Prince of the city

Margaret Leslie Davis’ ongoing examination of Los Angeles through the lives of its civic and cultural leaders is a grand project, deserving of generous praise. More than any writer of our time, she is methodically supplying this city with an understanding of itself.

Davis’ devotion to the task is evident in her choice of subjects -- previous biographies were on William Mulholland and Edward Doheny, of water and oil fame and infamy -- and in the rigorous research that is her signature. She is amassing a body of work without peer and, in the process, is delivering subtle lessons for today’s leaders -- or what’s left of them.

Davis’ latest addition to that oeuvre is “The Culture Broker: Franklin D. Murphy and the Transformation of Los Angeles,” and it is a significant, if imperfect, contribution.

Murphy, who as UCLA chancellor, arts patron, philanthropist and head of the Los Angeles Times’ then-parent company helped shape modern Los Angeles, proves a delicious and elusive subject. One of a host of Midwesterners who would come to define the City of Angels, Murphy was born in Kansas City, Mo., in 1916 to a medical professor and a concert pianist. He trained as a physician and gained national attention in his early 30s with his campaign to bring doctors to rural Kansans. At age 35, he became president of the University of Kansas, where he presided over an expansion of its artistic endowment but also clashed repeatedly with the state’s envious, cost-cutting governor. UCLA eventually beckoned, and Murphy went west in 1960, charged with turning the university, then a mere adjunct to UC Berkeley, into a world-ranking institution.

Those earlier years -- of Murphy’s adolescence and rise to influence in the Midwest -- are given short shrift as Davis rushes to bring him to Los Angeles, the central object of her concern. That’s her prerogative, of course, but her book pays a price -- we don’t see Murphy’s character develop.

The author views him with detachment: She tells us of his intellectual prowess and subtle alienation from his wealthy contemporaries without letting us feel much of it; she acknowledges his extramarital affairs but gives little hint of the passion or angst those must have entailed; when Murphy dies, he slips away mid-paragraph, with barely a hint of momentousness. It was, Davis blandly concludes, “the end of an era.” That sense of remove begins with the decision not to chronicle his young life and pervades the entire book. As a result, Murphy leaves this narrative much as he enters it: intriguing and influential yet distant.

But these weaknesses are balanced by fine reporting and flashes of insight. Davis’ description of Murphy courting J. Paul Getty and his heirs for their art collection, for instance, is superb, and she displays a steady command of complex and varied material. Murphy led an extraordinarily diverse life. Understanding him thus requires broad and deep expertise, and Davis consistently delivers in fields as varied as high finance and Renaissance art.

It is in analyzing Murphy’s role at Times Mirror that Davis supplies the more exciting element of her story, its compelling subtext. For as much as “The Culture Broker” is a story about the formation of modern Los Angeles, so too is it a jolting reminder of how much this city’s cultural and corporate leadership has changed and how far it has strayed from the days of Murphy’s dominance.

This story predates Murphy, whose civic influence would peak during his 18-year tenure at Times Mirror, a company whose ascent began before his arrival. The rise of Times Mirror and its signature property, The Times, can be pegged to a single moment -- the passing of the publisher’s mantle from Norman Chandler to his son, Otis, in a dazzling ceremony at the Biltmore Bowl on April 11, 1960, an event wonderfully described by Davis.

And yet Chandler’s gift was a mixed blessing: The paper at that juncture was something of a laughingstock, devoted to local coverage but devoid of grand ambition.

“The rigid conservatism of the Times and its provincialism -- there were no foreign bureaus and scant coverage outside of Los Angeles -- were an embarrassment and a poor image for the booming city,” Davis writes. “The younger, more educated workforce of the future expected a newspaper of quality and substance.”

Otis Chandler would see that they received it, and Murphy, who joined the company in 1968 as chairman and chief executive, would bolster Chandler’s drive with his own supple intellect and devotion to the arts. Readers of The Times and the company’s other newspapers responded to the turn toward excellence by subscribing in ever-increasing numbers, and advertising grew as never before. Times Mirror under the watch of Chandler, Murphy and various others became one of the nation’s most respected communications companies and, not coincidentally, an enormously profitable one.

Murphy used that respectable perch to lobby for excellence. Chandler built a newspaper. Together, they built a city of cultural sophistication and intellectual depth. How they are missed today.

Modern Los Angeles yearns for leaders of their imagination and ambition. Too many retreat from the call of cultural commitment -- indeed, that field has been given up to a small handful of engaged billionaires, led most notably by Eli Broad and David Geffen. Their contributions are profound, visible in the centers of artistic excellence across the city’s landscape. Disney Hall, the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA are among the institutions that owe their success to these and a smattering of other engaged leaders, some of them lured to their effort by Murphy himself.

But the city’s 21st century multicultural population stymies many well-meaning philanthropists, and its elected leadership has walked away from the complexity of long-term institution-building.

Murphy was not intimidated by the changing L.A., which he commanded with a supreme confidence in his own aesthetic. One charming illustration of that confidence concerns the Getty Center’s famous travertine facade. When community leaders objected to the glare a white exterior might produce, architect Richard Meier tried to placate them with a range of colored stone. Murphy rebuffed that plan, declaring it “too fussy,” which led to the choice of the “classical” soft beige stone. And when the center’s trustees were “distraught to the point of panic” about the project’s “mushrooming costs,” Murphy looked over his half-rim reading glasses and asked, “Does anyone remember what it cost to build the Taj Mahal?”

As for The Times, journalistic devotees well know that the debate about this paper’s future -- its commitment to foreign and national news, to sharp commentary and to penetrating and insightful Los Angeles reporting -- remains very much alive.

One cannot doubt, reading Davis’ account, that Murphy would have insisted upon a paper that strove for greatness, that grew rather than shrank, that took seriously its mission around the world and at home.

As Tom Johnson, who succeeded Chandler as publisher, noted on the occasion of Murphy’s retirement: “While the revenues, profits and acquisitions will be seen by many generations to follow, your imprint has been even more significant in your commitment to quality, your demand for excellence, and your dedication to the highest standards of integrity in all that we undertake.”

Those are words to live by, words by which Murphy prospered and which Davis delivers when we need them most. Without Murphy to lead Los Angeles, we can at least be grateful that we have her to tell us how he did it.