Dennis McDougal, former journalist for Los Angeles Times and successful author of more than a dozen books, including “Privileged Son”, a biography of the former publisher of La Times Otis Chandler, died on Saturday of injuries following a car accident. He was 77 years old.
McDougal and his wife, Sharon, led from their home near Memphis, tenn., To visit the family in the Los Angeles region, said Megan Cole Lyle, his granddaughter. They slowed down for traffic on Interstate 10 in the west direction near Palm Springs when the car behind them slammed. The couple was transported by plane to the regional desert medical center in Palm Springs, where they died. Sharon McDougal died of his injuries on Monday evening, a family member announced.
During his career as a 50 -year -old writer – who started as a journalist in a newspaper, including a decade in Times – McDougal wrote 14 pounds, alternating between the real stories of crime of macabre murders and biographies of the rich and famous, including Lew Wasserman, Bob Dylan and Jack Nicholson.
His first book, “Angel of Darkness”, was published in 1991, a non-fiction account of the serial killer of Southern California, Randy Kraft, who would have murdered 67 men. A book on corruption in Hollywood followed the following year. In 1993, McDougal left The Times, where the glitter and the corruption of the Hollywood film industry had covered, to focus on writing books.
“Privileged Son”, his 2001 biography of the former publisher of Times Chandler, was then adapted in a PBS documentary.
“No one should be called Angeleno unless you read” privileged son “. This biography is a masterpiece that not only tells Otis Chandler's life, but is one of the clearest stories in Los Angeles and the powers that have built it that you will never find, “said Martin Smith, former editor of Los Angeles Times Magazine.
“He was sassy, he was impetuous, he was sarcastic, he was brilliant, he had a fabulous vocabulary, he was a wonderful writer, and he was a father,” said Dorothy Korber, a long -time journalist and friend.
McDougal grew up in a family of blue passes in Lynwood, and after a brief visit to the Navy, he signed up at the UCLA, where he obtained a baccalaureate and a master's degree, said his family.
He then went to Palm Springs for his first job as a journalist in the newspaper, followed stays at the Riverside Press Enterprise and the long Beach Press-Telegram, where he and Korber both worked.
It was the glory days of American printed journalism, and the press-telegram had a morning and afternoon edition, Korber said.
McDougal stood out as an aggressive journalist and a prolific writer, she added. “He had a good nose for the news, but he was also a tri-writer,” she said.
In 1982, McDougal won a job at La Times covering Hollywood.
“Dennis was not only an obstinate and brilliant journalist, but he was also constantly generous with his time and his expertise,” said Steve Weinstein, former Times journalist. When he was a young journalist working in the newspaper's calendar section, Weinstein said that McDougal read his copy and would make suggestions “that considerably improved my work. He liked to pass for a graying curmudgeon, but he was one of the most beautiful humans I have ever met.”
While his career as an author prospered, Lyle, the granddaughter of McDougal, said that he had remained a devoted Angeleno, his ringed to “I love the” of Randy Newman ”
His youngest daughter, Kate Vokoun, said that her father always got friends with his subjects – even the murderers. She remembers having received frequent calls from prisons, and McDougal promising to send them gifts. “He said:” I know he is in the corridor of death and he will never come out, but he is a good person, and I'm going to send him a television, “said Vokoun.
His most recent book, “Citizen Wynn: A Sin City Saga of Power, Lust and Blind Ambition”, will be published in May.
In 2020, McDougal's daughter, Amy Riley, was Found assassinated in Mexico. Riley, a lawyer, had suffered from a serious mental illness, and McDougal spent years trying to understand what had happened. When he died, he always worked on a book on his death and the challenges of being a parent of a child with mental illness.
Lyle said that she planned to finish her grandfather's book, as well as several of her other unfinished works.
Vokoun said that she had received calls from dozens of friends from McDougal since her death and that everything said the same thing: “” But it is my favorite person. “My father was everyone's person.
Bill Knoededeldeder, another former LA Times staff, said he and McDougal spoke almost every day for 35 years, chatting with work and the family and making fun of each other.
“He probably had other friends like me, but I had no other friends like him,” he said.
At the hospital after the car accident with a seriously damaged spine, McDougal laughed and joked with his family and the doctors, said Lyle. At one point, before his death, he was gurner in front of his wife's room, and he started singing a song he had caught for her, Knoededeldeder said: “Oh, my little girl with red hair, I love you so much.”
McDougal is survived by her children – Jennifer Dominguez, Kate Vokoun, Fitz Dearmore and Andrea Adkins – and 15 grandchildren.
