Harry Allen Wolfgang Smith[1] (December 19, 1907 — February 24, 1976)[2] was an American journalist, humorist, and writer whose books were popular in the 1940s and 1950s.

In Florida, editing the Sebring American in 1925, he met society editor Nelle Mae Simpson, and they married in 1927.

The couple lived in Oklahoma, where Smith worked at the Tulsa Tribune, followed by a position at the Denver Post.

He found fame when his humor book Low Man on a Totem Pole (1941) became a bestseller during World War II.

As noted by Eric Partridge in A Dictionary of Catch Phrases, the book's title became a catchphrase for the least successful individual in a group.

With his newfound financial freedom, he left the daily newspaper grind for life as a freelance author scripting for radio and also wrote (for six months) The Totem Pole, a daily column for United Features Syndicate;[1] made personal appearances; and worked on his next book, Life in a Putty Knife Factory (1943), which became another bestseller.

He spent eight months in Hollywood as a screenwriter for Paramount Pictures and wrote about the experience in Lost in the Horse Latitudes (1944).

Histories of the Manhattan Project mention Desert Island Decameron because Donald Hornig was reading it when he was sitting in the Trinity Test tower and babysitting the atomic bomb on July 15, 1945, the stormy night prior to the first nuclear explosion.

His novel, Rhubarb (1946), about a cat that inherits a professional baseball team, led to two sequels and a 1951 film adaptation.

Larks in the Popcorn (1948, reprinted in 1974) and Let The Crabgrass Grow (1960) described "rural" life in Westchester County, New York.

H. Allen and Nelle Smith lived in Mount Kisco, New York, for 23 years before relocating to Alpine, Texas, in 1967.

Allen competed with Wick Fowler in the first chili cookoff in history, held in Terlingua, Texas, in October 1967.