Though he spent much of his mature life in New York as a playwright and in Hollywood as a screenwriter, it is as a Chicago journalist that Charles MacArthur left an indelible mark on the American scene. More than any other twentieth-century newsman, MacArthur served as a model for the tough, wise-cracking reporter--a freewheeling archetype that remained for decades an American original. Noted for his elaborations on normal social usage, he was in some ways as colorful and unpredictable as the characters in his plays and movies. His second wife, the actress Helen Hayes, once said of him, "There is no rule of reason that he follows, so far as I can discover, and there is no telling, ever, what will happen next."

As a reporter for the Chicago Tribune and earlier for William Randolph Hearst's colorful Examiner, MacArthur demonstrated that he was neither awed by wealth nor...