RHE’s Agness Underwood a NewspaperRHE’s Agness Underwood a NewspaperIn one of Betty’s first articles for the PV News she pays tribute to a path finding Woman newspaper person.
RHE’s Agness Underwood a Newspaper 'Legend’ Began As Phone Girl In 1926
By BETTY LUKAS
PV News
Staff Writer 1967
ROLLING HILLS ESTATES - I met a legend the other day. She is a real, live, breath ing legend. But, really, not quite what I expected a legend to be. She looks like a grandmother, which she is. She looks like a woman who’d engage you in conversation at the super market, which she does, because she’s very friendly. She looks like a woman who is open, interested, an eager listener as well as a talker. All of these things she is.
But more than that: Agness Underwood is assistant managing editor of the Los Angeles Herald Examiner. She is the only woman in the entire country who holds such a high post with a major metropolitan newspaper. And that makes her a legend. Talking easily in her Rolling Hills Estates home last week, Mrs. Underwood explained her success by a simple, “I’ve been lucky.” And, while some might agree that luck may have played a small role in her 41-year newspaper career, most people would be quicker to say that “Aggie” Underwood is where she is because she’s got what it takes.
For a woman who didn't know a headline from a deadline when she started as a relief telephone operator for the old Los Angeles Record in 1926, Mrs. Underwood rose through the ranks, teaching herself to type and write as she went along. During the 30’s her beat was crime. She was the prototype for the “sob” sister, a skill she honed and refined during her years on the Record, and then the Los Angeles Herald-Ex-press. It was in 1947 that she was named executive city editor for the Herald Express, a post she retained when it became the Herald Examiner in 1962. (No man has ever held the job as long as she has.) During those years she had charge of the city room, a bustling, hustling menagerie of reporters (mostly men), to whom she gave assignments for the day.
“Never once had any trouble with a man,” she reported proudly. “But if it was too noisy and no one could hear me, I’d just pull out my gun and fire a few rounds of blanks to get some attention. And wnen I got mad I’d read them off - but I also sewed their buttons on, too.”
“I’m no lady,” she smiled. And, I suppose, if you define a lady as proper, polite and reserved, gloved and hatted and pouring afternoon tea; sheltering herself with the niceties and order she can create, Agness Underwood is no lady. But she is a woman, whose hobbies include cooking and travel.
“1 collect cookbooks,” she said, pointing to a shelf full of colorful jackets. “A few years ago when I was on the Johnny Carson Show, I mentioned I collected cookbooks, and a few days later, my desk was covered with several editions which listeners had sent in.”
Does she use them? “Sure, I’m a wonderful cook. But it’s hard during the week.” (She leaves for work at 6:30 am and returns home at 4:30.) Weekends are entertaining times, she added. Sunday brunches are especially favorite occasions to entertain friends. She has also managed, during her long career, to raise a son and a daughter. “And I’ve been on the scene when all of my five grandchildren were born.”
On one occasion she had to go to Alaska for the event; another time to Las Vegas. (The remaining three were born in Los Angeles.) They’re all teenagers now, and I love them very dearly.” Her daughter, Evelyn, is the wife of Lt. Col. William Weed, and they live in Phoenix with Candi, 17, and Jim 13. Her son, H. George Underwood, has his own civil engineering firm, and lives with his wife and three boys in Greeley, Colo. The boys are Val, 17; Jay, 16, and Ray, 13. The family is especially close because her son and daughter married a sister and brother. They’re also close because they keep in touch and visit each other. One whole wall of a study is covered with family pictures. Two other walls of the same room are covered to the ceiling with framed awards, commendations, greetings, praise, tributes a countless array of thanks to Agness Underwood for everything she is and continues to be. Her official biography lists no less than 25 honors and awards which have been presented to her since 1949.
But there are two which are especially meaningful to her; “I’m grateful for them all, mind you, but two stand out:” One is the Los Angeles Times Woman of the Year award in 1960, “the first woman in journalism to receive it - and from a competitor, that means a lot.” The 1962 edition of “Who’s Who in American Women” lists her among 13 (from a total of 20,000) American women “for special citation for achievement.”
In an explanatory preface, the authors write: “They (the 13) hold in common the power to make life more rewarding for us all.” And, in the special paragraph devoted to Mrs. Underwood, they say, “She carries on a fiery dialogue with the city’s visible life and that of the underworld . . .Agness Underwood successfully runs her office with robust enthusiasm, hard work - and an occasional jesting blank fired from her desk drawer pistol.”
She’s been the subject of several articles in major news magazines: “Time,” “Newsweek,” “Coronet,” “Pageant;” even a Japanese “LifeMike magazine did a three-page spread on her. A German periodical did almost the same thing. She’s more than a local or national legend; she’s made the international scene. During her annual month-long vacations she bounds off to Europe or the Orient, “if the place and people who are going sound like fun.” Sometimes people come to her: When Ralph Edwards did “This is Your Life” in 1956, he brought her daughter from France, where she was living at the time, and her son from Colorado. “I’ve always told my children never to cry when I die,” she remarked, “because God has been good to me, and I haven’t missed a thing in life.”
Her home is full of mementos of the good life Agness Underwood has led. An ornately carved floor chest holds all her press clippings; the study walls are covered with tributes; the living room wall contains a pleasing assortment of watercolors and oils which friends have given her or her grandchildren have done; an oil painting of herself, done by a friend, hangs above the fireplace; six tender pastel head sketches of herself mark the entry hall - “one for each grandchild,” she explained. A floor-to-ceiling bookshelf crammed with cookbooks, novels and reference materials fills one end of the “family” room. One of those books is her own. In 1949 she authored “Newspaperman,” published by Harpers.
And there she was, sitting in a comfortable maroon leather chair, with her small feet resting on an ottoman, looking all the world like someone’s doting grandmother; someone’s loving mother. Looking completely unlike the larger-than-life legend which she has become. Maybe that’s why she is a legend. She doesn’t work at it. Rather, she works very hard at “following my hunches,” sparking each moment with creative energy, and, per haps, above all, being true to what she really is: a human being who, long ago, found her star and followed it. “You know, I've got this uncle who was an old-time printer. Well, when I was born people have told me he said, ‘Thank God she’s a girl! She can’t be a newspaperman!’ ” Little did he know!
MEMORIES - Los Angeles Herald-Examiner Assistant Managing Editor Agness Underwood brings back old memories as she looks through a special scrapbook containing tributes from colleagues and top government leaders who have been her friends during her 41 years in the newspaper business. A former resident of Inglewood, Mrs. Underwood has resided in Rolling Hills Estates for the past three years.