Whats missing is how a rich Southern California jock, who showed no passion for the family business as a young man, suddenly fell in love with his own newspaper and understood at some elemental level that journalism is more than a business; its also a public trust. Fiercely competitive, capable of engendering extraordinary loyalty, he also was self-absorbed, spoiled and a loner. Those jokes died out quickly once Chandler took over. He needed Buffie to push him to be what he did, in fact, want to be. Otis Chandler was born in 1920s. Ex-husband of Private ", "Do I feel regret? When the girls came around to sing Christmas carols, we would launch a water balloon bombardment from the top floor of DKE, right in the middle of their song. It doesn't sound so terrible today, but it was a big deal then.". I suspect that she internalized some of the disdain that so many Chandlers felt towards the Buffums. The psychiatrist, she later recalled, told her to stop being a passive victim and start getting involved.. In 1944, he handed the reins of the publishing empire to son Norman, who in turn passed it on to his son Otis in 1960. Fact Check: We strive for accuracy and fairness. For more than 30 years, Harry Chandler would hold more power than anyone else in Los Angeles, more power, its fair to say, than anyone else has ever held in the citys history. Otis is also well known as, The scion of the wealthy Chandler family who took over the Los Angeles Times and transformed it into a nationally respected publication. In his words, she was a power hungry matron-in-the-making who tried to control everyone around her. The family did force him out, but he was also ready to quit. He left the board of directors in 1998 at the mandatory retirement age of 70 and also resigned from the board governing the Chandler family trusts. he would look at me, shake his head and say, "I don't know who you are talking about." "Why continue to pile on?" In fact, other newspapers had put out similar magazines. 326 Galvez Street Harvey was born in 1788; John in 1790. An investigative series -- unusual in itself -- broke national news about the Teamsters Pension Fund even before attorney general Robert Kennedy's racket-busters climbed on Jimmy Hoffa's back. Brant). But he leaves little doubt about his opinion of Chandler's accomplishments in the profession that consumed his passion and energy for 50 years. I, like you, felt the odd combination of pride, curiosity and shame for peeking into the family photos of Los Angeles' most prominent family. I wish I would have had the guts to go at it 100% from the start. Harry's son, Norman, and his activist wife, Dorothy, transformed Los Angeles into a cultural mecca, creating the Los Angeles Music Center and luring world-class talent to play there. See change in peoples lives that use our product. [1] His son, Mike Chandler, was a race-car driver in the CART Championship Car series. He was the fourth and final member of the Chandler family to hold the paper's top position. Schultz is slated to step down from his third run as CEO on April 1, amid an ongoing labor dispute between the company and hundreds of U.S. stores. McDougal's book gives the indication that Buff actually undermined, to a degree, her daughter's fundraising efforts. Three months later, Willes fired 750 Times employees. The Milwaukee Bucks are trying to rediscover corner magic and weaponize the three-point shot in their offense. Otis cousins hated what they saw as the papers drift toward liberalism, and they hated even more that they had lost control of their paper. There is something mythic about Otis story. "He never asked anybody, 'How does this work? "No Easterner can understand what it has meant in Californiato be a Chandler,"David Halberstam wrote in a famous run-on sentence from his media history, The Powers That Be, "for no single family dominates any major region of the country as the Chandlers have dominated California, it would take in the East a combination of the Rockefellers and the Sulzbergers to match their power and influence.". "[Washington Post publisher] Donnie Graham called me when he heard about the Tribune sale and said, 'Aren't you just wiped out? [citation needed] I don't know that she was the most pleasant person to be around during that fund-raising drive, though; from what McDougal writes, her efforts were relentless, and her wealthy friends considered lunch with Buffie to be the most expensive lunch in town. Connect to 5,000+ Chandler profiles on Geni, Apr 21 1958 - Los Angeles, California, USA, Otis Chandler, Marilyn "missy" Chandler (born Chandler Stewart), Otis Chandler, Marilyn Jane Chandler (geb. . The wall had come down; the journalism, by definition, lacked editorial integrity. But the larger problem is that McDougal cant decide whether Privileged Son is a social history of Los Angeles, a biography of Otis Chandler or an extended portrait of a newspaper dynasty. Jeffrey Chandler and cousin Roger Goodan, along with family trust chairman Walter Williamson, were the last family members on the Tribune board. New Yorker wit S.J. Our mission is to get people excited about reading, and I think the way that generally happens is through social recommendations so we are working on ways to do book discovery that leverages the wisdom of the masses yet keeps the human element. Stanford, California 94305. About Michael Otis "Mike" Chandler. Though less personal to him, we were both drawn into the story. The decade was one of learning and exploration. In 1992, he resigned as chairman of the Times Mirror executive committee. In political contests, the Times declined to cover the Democratic candidate; it let the liberal newspapers handle that chore. Uploaded by His own mother, and the business allies who contributed to her beloved Music Center, pressured him to fire the Times music critic, Martin Bernheimer. Starting in 1985, when he gave up the title of editor in chief, Chandler wound down his involvement with the paper and with Times Mirror. By the time he finished Stanford, Chandler was hooked on motorcycles, surfing, bodybuilding and hunting. I feel fortunate to be the steward of such a thing, and the people who use it are what truly inspires us. The paper and the company, of course, were never the same. Otis Chandler and His Family A recorded phone conversation reveals former President Nixon's plan to investigate the Chandlers. By 1969, its weekday circulation surpassed a million and ad sales exceeded $115 million. While some major papers, most notably the New York Herald Tribune,decided to compete with the increasingly popular newsmagazines and television by adding lifestyle features and interpretive reporting, the Timesran reams of dull wire-service copy. As someone once remarked of Davy Crockett, there are a hundred stories about him, and fully 95 of them are true. Under his watch, the L.A. Times opened international bureaus and hired on Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists, at the same time buying several television station and the Newsday newspaper. He had five children: Norman, Harry Brant Chandler, Cathleen, Michael and Carolyn. While living in California, Chandler worked closely with children, teens and . Some seem certain it will revolutionize the world, while others point out its difficult or inaccurate responses. He returned to California to attend Stanford, where he proved to be a world-class athlete (injury prevented him from going to the 1948 Olympics) and a high-flying fraternity brat. And. Anti-labor, racist and provincial, The Times was the paper of Los Angeles business elite. After serving in the Air Force, he returned home with a Pasadena society wife, two small sons and vague thoughts of becoming a sports doctor. One evening before dinner, his father handed him a seven-page memo, in effect Otis's marching orders for the next seven years. McDougal hints that Otis grew to resent his mother for using him in her wars with her in-laws, but he never examines how this might have shaped his behavior. He made them a lot of money. Capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future. "He blasted all of them," recalls a bemused Howard Gilmore, '55, a longtime friend and hunting companion of Chandler's. Otis Chandler was born on the 23rd of November, 1927. The note contained just four words: "Surf's up at 12:30". I had toyed with the idea of asking him to arm-wrestle, because I knew that an angry Canadian musk ox had torn his right shoulder from its socket and impaired his upper-arm mobility. A considerable strength of this exceptionally resonant docu, made in association with Los Angeles PBS outlet KCET, is its broad appeal to a variety of viewers, from history buffs and journalism mavens to watchers of all things Los Angeles, and perhaps most of all to longtime SoCal residents who can recall when the Times mattered. Suddenly, everything was different. Burke was accused of using Chandler's influence to promote an oil company stock and paying him a finder's fee for moneys raised. Chandler's family owned a stake in the newspaper since his great-grandfather Harrison Gray Otis joined the company in 1882, the year after the Los Angeles . How can you get up in the morning?' "I discovered my trust in a close friend was misplaced," Chandler told STANFORD in 1978. A mini-board of directors, dominated by younger Chandlers, will have some say in how the Los Angeles paper is run. Chandler glances down at my comparatively undeveloped 6-foot frame and grunts, "Yeah. He grew up indulging his hobbies from weightlifting to big game hunting, and narrowly missing the 1952 Helsinki Olympics due to a wrist injury. Otis Chandler Family Member #234074 Most Popular Boost Birthday November 23, 1927 Birthplace California DEATH DATE Feb 27, 2006 ( age 78 ) Birth Sign Sagittarius About The scion of the wealthy Chandler family who took over the Los Angeles Times and transformed it into a nationally respected publication. Otis and Tom Johnson had understood this in a way that eluded their successors. The first of their ten children, Stephen, was born June 1, 1784 in Norfolk. Some 200 heirs with at least 20 different surnames are benefiting from clerk Harry Chandler's fortuitous marriage more than a century ago. But in McDougals telling, these contradictions dont add up to a rounded complex portrait. On the face of it, co-publishing a special magazine about L.A.'s new Staples Center sports arena with the arena itself doesn't seem so heinous. In a supreme irony, once Otis Chandler took charge in 1960 and directed the paper to drop its jingoistic, frankly dreadful writing in favor of classically mainstream American journalism, the Times . But in fact, he keeps in close touch with his contacts at the paper and lives and breathes the daily vicissitudes of the Los Angeles Times. He incorporated the company as The Times Mirror Co. and, with the help of his future son-in-law, Harry Chandler, the papers circulation manager, crushed the competition. I wanted, he later said, to make them eat their bloody words. Working with two editors--Nick Williams and then William Thomas--he expanded the staff, created new sections and opened bureaus. Its not enough for the Ukrainians to mine the roads and fields where they expect the Russians to advance. Still, to me it seems ridiculous and pretentious for the Chandlers to have looked down on Dorothy. But that campaign is skimmed over in favor of a more general overview of the Chandler family as a bulwark of extreme right-wing politics, the sort that supported the anticommunist John Birch Society while also helping forge the career of Richard Nixon. The Chandlers kept enough stock (they owned almost 30 percent at the time of the Tribune sale) to control the company. By the time she married Norman Chandler, her father (Charlie Buffum) and her uncle (E.E. PBS Presstour Politicians and the police were there to protect their interests and, more than anything else, those interests revolved around the citys rapid growth. I always think the universe does a neat trick when a person's name predicts the vocation he or she takes as an adult. Kit Rachlis, a former senior projects editor at The Times, is editor-in-chief of Los Angeles magazine, Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information, Before and after photos from space show storms effect on California reservoirs, Dramatic before and after photos from space show epic snow blanketing SoCal mountains, The chance of a lifetime: Five friends ski the tallest mountain in Los Angeles, Shocking, impossible gas bills push restaurants to the brink of closures, Review: A reimagined Secret Garden fails to flower anew at the Ahmanson Theatre, High school basketball: Southern California and Northern California Regional results and updated pairings, Im visiting all 600 L.A. spots on the National Register. Five years later, Otis unexpectedly stepped down as chairman, and for many the golden age was over. Goodreads raised a Series A round of funding from True Ventures in the summer of 2009. Watching the Chandlers And Their Times was jarring, comforting, educational, enlightening and a cautionary tale. In 1944, he handed the reins of the publishing empire to son Norman, who in turn passed it on to his son Otis in 1960. I was weaned on column one and Steve Lopez, reading the Times became part of my mornings somewhere in my sixteenth year. He also developed real estate and erected the famous Hollywood sign (which originally read "Hollywoodland") for one of his projects. So rich, complex and contentious is the Times saga that Jones and Catalena could have devoted an hour alone to the papers titanic political battle in 1934 against left-wing gubernatorial candidate and great American novelist Upton Sinclair. Securities charges against Chandler were eventually dismissed, but he suffered a very public black eye. It was a shock to them.". FamousBirthdays.com - use subject to the practices disclosed in our privacy policy. Gavin Newsom (D) blocked the move. I read every night before going to bed. Their strategy was aimed almost entirely at the short term, to prop up Times Mirror stock price and to increase the familys dividends. Despite his family's wealth his parents did not spoil him with gifts, but instead insisted he work in the 10-acre citrus ranch they owned in . A few days after learning of the Staples debacle, he phoned veteran political reporter Bill Boyarsky and dictated a memo. Variety and the Flying V logos are trademarks of Variety Media, LLC. Buffie also pushed her son Otis hard; as the documentary shows, she regularly told her son to remember who he was, and what he represented. Theres no reason why it cant be all three, but in Privileged Son, each element keeps elbowing the other out of the way. Norman, Harrys bland and self-effacing son, didnt so much expand the empire as secure it. "This has been the greatest week of his life," says his friend John Thomas, referring to Chandler's meetings with the Tribune brass. Otis Chandler was going into the newspaper business. Related to the above, I think Dune is excellent, and relevant. McDougal doesnt have much feel for psychological nuance, so his account of Dorothy Chandlers relationship with her son is one of the books major gaps. Times Mirror, the company that the Chandler family had so brilliantly built for more than 100 years, began to fall apart. "Wealthy Acquaintances of California Publisher Evidently Lost Bundle," read the page-one headline of the Wall Street Journal on August 11, 1972, followed by the subhead "Chandler 'Opened Doors' For College Pal Who Ran Oil Fund, SEC Now Probes." He is the great-great grandson of newspaper publisher, Harrison Gray Otis. At a paper long known as "the velvet coffin," that move earned him the nickname "the cereal killer." McDougal, a staff reporter at The Times during the 80s, has done an admirable job on the early history of the paper, but his contemporary account of the paper is thin. The pic rightly credits Dorothy with forging the citys first multiethnic coalition, in which she wed old Anglo money Downtown and in Pasadena with the Westside Jewish community to help fund the Music Center. No American newspaper has dominated a city the way the Los Angeles Times has dominated Los Angeles. The family patriarch, Gen. Harrison Otis, bought the newspaper in 1886. The paper had some habits that seem a little strange now. Analysis of the popular Formula One Nexflix series "Drive to Survive" Season Five on an episode-by-episode basis. Like a gargantuan 19th century novel, the saga of the Los Angeles Times is full of larger-than-life figures and historic sweep, betrayal and intrigue, pettiness and triumph. One day, he was in a meeting with L.A. Times editors and staffers when a messenger came in bearing a note. Unionists explode dynamite at the Times Headquarters during Harrison Gray Otis' reign as publisher. 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