Newspaperwoman

by Agness Underwood

Agness Underwood has written a crackling, breezy, no-words-minced account of her behind-the-news experiences as a top-notch reporter and as city editor of the Los Angeles Evening Herald & Express. In celebrity-and-sensation-rich Los Angeles -- one of the fastest, most competitive news centers of the world -- she is on top of every big story that breaks, seven editions a day. As often as not, she has helped arrange the breaks. As a rough-and-tumble, hard-working city-side reporter, she has covered every important West Coast murder and criminal trial in the past twenty-one years -- every major disaster from floods and fires to earthquakes and explosions. Her stories have included strikes, traffic deaths, plane crashes, rapes, amnesia cases, suicides, divorce trials, shootings, robberies, Hollywood premieres, racetrack openings. In the course of working her stories, she has gone unwashed, thirsty, hungry, sleepless; has dodged flying embers, been half-drowned, trapped in the hills by brush fires, threatened by goons, choked by tear gas. Now this seasoned reporter has checked back over her stories to tell how she lined up her exclusives and persuaded the tough ones to talk; how she got her pictures when the subjects were belligerent; how she talked her way into hostile homes, how she copes with Hollywood press agents, how the Los Angeles reporters cut the stars down to size. Hard, garish, rough though her work ahs been, she has loved it. Her memoirs reveal how she convinced skeptics that a woman can run a city desk -- and raise a family by telephone -- without blowing up under pressure.

Genres: True Crime, Memoir

297 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1949

Reviews

[Laura Bly · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author and reporter Agness Underwood has certainly lived a life. My only disappointment in this book is its lack of availability and peoples knowledge of it because this woman was a very accomplished true crime reporter in California in the 1940's.

Throughout the book she describes her involvement and contribution to articles including Charlie Chaplins court case of providing child support, Thelma Todds mysterious death, and the infamous case of the Black Dahlia. Not only did she report but she provided insight to police when asked since she had so much experience covering true crime cases. With her suspicions and practically detective like persona she even managed to catch a few criminals based on their behavior and the clues presented.

Agness Underwood knew that to be a good reporter you had to be respectful, persuasive but of course tough and firm. She took absolutely zero shit from any reporter, police officer, judge, lawyer, witness, celebrity, prisoner, and the list just goes on. She does not, as she eloquently puts in her book, "pussyfoot" around.

She started off as a woman who just to buy a scarf and began typing up reports and stories from journalists for extra money and eventually builds her way up to become a city editor of the Herald Express, respected by most if not all other Californian newspapermen and women.

I highly recommend the book to anyone with even a slight interest in true crime or merely whoever wants to view what life was like back in the 1940's.

[Val · Rating 3 out of 5]

I bet the author was fabulous to get a drink with. I think this autobiography could have used some editing and without having intimate knowledge of 1930s-40s L.A. judges, cops, newspapermen, and politicians, the gossipy stories lost me a bit.