Stop the Press: More Memories of L.A’s Front Page Era

In “Reporters,” his book on the Front Page era of Los Angeles journalism, Will Fowler inevitably includes a chapter on marvelous Agness Underwood, city editor of the Herald-Express and the nation’s first woman city editor.

Agness had started out as a phone operator on the old Daily Record, but watched her chances and soon had a job as a reporter. Aggie’s energy, ingenuity and intuition were legendary. After she had scooped the Herald-Express on five straight stories they surrendered by giving her a job and a raise of $2.50 a week.

Aggie demanded nothing more from her reporters than absolute loyalty and a reverent devotion to the job. She did not insist on absolute sobriety. She did not often drink as city editor, but when she had a rare hangover she would have a case of beer sent up to her desk by George, the nearby Continental’s one-eyed bartender, and when we reporters showed up at 6 o’clock she would demand that we start the day with a bottle of beer.

When the Her-Ex was merged with the Examiner, Aggie was made assistant managing editor. The managing editor, Don Goodenow, put her in a hot, tiny office in the poorly air-conditioned building and gave her nothing to do. One summer morning, when the slaves on the copy desk were sweltering, Aggie sent out for a case of beer. Soon Goodenow called her to his office.

“Are they drinking beer out there?” he asked her.

“Yes, they are,” she answered.

“Well, go tell them to stop it.”

“You go tell them yourself, you son-of-a-bitch,” said Aggie. “I bought it for them.”

Fowler not only loved Agness Underwood, he was also defensive of the several woman reporters who were new in the business and were sometimes hazed and harassed.

“When it was unpopular to do so in those early days,” Fowler writes, “I was the newspaperwoman’s champion, and often backed up my sentiments by getting into fistfights defending women’s rights to function as full-fledged reporters.”

None of the women reporters I knew--among them the late Sara Boynoff--needed any such champion; but I will say that any man who engaged in fisticuffs with Will Fowler was insane.

Fowler loved two of his colleagues--Jim Murray, a rewrite man at the Examiner, and Dick O’Connor, same at the Her-Ex. Murray was taken off rewrite and sent to Santa Ana to cover the Overell murder trial. It took seven months. After the Overells’ daughter and her lover were acquitted of blowing up her parents in their yacht, Murray said: “I finally got to go home, and return to the rewrite desk where I belonged.” Murray later went to Time magazine and Sports Illustrated and then to The Times.

Dick O’Connor brought a literary skill to his job. While doing rewrite he had his desk piled with books he was researching for one of his own published books, most about the Civil War. Between news stories he would slip a page from his book into his typewriter and get on with it.

Fowler recalls that I once told him how I got my job at the Her-Ex, explaining that “I have never told the story before because it isn’t exactly an example for the young.”

Fowler wrote: “He (Smith) said he had left the Daily News for another paper which soon folded.

“ ‘So in keeping with tradition,’ he said, ‘I went to the press club to celebrate.’ ”

Assistant city editor Art McCarroll had been phoning around for Jack to come to work at the Her-Ex.

“ ‘But I wasn’t ready to go back to work,’ said Smith. ‘My paper had just folded and I was supposed to celebrate.’

“ ‘Aggie wants to talk to you,’ ” said McCarroll after locating Smith.

“ ‘Tell her I’m drunk,’ ” said Smith.

“Jack heard Art speaking away from the phone. ‘Aggie, Smith says he’s drunk.’ A second later, McCarroll was back to Smith. ‘Aggie wants to know when you’ll be able to start work.’

“ ‘Monday,’ Smith said. And he showed up sober on Monday.”

Dick O’Connor once told Fowler, “Never have a hangover on your own time.”

Evidently taking this to heart, Will showed up one morning with a dreadful hangover and had to take an obituary over the phone from an old friend of the deceased. He kept questioning the caller, asking him who he was and what he did and so on, and finally wrote an obituary about the caller, not about the dead man.

When it was published the subject was furious. He threatened to sue. Aggie sent Will out to see him with a bottle of Scotch. Will called Aggie to tell her that the man had changed his tune. He was delighted with the obit. He wanted it brought up-to-date and published when he died.

“It’s a promise,” Aggie said.

He also wanted to frame it, Will said.

“Buy the frame,” said Aggie.