Floyd Odlum
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Floyd Bostwick Odlum (b. March 30, 1892, Union City, Michigan – d. June 17, 1976, Indio, California) was a wealthy lawyer and industrialist.
He was first married to Hortense McQuarrie, first woman department store head; his second wife was aviatrix Jackie Cochran.
Odlum was one of the 10 wealthiest men in the U.S. when he married Cochran in 1932. He owned Atlas Corporation, a Wall Street investment firm, RKO Studios, Convair, Northeast Airlines, Bonwit Teller, among other businesses, and was associated in aviation business with the well-known financier George Newell Armsby; his association with Armsby provided a link to the Armsby's and Cowdin's enterprise Transcontinental Air Transport, Inc.
Odlum sold RKO to Howard Hughes.[1]
He and Cochran were close friends of Amelia Earhart and her husband George Putnam Palmer and the Odlums were financial backers of Earhart's flying activities. They developed the Cochran-Odlum (C-O) Ranch in Indio, California where they lived after the 1950s.
[edit] Trivia
Odlum was an investor in the 1954 production of the Broadway show The Pajama Game and convinced Goldman Sachs's head Sidney Weinberg to invest as well.[2]
