Heywood Broun was a man of contrasts--gregarious and introspective, brave and fearful, direct and evasive, a celebrity and a champion of the underdog. His fellow newspaperman Franklin P. Adams called Broun "a lion in print but a lamb in his personal relationships" and added that Broun "will be a legend, and a quoted writer, when the Pulitzers, the Danas and Greeleys are only names."

Broun was a big man. At six feet three inches and between 250 and 300 pounds, he wore size thirteen shoes (frequently without shoelaces) and baggy, shapeless suits that some said made him look like an unmade bed. His hair was tousled, his ties askew, his hats slouched. He favored ice cream with gin poured over it. Raised in Manhattan, he spoke with an accent that "always sounded to me suspiciously like a Southern drawl," observed Joseph F. Collis, who added, "His drawl was as characteristic...