[3][4] Odunton was born on 24 December 1920 at Kpong in the Eastern Region of Ghana (then Gold Coast).
He was admitted into the Accra Academy in 1935 for his secondary education where he obtained his Cambridge Certificate in 1939.
He worked for the then Gold Coast Information department as its Assistant Propaganda Cinema Officer.
A year after graduating at the University of Oxford, he returned to the Gold Coast and worked at the Ghana film unit as a script writer.
[19] In April 1966, he was re-appointed Principal Secretary at the Ministry of Information by the National Liberation Council government.
[24] He was responsible for organising the Queen and her husband; Prince Philip's visit to Ghana in November 1959.
His son, Nii Allotey Odunton, is a mining engineer and was the Secretary General of the International Seabed Authority.