Privileged Son: Otis Chandler And The Rise And Fall Of The L.a. Times Dynasty [Hardcover]

Dennis Mcdougal (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 24, 2001

Here is the riveting story of how a second-rate newspaper rose to national greatness, only to become a casualty of war-a civil war within the family that owned it. Told in a hard-edged, investigative style, it spans the American Century, from 1884, when the Chandler family gained control of the just-born daily, through April 2000, when they sold it to the Tribune Company. Above all, Privileged Son chronicles the life of Otis Chandler, the Times' chief architect after 1960, whose flamboyant exploits in and out of the publisher's suite changed the perspective of the newspaper, and Los Angeles, forever.Using scores of insider sources, Dennis McDougal, the best-selling author of The Last Mogul, will surprise readers with his findings, including accounts of political graft and early mob connections among one of L.A.'s most prominent families. The Chandlers, who helped establish the national careers of Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and several other major political figures, controlled Los Angeles and the Times Mirror Corporation with a capriciousness that is seldom seen, even in the most dysfunctional media dynasties.Privileged Son is a thoroughly compelling page-burner that will keep readers engaged from its opening paragraphs. But it is also a numbing morality tale that extends far beyond Otis Chandler to highlight the greed that brought down one of America's richest family dynasties and one of its most prominent newspapers.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Though he tells more about the sometimes shady dynasty than about the newspaper, McDougal (author of The Last Mogul, about Lew Wasserman and MCA), an L.A. Times reporter, renders protagonist Otis Chandler, last of the family dynasty to run the Times, overly enigmatic. Dynasty founder Harrison Otis and son-in-law Harry Chandler played crucial roles in transforming L.A. from a remote outpost of 12,500 to a metropolis of millions. The Times's free Mid-Winter Edition began promoting Southern California to Easterners four years before the first Rose Parade; Otis campaigned for L.A.'s harbor and against unions; he and Chandler spearheaded the plundering of Owens Valley's water. Chandler's real estate ventures stretched from the San Fernando Valley to Mexico; he launched business ventures ranging from the Hollywood Bowl, L.A. Coliseum, landmark hotels and the 1932 Olympics to the local oil, auto, aerospace, fashion and movie industries and Cal Tech, which trained people for technological industries. Chandler's son Norman ran the Times while his wife Dorothy's fund-raising built the L.A. Music Center. Both broke ranks with the family's extreme right-wing politics, and Norman's son Otis, who took the paper's reins in 1960, transformed it from a disrespected, business-boosting propaganda rag to one of the most respected papers in the nation. McDougal inadequately explains Otis's ouster and subsequent ambivalence as the Times floundered under leaders portrayed as insular, incompetent and mendacious, as well as his 60-something second adolescence of fast cars and big surf. McDougal paints the family members as larger-than-life personalities, rather than treating them in context as L.A. grew beyond their control. Fascinating stories abound here, but Chandler and family are mythologized rather than analyzed. 16 pages b&w photos not seen by PW.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

The New York Times has called McDougal (The Last Mogul) "LA's number one muckraker," and he successfully defends that title with his latest book. More than a biography of Otis Chandler, the last of the Chandler family to hold the position of publisher for the Times Mirror media conglomerate before it was sold to the Tribune Company, this work is an exhaustive history of the Los Angeles Times, four generations of the Chandler family, and both institutions' influence on the development of Los Angeles and all of Southern California. It is also an account of how the Times changed its editorial philosophy and content over the years. McDougal stuffs this book with details designed to heighten the drama of the story. He doesn't always make clear what his sources are, so the reader has to guess how he knows that Harry Chandler "nodded" when a young aviator informed him that he needed $15,000 for a business venture. However, readers who enjoy tell-all epic tales of powerful families will not mind such embellishments. Recommended for all journalism collections, especially those in the Los Angeles area; also suitable for business and biography collections. Cheryl Van Til, Kent Dist. Lib., Spencer Branch, Gowen, MI
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 544 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press (April 24, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0738202703
• ISBN-13: 978-0738202709
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.5 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,300,340 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

With the recent publication of "Five Easy Decades" (John Wiley & Sons, 2007), Dennis McDougal has authored a total of nine books and hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles in a career that has spanned over 40 years. Currently, he is working on "The Acid Chronicles," a documentary film about the history and renaissance of LSD as a powerful tool in the treatment of mental illness.

Before he began covering movies and media for the Los Angeles Times in 1983 and, more recently, the New York Times, McDougal was a staff writer at the Riverside Press-Enterprise (1973-1977) and the Long Beach Press-Telegram (1977-1981). A UCLA graduate, McDougal holds a Bachelor's in English and a Master's in Journalism.

In 1981, he was awarded a John S. Knight Fellowship at Stanford University and spent a year teaching and studying in Japan and Canada, as well as at the Palo Alto campus. Over the years, his journalism has won over 50 honors, including the National Headliners Award and several Associated Press awards.

Before turning his attention full-time to writing books in 1993, McDougal reported on the glamorous and occasionally corrupt aspects of Hollywood as a staff writer for ten years at the Los Angeles Times. As a Times investigative reporter concentrating on movies, television and pop music, McDougal took readers behind the scenes of pop star Michael Jackson's troubled career, beginning with his "Victory" tour in the early 1980s; exposed the waste and mismanagement of Band Aid, USA for Africa, Farm Aid, and other "pop charities" of the 1980s; and followed celebrity courtroom dramas, such as the so-called "Cotton Club" murder trial, which featured former Paramount Pictures chief Robert Evans in a major supporting role. He was a producer for CNN during the O.J. Simpson murder trial.

McDougal's reporting has taken him to the top of San Francisco's Mt. Tamalpais at sunrise with Richard Gere and the Dalai Lama, Rodney King's rap music debut, Ethiopia with Harry Belafonte, Tokyo with former U.S. Ambassador Mike Mansfield, and Dr. Ruth Westheimer's Washington Heights bedroom for a discussion of the elements of good sex. He has interviewed dozens of celebrated men and women who have influenced our lives: pop stars, politicians, moguls and cultural icons.

A contributing writer with TV Guide through the 1990s, his last story for the magazine was the murderous saga of actor Robert Blake and his late porn queen wife Bonny Lee Bakley. McDougal and co-author Mary Murphy turned that story into the book "Blood Cold" (Putnam, 2002), which Mark Sennet Productions optioned for a motion picture. McDougal is a frequent contributor to the New York Times and has also written for Los Angeles Magazine, Brill's Content, Premiere, and the Los Angeles Times Sunday Magazine.

McDougal has been a lecturer in journalism and creative writing at UCLA, the University of Memphis, and the California State Universities at Fullerton and Long Beach. He and his wife, Sharon, live near Memphis, Tennessee, have five children, and ten grandchildren.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars West Coast Brahmins, July 17, 2001

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Robert Morris (Dallas, Texas) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Privileged Son: Otis Chandler And The Rise And Fall Of The L.a. Times Dynasty (Hardcover)

In several of our major metropolitan areas (e.g. Boston, New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles), a daily newspaper played a major role during the 20th century. From my perspective, the area and the paper had a symbiotic relationship which must be understood in all its complexity if we are to understand either the area's culture or the unique role the newspaper has played within that culture. In this book, McDougal functions as a journalist and an historian, of course, but also as an anthropologist. As the book's subtitle indicates, his primary purpose is to examine Otis Chandler during "the rise and fall of the L.A. dynasty." (It is worth noting that the Boston Globe is now owned by the parent company of the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times is now owned by the parent company of the Chicago Tribune. Perhaps McDougal or someone else will examine those recent developments in a book yet to be written. And perhaps examine, also, recent mergers which have created media conglomerates such as AOL Time Warner.) For much of this book, the Times's various publishers dominate the narrative. Specifically, first Harrison Otis, then Harry Chandler, then Harry's son Norman, and finally Norman's son Otis. Of equal interest to me were the roles played by various women, notably Norman's wife Buff and Otis' two wives, Missy and then Bettina. In California throughout the latter half of the twentieth century, the Chandlers established and solidified a "dynasty" but also what McDougal more correctly describes as an "oligarchy."

These are among the important questions addressed in this book:

1. How and why did the Los Angles Times become so influential?

2. How and why did it later lose so much of that influence?

3. Precisely what role did Otis Chandler play throughout that process?

McDougal is especially effective when explaining the culture within which three generations of Chandlers served as publisher. For example: "Like Harry, Norman understood early that the business of the Times was conducted as much in the private clubs and exclusive retreats of Los Angeles as it was inside the Times Mirror Building....With his chiseled good looks, cleft chin, and Stanford polish, Norman also rose naturally to a leadership among the newest generations of L.A. Brahmins. As the older patricians with whom Harry once did business began dying off, a new wave of young tycoons came to populate the exclusive mahogany-paneled grandeur" of the city's most exclusive cultural and social organizations. The young "brahmins" also called themselves "the Economic Roundtable" and founded their own organization bearing that name.

It was into such a culture that Otis was born and within which he was raised to assume, eventually, his own position of immense wealth, power, status, and prestige. He and others in his generation "behaved in much the same fashion as their East Coast counterparts with their insulated neighborhoods, leisure time activities (e.g. membership at the Los Angeles Country Club with its "no-Jews/Negroes/Mexicans allowed clubhouse"), and social inbreeding. Otis was perhaps the most privileged of sons but, interestingly enough, his father required him to begin at the lowest level in each of the newspaper's departments; after completing one apprenticeship, he was assigned to a different department and again began at the bottom, including salary level. By the time he became publisher, Otis was well-prepared in terms of understanding literally every facet of the newspaper's operations.

There are only a few recently published biographies and cultural histories which read like a well-written novel. This is one of them. I'm not suggesting that McDougal is an heir to Balzac or Barzun but I do commend him on the liveliness of his narrative as well as on the substantial content produced by his extensive research. McDougal helps his reader to understand why the Chandlers and the Los Angeles Times have been central to the evolution of a city, indeed of an entire region.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Great Journalist 's Latest and Best, June 14, 2001

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jack olsen - See all my reviews

This review is from: Privileged Son: Otis Chandler And The Rise And Fall Of The L.a. Times Dynasty (Hardcover)

It's always a pleasure to see a vastly underrated reporter burst forth with a work so comprehensive, so brilliantly written, so thoroughly researched that attention must be paid -- and is (see excellent full-page notice in New York Times Book Review). Dennis McDougal has always been in the top echelons of American reporters, but he has never been a household name. Let's hope that "Privileged Son" rights this wrong. What a pleasure to read a major work of American history that doesn't read like a legal brief or a Ph.D dissertation. Dennis McDougal proves that definitive works don't have to be dull. The Chandlers and their successors simply jump off these pages.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great examination of the growth of LA & its great paper, August 12, 2001

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R. Spell "raspell" (Memphis, TN USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Privileged Son: Otis Chandler And The Rise And Fall Of The L.a. Times Dynasty (Hardcover)

I really liked this book. As a fan of LA where I travel often for business and pleasure, this book fills in the history of how LA was built and the role played by the driving family of the LA Times. But as interesting as this history is, there are so many subplots to follow that are also fun. For example, as the family is accepted in the Pasadena "blue-blooded" culture, it's interesting how most become so snobbish about accepting anyone in their culture. My favorite stories on this subject are his second wife's training to develop social graces to travel in the Chandler's circles that was somewhat required. Also, when he divorces at 50, his Mom starts investigating which of her friends have unmarried daughters that would be acceptable marriage bait for this 50 year old bachelor. Like he can't take care of himself.

But enough of the small stuff, this book is about the Times and LA and starts with the Otis family and its purchase of the Times. The General and his Son-in-law ran this paper as a Republican tour guide of LA. And it worked. Maybe too good as LA is way too crowded. Along the way is great history of the need for water and the shady ways it was obtained as well as real estate development stories including a foray in Mexico.

Harry Chandler's son Norman ran it much the same way but his son Otis Chandler who took over around 1960 was much more liberal and open to debate and other opinions which did not endear him with his pompous family. This break seemed to eventually lead to his ouster in 1985 even though he had grown the earnings strength of the paper. I believe the book did not adequately explain the buildup to his ouster. His Chairman comes in and it's over. Clearly, Otis was partially to blame as his hobbies of hunting, cars and lifting weights took away his attention.

The replacements proceed to tear down the paper leading to its eventual sale to the Chicago Tribune. It's a very interesting business story although from that perspective it could have done a better job by financially describing the significance of the paper's net worth at different points in history.

But the book also overlaid the history of Otis' family, as he clearly was where most of the information for this book came from. Interestingly, Otis grew up in an exclusive family attending Andover and Stanford. But while two of his sons attended prep school and top colleges, one did not. And many of his offspring did not marry inside their social set and did not rise to the same levels as captains of industry. Otis Chandler did not place large pressure on his family to live the same social life he was forced to live and it's interesting how they grew up and the relationships they had with their parents. With so many transplanted Southern Californians all enjoying the beautiful weather, it was inevitable that many in his family would marry outside the Pasadena blue-blooded set.

I enjoyed this book immensely but it is a time commitment at over 450 pages of small print. I recommend this book for someone interested in journalism, the history of LA and Southern California, or a history of a wealthy influential family that helped shape the future of LA.