Dorothy Chandler, a Maker of Modern Los Angeles
DOROTHY BUFFUM CHANDLER, born in 1901, was a prime shaping force of modern Los Angeles. She married Norman Chandler, publisher of the Los Angeles Times, and in her own right, and through her husband and son Otis Chandler, Dorothy had an enormous effect on the Times, and on southern California.
‘You should be doing…’ That’s how Dorothy challenged herself and everyone around her. She tended to see others in terms of where their talents lay, and how those talents might intersect with Dorothy’s own plans and the needs of Los Angeles. ‘You should be working harder…’ ‘…You could be raising money for this project…’ She never meant comments like those as arrogance; she felt she was doing these people a favor by advising them how they could improve themselves and where their talents lay.
Born in Illinois, at the age of three she moved with her family out to Long Beach, California. The Buffums made a small fortune in the dry goods business and, in time, her father became the mayor of Long Beach. A Buffum of Long Beach, well-connected in the commercial and civic life of the city, she grew up around “issues” and politics. But it was men who made almost all of the decisions in these areas.
Dorothy was a swift runner, and delighted in beating boys in foot races, but when a coach wanted to try to make her an Olympic-quality runner, Dorothy’s parents said no. They thought that was unladylike. Dorothy reached out to whatever strong female role models she found. One was her Aunt May Smith, who studied medicine and never married; anothe was a teacher, Miss Fox, who urged Dorothy to go to a first-rate university and develop her mind. Dorothy went to Stanford.
The Los Angeles Times, founded in 1881, was bought a few months later by a feisty 45-year-old named General Harrison Gray Otis. He remained its publisher until 1917. At a time when Los Angeles had just 12,000 people, General Otis promised people that Los Angeles would become a great city. He made the Times a civic booster. The Times did more than cover the city’s ascension to greatness; it played a large part in it. Politically, it was arch-conservative.
Well-intended civil service reforms had banned California’s political parties from dispensing patronage. This weakened the political parties and in the years before the rise of television, newspapers became major players in California politics, especially the San Francisco, Oakland and Los Angeles papers. And as southern California, with its seductive climate, gained people faster than northern California, the L.A. Times became the most important newspaper in the state.
In 1917, having failed to find anyone in the Otis family capable of taking over the paper, Harrison Gray Otis handed control of the paper to his handsome, hard-driving assistant and son-in-law Harry Chandler. In time, Harry brought his oldest son Norman Chandler into Times upper management, though Harry was a little worried about Norman. Not enough drive in the young man. Not enough relish in politics, or enough vision in business.
Norman left Stanford after Christmas of his senior year, not bothering to graduate, because he knew the time had come for him to work full-time for Times. Dorothy left Stanford after her junior year and in August of 1922, Dorothy and Norman were married.
Dorothy tried at first to be a conventional wife of the 1920’s, getting pregnant and keeping the home. But she wasn’t happy. She gave birth to a daughter, Camilla, and then a son, Otis, but there were also several miscarriages. The Buffums were a major family in Long Beach — but Los Angeles families looked down on Long Beach.
Norman’s sisters had never accepted Dorothy as their equal, they had snubbed her repeatedly, and she felt she was locked in an epic battle with them for Norman’s affection, and that, in the years to come either she would have to change or destroy Norman’s sisters, or they would change or destroy HER. In 1932, a decade into her marriage, Dorothy fell into a deep depression.
She was lucky then to be treated by a remarkable psychiatrist, Dr. Josephine Jackson. For six months, Dorothy moved into Dr. Jackson’s private clinic in Pasadena, seeing Norman, Camilla and Otis only once a week. She came to Dr. Jackson feeling guilty about neglecting her family, and that something was very wrong with her to be so depressed.
Dr. Jackson began by assuring Dorothy that there was little risk of anyone in the family changing or destroying anyone else. She coaxed Dorothy to forget about Norman’s sisters. Didn’t Norman himself love her, and feel secure enough in himself to admire her talents?
Then she told Dorothy ‘You’re LUCKY to have so much talent, energy and ambition. Talent, energy and ambition are things to be used and enjoyed, not denied or suppressed. The question is: What’s the best way to channel these torrential energies of yours?’
Dr. Jackson convinced Dorothy that there would have been something odd about NOT being depressed, given the leadership qualities she had and the way they were being stifled. ‘Involve yourself in life,’ she urged Dorothy! ‘Wage battles about things you care about. Work outside the home, cultivate and engage your political interests. Cry hard when you feel sad, and then dry your tears and battle some more.’
Together, Dorothy and Dr. Jackson decided that Dorothy would embrace the best of the Chandler family legacy in Los Angeles, while trying to push the paper and the city into a new and more dynamic era. The paper and the city would have to grow and change or it would fall behind.
Dorothy could see that Norman had a good heart, but was a caretaker of the paper, an introverted, complacent caretaker, and she couldn’t tolerate that. She had a gift for seeing a void before others did, and stepping in and handling a problem. She guessed correctly that Harry Chandler would frown on any woman being a force at the paper — but would privately admire her guts. Each of them had married into the paper, and each had a knack for seizing the reins.
And she would drive Norman to do more, which Harry Chandler would appreciate. Dorothy watched Norman drinking at parties, and would say quite audibly “No more drinking, Norman!” when he’d had enough. Or she might say “Posture, Chan, posture!” if he was slumping a little in front of guests. She wrote Norman’s speeches for him.
Dorothy looked at the Times and saw a paper that had always pampered the Republican oligarchy running Los Angeles, automatically siding with management in all labor disputes. During the Depression, Times editorials regretted mass unemployment — but reminded its readers that poverty could also be a blessing from God, teaching the poor humility and the value of hard work.
It was not so much the Times editorials that bothered Dorothy, but that the paper’s news articles were so slanted. Very often, the campaign of the Democratic Party candidate would not be covered at all in the Times, while the Republican candidate got extensive, fawning coverage. The L.A. Times virtually launched the thin-skinned Richard Nixon as a national candidate, ignoring his mistakes in its news coverage, treating Nixon with kid gloves.
Dorothy insisted on having a formal title at the Times, an office and a salary. She prodded the paper’s executives to start hiring a better kind of reporter: more independent, more liberal, reporters who would write the news columns straight. She took journalism classes at USC, to learn the trade from the inside. She kept an office in a small apartment on the top floor of the Times Building, and would pick the brains of reporters. What did THEY think the Times could be doing differently? The better ideas she passed along.
She hated the staid quality of the Women’s section of the paper. Little articles about ladies clubs, bridge clubs, garden clubs, sewing circles. Vacuous social items. Articles designed not to offend anyone. Dorothy thought that was a terrible way for a newspaper to think. She put coverage of social issues in the Women’s section — the dangers of smoking, for instance. She commissioned articles in the Women’s section about building campaigns, artists in town, even avant-garde ones. She was determined to shake up the Women’s section.
Instinctively, she disliked the quick fix, and liked to think broadly, for the long-term. One very long-term project was preparing her son Otis to be the next publisher of the Times, when Norman was ready to retire. When Otis was eight years old, he had a terrible riding accident, and the hospital staff who treated him warned Dorothy that Otis might die. Dorothy harrumphed at that, immediately removed Otis from THAT hospital and found another one with a more positive outlook.
She used to tell people that politics, business and journalism were three fascinating arenas, and managing a major big city newspaper made you a player in all three arenas. Think about what you’re doing but avoid paralysis by analysis. Don’t ask too many questions. Act! It’s great fun.
Invited on the board of the Hollywood Bowl, Dorothy was shocked to learn that the Bowl was badly in debt, and in danger of closing. The other board members were laboring to keep it open. It was Dorothy’s idea to close the Hollywood Bowl for a time, giving the impression that it might never re-open, then use that threat to sign concert talent to contracts requiring them to perform for free. Under her guidance, costs fell, donations rose, and the Hollywood Bowl was saved.
If people in Los Angeles high society still took their cues from Norman’s sisters and snubbed Dorothy, she would have to change the pattern and values of Los Angeles high society. She used the Women’s pages of the Times to do that quite successfully. If some of the major banks in town and some of the “old families” in Pasadena looked down on Dorothy, she would return their disdain. They weren’t doing their part to make Los Angeles a world-class city.
She loved fundraising. She used to say fundraising is the one place where women have an advantage over men, because men think of women as selfless, which allows women to ask for big donations. “Twenty-five thousand?” she might say on the phone to a donor, with an edge of contempt in her voice. “We’re not talking about THAT small a gift.” But she could also stroke a donor, giving them warm treatment in the Times.
In the 1950’s, Dorothy decided that the Times would select an annual “Woman of the Year.” She was miffed when people asked her why the Times chose no “Man of the Year.” To her, it was very simple; men had all the power and publicity they needed and deserved. Women did not.
In 1955, at the height of the Cold War, Dorothy and Norman visited the Soviet Union. When she returned, Dorothy began promoting the idea of regular cultural exchanges with the Russians. It was startling to conservative readers of the paper. but Dorothy stood firm. Russia and the United States were going to be adversaries for many decades; it would be to our mutual advantage to know each other better. She was always thinking long-term.
She also became a gatekeeper of the social scene, a demon fundraiser, a great and loyal friend — but a bad enemy to have, someone you did not cross lightly. A very tough and impressive lady. She worked constantly — another phone call, a firm suggestion to a reporter, a query for Norman.
She was quite interested in astrology, and astrology sometimes helped dictate major hiring decisions she made. For such a hard-headed businesswoman, the deference to astrology was odd, but she was unapologetic about it.
Imperious as she could be, she was also genuinely interested in people and their problems. Unlike her husband, Dorothy enjoyed having weaker, less well-connected people tell her their troubles. She might put all of her other interests aside for half a day to listen to a hard-luck story of someone she barely knew. And she usually delivered good advice, though it might seem a little stern.
The University of California asked Dorothy to serve on its Board of Regents, and she was a quite effective chair of the Building Committee, which oversaw construction on all of the far-flung UC campuses. When the regents met in San Francisco, at the Pacific Union Club, which had no female members, the other regents got an earful from Dorothy. So did the New York Stock Exchange when she learned that women were not allowed on the floor of the Stock Exchange. She didn’t mind shaming sexist institutions with articles in the Times about their sexism.
There was a feeling at the L.A. Times that, as a regent, Dorothy might feed the Times some juicy stories about the University of California, but when the Education reporter from the Times came sniffing around, Dorothy gave him almost nothing. While she was on the Board of Regents, the university was under her protection, and she took that seriously.
Dorothy conceived the idea of a Music Center for Los Angeles, raised 18.5 million dollars for it, and WILLED it into being. She kept tabs on potential major donors — how illness, ambition, divorce, or the fear of death and thoughts of ‘legacy’ might make them more or less receptive to a touch. She told her proteges in fundraising that a fundraiser is part businesswoman and part psychologist, a doctor and a marriage counselor, as well as a lover of a cause.
Near the end of her life, when journalists and historians came calling, Dorothy could hardly refuse interview requests. She’d spent her adult life in the newspaper business, she admired journalists and, in theory, felt history was important. But she didn’t want anyone pawing over her past, and didn’t see why so many otherwise intelligent people indulged themselves in discussing the past, which couldn’t be changed. Dorothy Buffum Chandler was always looking forward.
She especially didn’t enjoy thinking back over the problems she’d met and mastered, the people she’d had to push aside, or maneuver around, to get what she wanted. She was not above telling an historian, ‘You shouldn’t be asking me all these questions. Focus on happy things. Enjoy life.’