David Brown; Founder of L.A. Magazine

David R. Brown, an enterprising advertising agency executive who saw the need for a high-tech, graphically innovative magazine here nearly 30 years ago and founded Los Angeles magazine on a $50,000 shoestring, died Tuesday.

Geoff Miller, currently editor and associate publisher of the now highly successful journal, said Brown was 62 when he died of complications of bone cancer at his Malibu home.

Miller credited Brown with having a courageous vision in 1960, the year the publication started as “The Southern California Prompter.”

“He had very little money, an editorial staff of four and a family to support,” Miller said.

Writer Burt Prelutsky, recalling those early, aggravating years in 1975 on the 15th anniversary of the magazine’s birth, recalled how “my pay ranged from 2 to 5 cents a word” and how Brown “had a talent verging on genius for making writers feel they were being boorish if they even made passing reference to money in his presence.”

Others remembered how Brown would offer local writers stock in the magazine in exchange for literary contributions.

Despite Brown’s economizing, his original investment soon dried up and the infant magazine was at risk when Harry J. Volk of Union Bank made a personal investment in the periodical.

“At the time only San Diego had a city magazine of the quality of Los Angeles,” Miller said. “New York magazine and all the others were down the line.”

The magazine finally showed a profit in the late 1960s and in 1973 was sold to the publisher of New York magazine for an undisclosed price. Eventually it was absorbed by ABC Publishing.

Los Angeles magazine, with its strong pictorial format and high-technology graphics, is considered a leader in the city magazine field and has since been emulated throughout the country.

Brown stayed on at the magazine until 1974, went into semi-retirement and then returned to help produce the official guide to the 1984 Olympics, Miller said.

He is survived by his wife, Kathy, five daughters, a sister and three grandchildren.

Services are scheduled Friday at 2 p.m. at Pierce Brothers Mortuary in Camarillo.