May 23, 1898. Born on Terminal Island, Los Angeles, California, to May Elizabeth Gabriel and Bennett Mason O'Dell, an official of the Union Pacific Railroad, O'Dell's great-grandmother was a first cousin of the Scottish novelist Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832). "Los Angeles was a frontier town when I was born there around the turn of the century. It had more horses than automobiles, more jack rabbits than people. The very first sound I remember was a wildcat scratching on the roof as I lay in bed.

"My father was a railroad man so we moved a lot, but never far. Wherever we went, it was into frontier country like Los Angeles. There was San Pedro, which is a part of Los Angeles. And Rattlesnake Island, across the bay from San Pedro, where we lived in a house on stilts and the waves came up and washed under us every day. And...