Corduroy Road, The Story of Glenn H. McCarthy

Glenn McCarthy was born in the panic year 1907 at a time many said the day of individual opportunity was over. McCarthy proved it was not. Known in the media variously as "Diamond Glenn" and "The King of the Wildcatters”, McCarhy’s charismatic personality and rags-to-riches story drew much attention from the national media. He was the cultural mythos of the Texas oil millionaire: charming, lucky, and unabashed. He inspired the fictional character Jett Rink in Edna Ferber’s Giant, published in 1952 and later made into a move by the same name with James Dean cast in the role of Jett Rink. McCarthy built Houston’s Shamrock Hotel, the largest built in the United States in the 1940s. The Shamrock’s grand opening is still cited as one of Houston’s biggest social events ever. The hotel was demolished in June 1987 and McCarthy died 18 months later. Jim Clark, co-author of Spindletop, called McCarthy “a throwback to and a composite of the pioneers who created the oil industry”.   Houston: T