Two-Man Show

Publisher Elias Manchester Boddy of the Los Angeles Daily News gazes at no crystal and reads no stars. But when the National Recovery Act went into effect in 1933, Boddy wrote: "It will eventually be thrown out." When the Wagner Act was passed, he said: "Labor regards [it] as a Magna Charta, whereas it will prove to be merely a license for a nationwide fight for union leadership." Months before it happened, Boddy foresaw the German-Russian alliance. Last September he was on the button again. Wrote Boddy in his daily Views of the News column: " . .. Another great movement will be a mechanized force dispatched from Gibraltar across the narrow channel to Tangier and from there along the coast of North Africa toward Tripoli. Now there you have the pattern of a possible Allied offensive."

Just such bits of forehand amateur analyzing, plus some remarkable financial adroitness, and a business manager named Robert L. Smith, have enabled "Chet" Boddy (rhymes with Cody) to turn a down-at-the-heel newspaper into one of the West Coast's most profitable publishing enterprises.

High Finance. Dapper Manchester Boddy, 51, acquired the News in 1926 on what he calls a "borrowed shoestring." Boddy was general manager of the Los Angeles Times's book-publishing department, then he heard about the Los Angeles Illustrated Daily News. Published by Cornelius Vanderbilt Jr., it was then (1926) the last word in newspaper daffiness (retouch artists used to put shirts on pictures of hairy-chested wrestlers to meet the Vanderbilt standards of wholesomeness). The News was losing $30,000 a month, ultimately landed in bankruptcy court.

Boddy had no money; he did have a yen. First he went to Vanderbilt, got him to cancel a $1,000,000 note owed him by the News. Then Boddy borrowed (from a private loan company) $100,000 with which to acquire controlling interest in the News. He used the News itself as collateral. If the News failed to show a profit in six months, the loan company was to take over. Boddy worked night & day to improve the six-column ("But it's not a tabloid") paper.

By the end of six months there were still no profits. Boddy went to a bank to get money to pay off the loan company. The bank said no. Boddy made a deal to buy the Huntington Park (Calif.) Signal, returned to the bank and offered the Signal as collateral, got a $350,000 loan ($225,000 for the Signal, $100,000 to pay off the loan company, $25,000 for the Toms, Dicks & Harrys from whom Boddy had borrowed periodically).

Things began to perk up. Boddy exposed a scandalous misuse of public funds on the projected San Gabriel Dam. He tore into a malodorous municipal bond issue. The reputation of the News for fair dealing grew until in February 1929 it showed its first profit ($11,000).

Smart Management. One day Robert L. Smith, 27, walked into the News trying to sell a commercial research service. He talked so persuasively that Manchester Boddy hired him on the spot as general manager (a few months later he was upped to vice president).

When Smith took over, the News was devoid of department store advertising, had less than 5% of the total retail advertising in the market. Now the News boasts a greater linage in the last five years than any other U.S. paper. In the face of warnings that increased circulation rates would mean loss of circulation, Smith boosted the price of the News over a period of six and a half years--from 2-c- a copy and 40-c- a month to 5-c- a copy and $1 a month. Circulation skyrocketed from 68,000 (in 1933) to 266,610 last month. The News has been in the black four years, last year netted some $100,000.

Boddy is easily the star attraction in a paper that contains the writings of stars like Drew Pearson, Raymond Clapper, Eleanor Roosevelt. He averages 3,000 words a day, turns out all the paper's inside editorials, writes the front-page Views of the News column, does three 15-minute radio broadcasts a week. He still has time to grow so many camellias at his Pasadena ranch that he has become No. 1 U.S. commercial camellia grower.

His reader audience is so enormous, his influence so great, that on the heels of any great event many an Angeleno says: "Let's wait and see what Boddy thinks about it."

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