Paul Gallico

Paul William Gallico

• School Columbia University

• Born July 26, 1897 in New York, NY, USA
• Died July 15, 1976 in Monte Carlo, Monaco

Biographical Information

Paul Gallico is an American writer of the 1920s and 1930s. He was a man of two careers, with his sports career effectively ending in 1942. From 1919 to 1942, Gallico was a successful newspaper writer with the New York Daily News. Gallico was the first to participate in a sport then write about his experiences when he interviewed then sparred with Jack Dempsey. He was known as Babe Ruth's ghostwriter, and he wrote a weekly column in the name of the Babe.

In 1936, Gallico abandoned sports in favor of fiction and short stories. For the next forty years, Gallico was widely published. His last major sports work was The Pride of the Yankees, the story of Lou Gehrig, which earned him an Academy Award nomination for best screenplay in 1942.

Later, Gallico wrote 41 books. The most famous was The Poseidon Adventure. He died in Monaco of a heart attack in 1976.