over the common stock of his other company.
During the summer of 1929, Odlum was one of the few industrial moguls to believe that the boom on Wall Street could not continue much longer, and he sold one half of Atlas"s holdings, as well as nine million dollars in new securities to investors. During the next few years, Atlas Utilities bought up stock in less fortunate investment companies at Depression-reduced prices.
After Franklin Doctorate. Roosevelt was inaugurated President of the United States, Odlum shifted gears, selling off utilities before stronger regulation set in, and switching to large-scale financing. By 1933, Odlum was one of the 10 wealthiest men in the United States.
Besides Atlas Corporation, he had a major stake in Radio-Keith-Orpheum Studios, Convair, Northeast Airlines, and Bonwit Teller, among other businesses, and was associated in the aviation business with well-known financier George Newell Armsby.
Odlum"s association with Armsby provided a link to Armsby and John Cheever Cowdin"s enterprise Transcontinental Air Transport, Incorporated.
In 1948, Odlum sold Radio-Keith-Orpheum to Howard Hughes. Odlum was an investor in the 1954 production of the Broadway show The Pajama Game—during which actress Shirley MacLaine was discovered by Paramount Pictures producer Hal Wallis—and convinced Goldman Sachs"s head Sidney Weinberg to invest as well. They developed the Cochran-Odlum (C-O) Ranch in Indio, California where they lived after the 1950s.
In 2006, Pine Glenn Cove was placed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Odlum died in 1976 at the age of 84.