Dennis McDougal, a former Los Angeles Times reporter and bestselling author of over a dozen books, including “Privileged Son,” a biography of former L.A. Times publisher Otis Chandler, died Saturday of injuries following a car accident. He was 77.
McDougal and his wife, Sharon, had been driving from their home near Memphis, Tenn., to visit family in the Los Angeles area, said Megan Cole Lyle, his granddaughter. They were slowing down for traffic on Interstate 10 westbound near Palm Springs when the car behind them slammed into them. The couple was airlifted to Desert Regional Medical Center in Palm Springs, where he died. Sharon McDougal died of her injuries on Monday evening, a family member said.
During his 50-year writing career — which began as a newspaper reporter, including a decade at The Times — McDougal penned 14 books, alternating between true crime accounts of grisly 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 nonfiction account of Southern California serial killer Randy Kraft, who was believed to have murdered 67 men. A book about corruption in Hollywood followed the next year. In 1993, McDougal left the The Times, where had covered the glitz and corruption of the Hollywood film industry, to focus on writing books.
“Privileged Son,” his 2001 biography of former Times publisher Chandler, was later adapted into a PBS documentary.
“No one should call themselves an Angeleno unless they’ve read ‘Privileged Son.’ That biography is a masterpiece that not only chronicles the life of Otis Chandler, but is one of the most clear-eyed histories of Los Angeles and the powers that built it that you’ll ever find,” said Martin Smith, a former senior editor at the Los Angeles Times Magazine.
“He was sassy, he was brash, he was sarcastic, he was brilliant, he had a fabulous vocabulary, he was a wonderful writer, and he was a family man,” said Dorothy Korber, a journalist and lifelong friend.
McDougal grew up in a blue-collar family in Lynwood, and after a brief stint in the Navy, he enrolled at UCLA, where he earned both a bachelor’s and master’s degree, his family said.
He then headed to Palm Springs for his first job as a newspaper reporter, followed by stints at the Riverside Press Enterprise and the Long Beach Press-Telegram, where he and Korber both worked.
It was the glory days of American print journalism, and the Press-Telegram had both a morning and afternoon edition, Korber said.
McDougal stood out as an aggressive reporter and a prolific writer, she added. “He had a good nose for news, but he was also a writerly sort,” she said.
In 1982, McDougal landed a job at the L.A. Times covering Hollywood.
“Dennis was not only a dogged and brilliant reporter, but he was also unceasingly generous with his time and expertise,” said Steve Weinstein, a former reporter for the L.A. Times. When he was a young reporter working in the Calendar section of the newspaper, Weinstein said McDougal would read his copy and make suggestions “that drastically improved my work. He liked to pose as a grizzled curmudgeon, but he was one of the loveliest humans that I have ever met.”
As his career as an author flourished, Lyle, McDougal’s granddaughter, said he remained a devoted Angeleno, his ring tone set to Randy Newman’s “I Love L.A.”
His youngest daughter, Kate Vokoun, said her father always befriended his subjects — even the murderers. She remembers him receiving frequent calls from prisons, and McDougal promising to send them gifts. “He’d say, ‘I know he’s on death row and he’s never gonna get out, but he’s a good person, and I’m gonna send him a television’,” Vokoun said.
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 murdered in Mexico. Riley, an attorney, had suffered from severe mental illness, and McDougal spent years trying to figure out what had happened. When he died, he was still working on a book about her death and the challenges of being a parent to a child with mental illness.
Lyle said she plans to complete her grandfather’s book, as well as several of his other unfinished works.
Vokoun said she had received calls from dozens of McDougal’s friends since his death and that all said the same thing: “ ‘But he’s my favorite person.’ My dad was everyone’s person.”
Bill Knoedelseder, another former L.A. Times staffer turned author, said he and McDougal spoke almost every day for 35 years, chatting about work and family, and poking fun at one another.
“He probably had other friends like me, but I didn’t have any other friends like him,” he said.
In the hospital after the car accident with a severely damaged spine, McDougal laughed and joked with his family and the doctors, Lyle said. At one point before he died, he was gurneyed past his wife‘s room, and he started singing a song he had made up for her, Knoedelseder said: “Oh, my little red-haired girl, I love you so.”
McDougal is survived by his children — Jennifer Dominguez, Kate Vokoun, Fitz Dearmore and Andrea Adkins — and 15 grandchildren.
