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ASK THE MAYOR

SAMUEL YORTY

Interviewed by Hynda Rudd

Completed under the auspices

of the

Oral History Program

University of California

Los Angeles

The copyright law of the United States (Title 17,
United States Code) governs the making of photocopies
or other reproductions of copyrighted material. Under
certain conditions specified in the law, libraries and
archives are authorized to furnish a photocopy or other
reproduction. One of these specified conditions is
that the photocopy or reproduction is not to be used
for any purpose other than private study, scholarship,
or research. If a user makes a request for, or later
uses, a photocopy or reproduction for purposes in
excess of "fair use," that user may be liable for
copyright infringement. This institution reserves the
right to refuse to accept a copying order if, in its
judgement, fulfillment of the order would involve
violation of copyright law.

RESTRICTIONS ON THIS INTERVIEW

None.

LITERARY RIGHTS AND QUOTATION

This manuscript is hereby made available for research
purposes only. All literary rights in the manuscript,
including the right to publication, are reserved to
the University Library of the University of California,
Los Angeles. No part of the manuscript may be quoted
for publication without the written permission of the
University Librarian of the University of California,
Los Angeles.

CONTENTS

Biographical Summary viii

Interview History ix

TAPE NUMBER: I, Side One (August 15, 1985) 1

Yorty's parents and background — Early interest in
pol itics--Schooling — Interest in sports and
mus ic--Delivers newpapers — His father's
dif f iculties--His parents' divorce--Yorty moves
to Los Angeles — Works as a salesperson--
University education--Early days in Los Angeles--
Campaigns for Charles W. Dempster--Takes a job
with the Water and Power Department--Becomes
acquainted with the philosophy of technocracy —
Interest in Will Durant's writings — Yorty's
feelings on unions--Communist attempts to win
Yorty over.

TAPE NUMBER: I, Side Two (August 15, 1985) 28

Communism--Yorty ' s job with the Water and Power
Department — Yorty becomes acquainted with John R.
Haynes--Works with Ray Dav idson--Convinces the
president of Southern California Edison Company
to support the Department of Water and Power's
bond issue--Loses nomination to Fletcher Bowron--
Is elected assemblyman--Yorty ' s mother and her
second husband--The California State Legislature
Joint Fact-finding Committee on Un-American
Activities — Yorty is denounced as a communist in
the EiOS Angeles Times.

TAPE NUMBER: II, Side One (August 28, 1985) 45

Yorty's professors at Southwestern University--
The communist threat in the United States--Yorty
talks Dewey Anderson into being state director of
relief--Commun ist control of the state relief
program--Supports Fletcher Bowron--Yorty ' s sister
Enid campaigns for him--Yorty's identity as a
liberal--Work at Laline cosmetics business--
Supports Franklin Delano Roosevelt — Opposition to
the Ku Klux Klan — Arguments for a unicameral
leg islature--Supports bill to outlaw fishing by
alien Japanese in California waters — Yorty's work

on the California Committee on Un-American
Act ivities--Marries Elizabeth Hansel — Loses the
race for city councilman — Runs for the United
States Senate against Hiram Johnson--Starts a law
practice — Joins the United States Air Force and
is stationed in the Philippines--Becomes an
intelligence officer--Is sent to Tanawan.

TAPE NUMBER: II, Side Two (August 28, 1985) 74

Reestablishing local government in the
Philippines--Comes home to the United States —
First hears of Edmund G. Brown, Sr. — Jack
Tenney--Experience as a lawyer--Elected to the
state assembly — Elected to the United States
House of Representat ives--Fights for California's
water rights--Campa igns against Eisenhower's cuts
in the air force--Talks to Truman about returning
tidelands to the state — On Truman's firing of
MacArthur--Eleanor Chambers--Another campaign for
the United States Senate--The California
Democratic Council--Yorty ' s opinion of John F.
Kennedy — Lyndon Baines Johnson — Richard Nixon.

TAPE NUMBER: III, Side One (September 11, 1985) 102

Yorty is accused of stealing taxes he collected
in the Philippines--Ob jections to Kennedy--Yorty
runs for mayor of Los Angeles--Television
appearances — Groups which supported Yorty —
Reputed Las Vegas connections — Yorty 's staff
appointments--Polit icians who supported Yorty —
Relations between Yorty and the city council--
Rosalind Wiener Wyman--Calvin Hamilton--On
accusations of prejudice against Chief William
Parker--Yorty insists that the city fire
department be integrated--The arrival of the
Dodgers--The Los Angeles Zoo--Cleans up Pershing
Square — Yorty's 1954 campaign for the United
States Senate--Eye surgery.

TAPE NUMBER: III, Side Two (September 11, 1985) 128

Yorty remodels the mayor's of f ice--Transportation
problems in Los Angeles--Problems with garbage
collection during Yorty's terra--The development
of earthquake-resistant buildings in Los
Angeles--Renovations of the city hall buildings--

Chief William Parker--Tom Reddin succeeds
Parker--The Los Angeles Times supports Yorty over
James Roosevelt--Sister cities--Visiting
dignitaries.

TAPE NUMBER: IV, Side One (September 27, 1985) 144

Yorty's integrated staff--John F. Kennedy's
death--Mart in Luther King, Jr., speaks in Los
Angeles after the Watts riots--Robert F.
Kennedy's death a result of his refusing police
protection--Strange circumstances surrounding
Marilyn Monroe's death — The hippies on Sunset
Strip--Imposs ibi li ty of winning the war in
Vietnam--President Lyndon Baines Johnson and his
policies--The Watts riots--Yorty ' s 1965 campaign
for reelect ion--Taxes during Yorty's term as
mayor--Health services transferred to the
county — City Hall East is built — The
computerization of city services--? Ian to combine
Long Beach and San Pedro harbors — The building of
the Los Angeles Convention and Exhibition Center
— Changes in downtown Los Angeles--Need to revise
the city charter--The lobbyist registration
ordinance — Yorty's attempt to institute a uniform
building code--Parks in Los Angeles--The Hoover
Project--Black councilmen--The Bunker Hill
Project--Tom Bradley's 1969 campaign for mayor.

TAPE NUMBER: IV, Side Two (September 27, 1985) 173

Bradley's support in the black community--
Balanced budgets — C. Erwin Piper--Changes in
departments during Yorty's tenure--Need for
Venice to be renovated--Sewage treatment
projects.

TAPE NUMBER: V, Side One (October 3, 1985) 180

Edward G. Robinson testifies before the House
Committee on Un-American Activities — Z. Wayne
Griffin appointed to head the Community
Redevelopment Agency--George Putnam--Yorty ' s
radio and television shows--Judge Stephen
Reinhardt--Yorty ' s experiences in the 1972
presidential pr imaries--Tom Bradley's 1973
campaign--The tactics of the Communist Party--

Yorty's activities since leaving office — The city
council's subpoena of Occidental Petroleum — Yorty
has his name on the ballot in the 1977 election —
Yorty's opinion of Alan Cranston--The Dragon
Lady — Yorty's plans for the future — Reflections
on his service as mayor--People who worked with
him in city government.

Index 198

Vll

BIOGRAPHICAL SUMMARY

PERSONAL HISTORY:

Born; October 1, 1909, in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Education; Public schools, Lincoln, Nebraska;
Southwestern University, Los Angeles, California;
University of Southern California, Los Angeles,
California; University of California Extension, Los
Angeles, California.

Profession; Admitted to California bar, 1939; practiced
law in Southern California, 1940-42, 1946-49, 1954-61,
1973-present .

Spouses; Elizabeth Hensel, married 1938, deceased 1984;
Gloria Haig, married 1986.

OFFICIAL POSITIONS:

California State Assembly, Sixty-fourth District, 1937-
40, 1949-50.

United States House of Representatives, Fourteenth
District, 1951-52; Twenty-sixth District, 1953-54.

Mayor, Los Angeles, California, 1961-73.

BOOK:

Los Angeles Progresses into the Seventies: A
Continuation of the Yorty Years; Los Angeles,
California, 1971.

RADIO AND TELEVISION PROGRAMS;

During his first term as mayor, Yorty hosted "Ask Your
Mayor," a listener call-in show on radio station KNX.
In 1967, he began hosting "Sam Yorty" on KHJ-TV and
continued that show on KCOP-TV into the mid-seventies.

VI 1 1

INTERVIEW HISTORY

INTERVIEWER:

Hynda Rudd, Los Angeles city archivist. B. S. , History,
University of Utah; M.S., History, University of Utah;
M.S.L.S., University of Southern California.

TIME AND SETTING OF INTERVIEW:

Place: Yorty's home in Studio City.

Dates: August 15, 28, September 11, 27, October 3,
1985.

Time of day, length of sessions, and total number of
recording hours: Interview sessions took place in the
afternoon and lasted anywhere from less than an hour to
an hour and a half. A total of over five hours of
conversation was recorded.

Persons present during interview: Yorty, Rudd, and
Yorty's wife, Gloria Haig Yorty.

CONDUCT OF INTERVIEW:

Tapes I and II follow a chronological format, beginning
with Yorty's youth and moving through his early
political career. Tapes III and IV then cover Yorty's
term as mayor, but are organized thematically rather
than chronologically. Tape V focuses on Yorty's life
since leaving city hall and returns to topics raised in
previous sessions.

EDITING:

Virginia Carew, assistant editor, edited the
transcript. She checked the verbatim transcript of the
interview against the original tape recordings, edited
for punctuation, paragraphing, and spelling, and
verified proper names. Words and phrases inserted by
the editor have been bracketed.

Yorty reviewed and approved the edited transcript.

Teresa Barnett, editor, prepared the table of contents,
biographical summary, interview history, and index.

SUPPORTING DOCUMENTS:

The original tape recordings of the interview are in the
university archives and are available under the
regulations governing the use of permanent noncurrent
records of the university. Records relating to the
interview are located in the office of the UCLA Oral
History Program.

TAPE NUMBER: I, SIDE ONE
AUGUST 15, 19 8 5

RUDD: I think Mr. Yorty's going to be a very exciting
person to interview because he's looked at politics from a
point of view where in some of the cases, he's probably
been way ahead of his time. Someone told me today about
the fact that he was talking energy crises back in the
sixties. I think that's quite brilliant.

This interview today is being done with Mr. Samuel
William Yorty. He is the interviewee; the interviewer is
Hynda Rudd. The date is August 15, 1985.
YORTY: I think that letter--
RUDD: It says July 15.

YORTY: --says you'll be out here July 15.
RUDD: Oh, that's right. Oh my god, a month behind!

Well, let us start with your youth, where you were
born. And could you tell me something about where you were
born, who you were born to, and when you were born?
YORTY: Well, I was born in University Place, Nebraska,
which is now-- University Place was later incorporated into
Lincoln, so you can say Lincoln, Nebraska, but it was
University Place, a suburb, when I was born there. And of
course. I was born to Frank Patrick Yorty and Anna Egan
Yorty. My mother was born in Ireland, her name was Egan.
RUDD: What date were you born?

YORTY : October 1, 1909.

RUDD: Both your parents had Irish background?

YORTY: Yes. My father's name, Yorty, was from

Pennsylvania Dutch, which is really German, but his mother

was really born in Ireland, so just his father was

Pennsylvania Dutch.

RUDD: I read in one of the books that your name--maybe it

wasn't in your time, maybe your father ' s--was not always

Yorty?

YORTY: Well, it's hard to tell, because my father said

when the early settlers came to Pennsylvania, they'd go for

a job, they'd say, "What's your name," and you'd say,

"Yorty," and they'd spell it however it sounded to them.

It could have been "Jorde," which would be German, or

there's some "Yordys," same family, and ours, "Yorty." I

guess that's the way somebody wrote it down.

RUDD: Was religion a part of your life experience as a

young fellow?

YORTY: Well, yes. I went to church, I think, quite

often. My mother was a Catholic, and my father was a, oh,

religious man, but not particularly to any denomination.

So my first introduction to church was to go to the

Catholic church.

RUDD: From where you come, there is usually a tremendous

amount of fundamentalism, and I kind of got the impression

that that was geared toward politics more than religion.

YORTY : Well, I always wanted to go into politics. I told

my mother when I was five years old and wanted a nickel for

an ice cream cone, I said, "Someday I'm going to be a

lawyer, and I'll buy you an ice cream cone"; and we had a

neighbor who was a lawyer. But my political inclinations

came from both my father and mother, who were both very

interested in politics. My father was a friend of William

Jennings Bryan, and loved him. And when Charlie [Charles

Way land] Bryan ran for governor of Nebraska, I remember he

called my mother on the telephone to ask her to help him.

RUDD: Really?

YORTY: He became-- Before he was governor, he was mayor of

Lincoln .

RUDD: Now, was this William Jennings Bryan's brother?

YORTY: Brother, yes, Charlie Bryan.

RUDD: I see. So you had contact with the man?

YORTY: Well, indirectly, yes.

RUDD: Did you have any brothers or sisters?

YORTY: I had two sisters, one eight years older than I am,

and she's still alive. And one four years older, who is

not alive today.

RUDD: Did they both move to Los Angeles?

YORTY: No, just one, the younger sister.

RUDD: And what was her name?

YORTY: Her name was Enid.

RUDD: Enid. And your older sister's name?
YORTY: Kathleen.

RUDD: Kathleen. So you would say that William Jennings
Bryan was a great influence?

YORTY: Well, not just William Jennings Bryan. Woodrow
Wilson had a great influence. When he ran in 1916 for a
second term, I went with my father to vote, and before
that, some people had had a picture of Hurley [Charles
Evans Hughes] in their window, and I went over and told my
dad. And he went over to their house, and when he came
back that picture was down. But at the polling booth, I
remember wrestling a kid to see who was going to win; I was
for Wilson, and I wrestled him down. So it's always been a
political atmosphere.

RUDD: Wonderful. What was school like for you?
YORTY: Well, when I went to Catholic school, it wasn't
good at all, about the first three grades. And I played
hooky quite often because I didn't like it there. It was a
question of who was the biggest fighter. A kid named
Ferris was the best fighter, and he was kind of the king of
the school grounds. And one day a kid named Murray slapped
me on the church grounds, and I didn't hit him back then,
because I respected the church, but I waited for him around
the corner on the way home, and told him to put up his
hands and I socked him in the eye and gave him a black

eye. It was the only fistfight I ever had in my life. And
he went back to the school and tattled to the sisters, and
they called us both in, but they didn't do anything about
it. And from then on, I had great respect for the school.
RUDD: Now, was this your first three years, you said?
YORTY: The first three. After that I went to public
school, and I loved it. And my grades soared, and
everything was fine.

RUDD: You had a teacher, apparently, who influenced you.
YORTY: Well, that was Mrs. [Greta] Grubb. I had a letter
from her the other day. Her husband was a doctor. But she
was my teacher in ninth grade. That was guite a bit
later. But she had a great influence on me because she
helped a lot with English and spelling and things that
weren't so good. And she asked us to write a paper about
what we wanted to be, and I wrote on the paper that I
wanted to be a politician, and she liked my paper, except
that she struck out the word "politician" and wrote
"statesman . "

RUDD: I was very impressed by that.
YORTY: Yes, I was too.

RUDD: Very impressed. At that time, were women very much
involved in politics?

YORTY: Not so much, except for E. Ruth Purdle, who was the
administrator of the grade school I went to, [and] later
became the superintendent of education for Nebraska.

RUDD: Sports were very important to you, from what I

gather .

YORTY : Oh, yes. Very. Always have been, they still are.

RUDD: What kind of sport did you favor?

YORTY: Well, I favored everything. I used to stay after

school and play baseball and soccer, and I played on the

basketball team too, but in grade school I was too short to

play very good basketball. But I was on the team anyway.

But I was on the track team that won the championship in

Lincoln for the grade school. I was a runner and broad

j umpe r .

RUDD: I also noticed you enjoyed music.

YORTY: Always. My sister Kathleen, the oldest sister,

played the piano.

RUDD: Uh-huh, and you?

YORTY: Well, I took violin for a while, and the teacher

was-- The teacher in grade school was very good, and she

said I should go on and study violin. And a fellow named

Steckleberg at the University of Nebraska who charged two

dollars a lesson, and I wanted to take from him; my father

didn't want to pay the money, so that ended my violin

career. And later I bought a banjo in a hock shop, and

took it home, and started to play the banjo. I took banjo

lessons from a fellow named Martin Groundhorst, who came

here to Los Angeles later, and he was the Paul Martin Band

bandleader. He had the band out at Twentieth Century-Fox.

RUDD: Really?

YORTY : But he's the one who taught me to play the banjo.
RUDD: That's very interesting. In reading--
YORTY : Of course, you know I had an orchestra--
RUDD: Yeah, well, was that--
YORTY : Fifteen, yes.

RUDD: When you were fifteen. Tell us about it.
YORTY: Well, it was a pretty good orchestra [Sam Yorty's
Melodors] . We were doing very well. We played a lot of
little towns around Nebraska, and I could have either a
five-piece band or seven-piece band, depending on what they
wanted. And I had a piano player who was the practice
piano player for the Kansas City Nighthawks, who was very
good. And he was really the backbone of the band, but the
others were pretty good. And we had a saxophone and a
trumpet and a banjo and a violin, and I guess, then,
sometimes we'd have two extra. I've forgotten what they
played. But anyway, we were getting very popular at a
place called Linoma Beach, between Lincoln and Omaha, it
was just opening, and we were the opening orchestra, and
they charged ten cents a dance. I remember we would play
four choruses, and boy, they got them off the floor and on
again so fast, we'd be starting again. [laughter] They
didn't get to dance very long, I'll tell you. But it was a
success, and then I got an invitation to apply for the Loup

County Fair in more western Nebraska. And I didn't want to

pay the transportation up there for my orchestra, so I

bought an automobile, and it was a tragedy. And the old

Paige, gosh, the tires kept puncturing, and we had a heck

of a time getting to Loup County. And we played the

fair. And on the way back, this car broke down again, and

I had to pay all the fellows to get home on the bus or

train, I've forgotten which they took. But anyway, I ended

up owing them money when I got to Lincoln. I had to sell a

violin that I had--not the one that I had been playing--to

get enough money to pay them off. And that ended my

orchestra .

RUDD: Now, this was primarily for a dance band?

YORTY: Yes, it was a dance band.

RUDD: I see. And you were fifteen years old then?

YORTY: When I formed the band, yes.

RUDD: I bet it was a lot of fun.

YORTY: Well, it was, and I made pretty good money because

I got leader money. I think I got fifteen dollars a night

for the men in the band, and I got fifteen dollars a night

for playing in the band, and ten dollars leader money. And

I'd never seen any money like that before.

RUDD: Yeah. And how old were you, fifteen?

YORTY: Fifteen. •

RUDD: I see.

YORTY: But T was selling papers — At that time I was
delivering papers for the Lincoln Star. I started off with
selling papers on the delivery route, and then I became the
complaint messenger and also the newsstand salesman. And
I'd take the papers out to the newsstand, and try to get
them to take all I could, and then try to take them some
more if they needed thera. And then when I got through with
that job, I had to go down to the newspaper, and people
called in [who] didn't get their paper, and I got ten cents
for each one of those I delivered on ny bicycle. And
sometimes a delivery boy would miss a whole block, you
know. So I'd do pretty well. And I had to stay there till
seven o'clock at night, on Sunday till two in the
afternoon, and I had the dance band at the same time, so--
Saturdays, when the dance orchestra would finish, I'd go
back to the Lincoln Star and sleep on the mail sacks till
the press stopped; that woke me up when the press
stopped. And then I'd deliver my newsstands. I had quite
a life, I'll tell you.

RUDD: When you worked, did the money go to contribute to
the family?

YORTY: No, I didn't have to contribute to the family. I
just took care of myself, my own clothes and expenses and
so forth.
RUDD: What did your father do for a living?

YORTY: Well, he did quite a few things. He had been a

contractor. He could paint and paper and roof and all

that. But he was painting a big hotel in Lincoln,

Nebraska, and went up on the scaffold to inspect it, and

the scaffold broke, and he fell on his back on a paint can

for a story or two, I've forgotten what. But he was in bed

a year, and doctor bills were very big for him because he

didn't have any insurance. And we had to sell our nice

home in Lincoln, Nebraska, and move to a neighborhood that

we didn't like.

RUDD: I see.

YORTY: And after that, he had tough luck. He was painting

Beatrice Creamery inside, and slipped and turned his ankle,

and he had to wear a brace the rest of his life. But he

was a very bright man and could do anything he set his mind

to, but just had bad luck.

RUDD: Your parents separated, didn't they?

YORTY: Yes, when I was quite young.

RUDD: Was this a formal divorce?

YORTY: No, they didn't get a divorce till after I came to

California. My mother didn't want to get a divorce while

any of the children were at home, and I was the last one.

But they were separated.

RUDD: Oh, in Lincoln?

YORTY: Yes.

RUDD: Did this cause you any problems? Were you upset

over this, you know?

YORTY : Well, it naturally is upsetting. And I used to

have to go down to my dad to try and get the five dollars a

week he was supposed to pay for me, and he'd be down at the

domino place. He was a great domino player. And I'd go

down, and once in a while we'd go to ball games together —

he loved baseball. I was friendly with my dad, and of

course, my mother I loved; I loved both of them. But I

didn't-- Of course, it's different when they don't live

together, your life is all different. But we got along

fine .

RUDD: How old were you when they separated?

YORTY: Oh, I don't know. I must have been about ten. I

don't really know.

RUDD: I noticed that when you had moved here and you were

getting involved in politics, you would write him often.

YORTY: Yes.

RUDD: And did he usually respond to you?

YORTY: Oh, yes, sure. He wrote me back, and he was very

happy about my progress in politics. And of course, he was

a great Democrat, from William Jennings Bryan days.

RUDD: Sure. When did he pass away?

YORTY: He passed away before I became mayor. He passed

away in the 19 50s.

RUDD: How old a man was he, would you say?

YORTY: Oh, he must have been about seventy-eight when he

died .

RUDD: I see. Did he always spend his life in Lincoln,

Nebraska?

YORTY: Yes. He came from-- Originally, the family on his

mother's side came from Milwaukee. That's his Irish

mother. And her husband, Sam Yorty, died very young, so

she was a widow and had married again.

RUDD: When did your mother move out here?

YORTY: Oh, I don't know when it was. She came about 193 3

or '34.

RUDD:
here?

YORTY

So you lived here about seven years before she moved

Oh , yes

RUDD: She remarried?

YORTY: After I left home, yes.

RUDD: Did she marry a man from Nebraska?

YORTY: Yes.

RUDD: And what was his name?

YORTY: His name was Barrett, Richard Barrett.

RUDD: Barrett?

YORTY: Uh-huh,

RUDD: And you said, was it Enid who moved here, or

Kathleen?

YORTY: Enid. Kathleen married Leslie Seacrist in Lincoln,
Nebraska. The Seacrists own both newspapers there now.
They owned just the Journal, when I worked for the Star.
But Leslie was the cousin of J. C. Seacrist, who was a big
shot around Lincoln. The Seacrist name is big in Lincoln.
RUDD: What were your reasons for leaving Lincoln to come
here, in particular?

YORTY: Oh, I wanted to go where there was more opportunity
and less consciousness of your wealth, you know, because we
weren't wealthy. We didn't consider ourselves poor ever,
but I guess we were by some standards. But I wanted to get
out of that atmosphere, small town atmosphere.
RUDD: What work did you do before you left?
YORTY: Well, in addition to my work at the Lincoln Star
and my dance orchestra, I was a salesman at the Leon Shirt
Shop, which just sold shirts and hats and shoes. I worked
under a fellow named Campbell, [E. Burton] "Humpy"
Campbell, who was a very good salesman, and he taught me a
lot about salesmanship.

RUDD: When you came here, were you surprised to see a city
like Los Angeles, as opposed to what you had left in
Lincoln? Did you have big expectations, or had you seen
photographs or something of L.A. , or different things?
YORTY: No, I just came to L.A. more or less by accident.
I wanted to go to some big city, Chicago or Los Angeles or

San Francisco. And a fellow came in the Leon Shirt Shop
and said he was going to Los Angeles, and how would I like
to go with him. And I said, "Well, I think I'd like to get
out of here." I had saved $170 to go someplace, so I went
home at noon, told my mother I was going to Los Angeles.
And we planned on taking the train to Salt Lake City and
working there a while and then coming to Los Angeles. And
we took the train to Salt Lake City.
RUDD: That's where I'm from.

YORTY: Is it? I don't remember much about Salt Lake City
in those days. We just stayed in a hotel. And then I
found a jitney for five dollars would drive you to Los
Angeles across the desert, and so I came on to Los
Angeles. And we went through Las Vegas, which was nothing
then, there wasn't any air-conditioning. We just stayed in
a little old hotel where you walked upstairs. Las Vegas
was nothing.

RUDD: Were you impressed with our climate out here,
especially in the winter?

YORTY: Well, yes, in the winter. But when I first got
here I was very cold, because the sea is a different
climatic phenomenon from the dry cold in Lincoln, and I
thought I'd freeze to death. I stayed for a while with an

old man who was a landlord of my mother's in Lincoln,

Nebraska. And he lived out on Second Place, near the Pico--

used to be the Pico Theater. I don't know whether it's

still there or not. But anyway, he loved auctions, and his

wife had passed away, and he kept going to auctions, and

the place was so full of furniture you could hardly walk

through it. And the room that I had, I was very cold in

there .

RUDD: Now where was this?

YORTY: This was here, in Los Angeles, near Pico. I think

it's Second Place.

RUDD: Oh, Second Place? All right. You said the size of

the city didn't totally amaze you. You were the first one,

then, from your family to come out here?

YORTY: Yes, the first one.

RUDD: And then when did you say your mother came out?

YORTY: Well, she didn't come out right away, for maybe ten

years. My sister Enid came out sooner, but it must have

been about four or five years before she came out. She

came from Omaha, then; she'd been working in Omaha for the

Mutual of Omaha Insurance Company.

RUDD: Really? I know that she helped you with your first

elect ion .

YORTY: Well, I never would have been elected without her

and her girlfriend, because they worked the precincts, and

we were told that the people in the apartment houses
weren't very good at voting, to work just the home
sections. So my sister and her friend, Joy, whose last
name I don't know, my sister paid Joy two dollars a day a
precinct--two dollars a precinct — and my sister, of course,
didn't get anything. But the precincts that they worked, I
carried every one of them.
RUDD: That's what I read.
YORTY: Yeah.

RUDD: That's wonderful. When you came here, what was the
first job that you had?

YORTY: Well, it's Silve rwood ' s . I had the name of a
personnel manager at Silve rwood ' s , and I went down to see
him. And he was a very nice fellow, and he told me they
were having a sale in the boy's shop and he'd put me in
there. And so I worked there a couple of days, and that
was all the time of the sale; of course, they didn't need
any help. But the manager of the department said, "Young
fellow, you've done so well here, if you want a reference,
you give my name, and I'll tell them you've been here six
months or something, and I'll give you a good reference."
So I went down to Bullock's, and the name of the personnel
manager there was McArthur. And he hired me to go to work,
oh, about the following Tuesday or something. T walked on
down the street, and I saw a shop called Alexander and

Oviatt's. And it had such funny-looking clothes in the
window, I thought. And they had a hat shop next door, and
I walked in and met the hat salesman and introduced
myself. He told me he'd won the prize of the best hat
salesman in the United States. He said, "This is a very,
very hard place to work because it's very expensive, and
the customers are always not so easy to please, but he took
me over to Van Louven, who was the floor manager, and said,
"I want to introduce this young fellow; he'd like to work
here." And so I stood there while Van Louven went and
authorized checks that were given, all day long
practically. At the end, he hired me, and so I went back
to McArthur to tell him I'd taken a job at Alexander and
Oviatt's and he said, "Young fellow, you're burning bridges
behind you." I'll never forget that. But it wasn't any
bridges I'd built, behind me. But Alexander and Oviatt's
was an interesting place to work, and I was just to start
on the stock there first, just putting away. But Van
Louven went out of town, and when he came back, I'd sold
more merchandise than any of the other salesmen. And he
thought that was wonderful until he realized I'd waited on
more customers than anybody else. [laughter] I just
grabbed them when they came in the door. Then I decided--
Then they brought in another fellow, one of Oviatt's
nephews, and he was going to head up the ladies'

department, which just started, and I was to teach him
about the store, and I did. Then they brought in young
Oviatt, and he was taking over as a buyer and everything,
and I could see that this merchandise business was not for
me, if they're just bringing in their relatives and put
them over you. I'd almost decided to stay in the
merchandise business.
RUDD: Really?

YORTY: But then I went to Van Louven and told him. He
said, "Well, I'd like to keep you here," but he said,
"Don't worry about these relatives coming in." But I
decided-- He said, "I can't let you work part time here
because everything is personal customers." He wouldn't
give me a reference, Van Louven, but a fellow named Smart
who worked there also and was over Van Louven--he was the
assistant buyer — he gave me a very fine reference. I went
up to a fellow at Desmond's, Bill something, name doesn't
come right now. But anyway, he put me to work part-time
while I went to school, and I didn't have to come to work
until about eleven, and I worked till three.
RUDD: Now where were these stores?

YORTY: Well, the store I worked in then was down on Spring
Street; it was the Arcade store. And we just sold shirts,
hats, shoes, suspenders, things like that, sort of a
haberdashery store. And of course, I'd had good experience

at Alexander and Oviatt's, so instead of paying me fifty
cents an hour, they paid me sixty cents. And the fellow
there, McCarthy, who was the boss of the store, was very
nice. He never complained when I didn't get there right at
eleven because I didn't always get out of school. And one
time when Herbert Hoover was coming to town, I wanted to
meet Herbert Hoover, [and] he let me off to go down to the
City Hall and shake hands with Herbert Hoover. Of course,
that would be 1928, I guess. So, it was a very pleasant

job.

RUDD: Now, you mentioned going to school. What were you

doing at school?

YORTY : Pre-legal.

RUDD: And where was this?

YORTY: Southwestern [University]. That was down on

Eleventh and Broadway, in that day. It's not there now.

RUDD: And your attempts were then to become an attorney?

YORTY: Yes, that's what I'd always intended to be anyway,

an attorney and to go into politics.

RUDD: Did you go on any other campuses to school?

YORTY: Well, later, I went to USC [University of Southern

California], and night school. [tape recorder off]

RUDD: Who were some of your friends that you made when you

were here, when you first moved here?

YORTY: Oh, I didn't have very many friends, but this old
man, J. Gould Dietz, my mother's landlord, was the first
one I really knew, because he'd been in Lincoln a lot
because he owned a lot of property there. Then I used to
go down to dance at the Santa Monica Pier. I could drive
down Pico from the house I stayed at, and I knew how to get
back there, so I went dancing down there. I met some
fellows, I can't remember the names now. Finally, I went
to a dance hall called Wilson's, which is downtown. And I
don't remember exactly what happened, but there was a girl
there that somebody asked to dance, and she didn't want to
dance with him. I told her I'd overheard that, would she
like to dance with me? So we danced. That was Hazel
Handeside, and I went with her steady for a long time.
RUDD: You mentioned you drove down. You had a car here?
YORTY: Yes, I did when I drove down. I don't remember
exactly how I got the car. It was repossessed once back in
school. [laughter] But I had it for a while, anyway.
RUDD: You bought it here?
YORTY: Yes.

RUDD: What kind, do you remember?
YORTY: It was a Dodge roadster.

RUDD: Dodge roadster. These early years of yours in Los
Angeles, the Depression was coming.
YORTY: It was here, very shortly, yes.

RUDD: What was it like for you? What was it like for the
community? Do you recall any of these things?
YORTY : Well, it was very tough, because everyone was
depressed, and-- I used to have my income from working at
Desmond's, you know, so I got along all right. I had a
little one-room place with a hot stove, and I could cook my
own meals. That was out on Lucas Street or Witmer, one of
the two; I had a place on both at various times. Every
once in a while I'd get real broke, and I'd get a check for
fifty dollars from my mother. She always seemed to sense
when I was real broke. That was the only help I ever got.
RUDD: What was the climate like for most people?
YORTY: Well, the climate, if you mean weather, it was like
now.

RUDD: No, I mean, the atmosphere, the environment.
YORTY: Well, it was very depressing because there was so
much unemployment. And people didn't have any welfare in
those days. They used to go down to the county and get a
bag of beans. That was all the welfare they had. It was
really very tough.

RUDD: I imagine so. In your political beginnings, you
came across the philosophy of technocracy.

YORTY: Yes. I think before that there was a fellow named
Charlie [Charles W.] Dempster who ran for mayor against
[Joseph] Shaw. And I supported Dempster. He had to be up

in the legislature quite a bit because he was an
assemblyman, so I made speeches for him in Los Angeles.
And [at] one of the speeches, for the Water and Power
group, I met John B. Elliot, who was an old-time Democratic
power in Los Angeles. He'd managed Woodrow Wilson's
election campaign for the second term. And he'd managed a
lot of others, too, including Franklin Roosevelt's first
campaign. But anyway, he took a liking to me, and he told
me if he could ever help me he would do it, and that was my
first real introduction to somebody with any power or
influence in the city. But Charlie Dempster, of course,
got beat, and then, oh, I got a job at the Water and Power
Department. First I was surveying the water rights of the
land partly between here and Boulder Dam, because the water
rights affected the land's value, and we wanted right-of-
way to build a power line from then Boulder Dam, it's now
Hoover Dam, over to Los Angeles. So I walked up the hills
and all around and checked the water. And then later I was
a field agent at the same Department of Water and Power,
helping to buy the right-of-way for the line from Boulder
Dam.

RUDD: You mentioned you were giving speeches. Had you
always-- Were you in debate, or anything like this?
YORTY : No, not debate, just political speeches, just for
Charlie Dempster, whom I admired; he was quite a guy.

RUDD: But it also takes, say, for lack of [a] better word,

a great deal of chutzpah within yourself to be able to get

up there. Had you always felt that you could get up and

perform in front of people?

YORTY: I was never afraid of making speeches; I always

liked to make speeches.

RUDD: How did he hear about you?

YORTY: Oh, I don't know. I guess I just volunteered to

work [in] his campaign.

RUDD: I see. We'll get back, now, to the technocracy.

What happened?

YORTY: Well, technocracy became quite a vogue, and I

wasn't too clear about what they were trying to do, but it

was mainly to bring technicians and technology into the

government, and I became secretary of the technocrats here

in Los Angeles. Manchester Boddy was the head of it, and

he published the Los Angeles Daily News, a small paper in

Los Angeles; it was a six-column paper, sort of a hybrid

paper. But that got me acquainted with Manchester Boddy,

and I met some friends there. I don't remember who it was

now, but it was an interesting experience, because

technocracy was very new and caught on; everybody was

interested in just what it was. It really was to apply

modern technology to government, that's what it really

amounted to.

RUDD: Was it in relationship to, or against, say,

something that happened in the Depression?

YORTY: Well, it was sort of a panacea for the situation.

They thought by opening everything up to technology and all

that, that it would solve some of the problems of the

Depression. But of course it didn't.

RUDD: Now, Mr. Ainsworth mentioned that you also became

friendly, or at least you got to know, Will Durant, the

historian.

YORTY: Well, not very well, no. I was an admirer of Will

Durant's, and went to hear him speak. And there was a

place called the "Parliament of Man" here that had the

weekly meetings of great speakers, philosophers like Will

Durant. T can't think of the doctor of philosophy, I can't

think of his name right now, who ran the "Parliament of

Man," but it was a great institution, and I learned a lot

by going there, and that's where I met Will Durant. Hazel

Handeside gave me his book (she was Scotch, and they're

supposed to be very tight, but she was very generous) The

Story of Philosophy. So I read that, and then I read books

by all the philosophers mentioned in The Story of

Philosophy.

RUDD: Yes. Well, you must have been quite a young nan

then.

YORTY: Well, I was still very young, yes.

RUDD: And he must have been, also.

YORTY: Well, he was a lot younger, yes. I don't remember
how old he was, but he had written this book. The Story of
Philosophy.

RUDD: That must have been very interesting to meet him.
One of the things that I found very interesting is your
ideas of politics, like at one time you're called an
ultraliberal . The next time you're called a moderate.
YORTY: Yeah. Well, I remember in Lincoln, Nebraska, when
my father was building a building, I went up and watched
the bricklayers. Dad said they always hired union
bricklayers because they had standards and would lay so
many bricks an hour and so forth. So, that impressed me,
and when I got out here in Los Angeles, my stepfather,
Richard Barrett, worked for the Ford Company. And he used
to work till they finished the model of the year, then he
was laid off, then he'd go back to apply for a job next
model year. He had no seniority, no pension system or
anything, and the unions were very weak. There was no
union at Ford then. So I could see that the working men,
the unions, were the underdog, and that's why I was very
pro-union. It was just the influence of my life. And
that's why they — Los Angeles is a very open shop town, and
anybody who was for the unions here was considered
radical. And of course, the biggest newspaper in Los

Angeles is the Los Angeles Times, which has always been
nonunion, and still is, and that dates back to the days of
a fellow named Mooney [actually, J. B. and J. J. McNamara] ,
who was supposed to have bombed the Times because they were
nonunion, and he was prosecuted and sent to prison. But
that made the Times very nonunion. In later years they had
a union formed by the pressmen or something, and they
didn't give up till they broke it. And they're still a
nonunion newspaper. So if you were for unions, you were
always a radical as far as the Times was concerned. And
the Times was a great influence in Los Angeles, and still
is.

RUDD: Do you feel that as you matured, your philosophies
became more strict, or changed, or what, from what you
f irst--

YORTY: Well, the situation changed, the environment. For
one thing, the unions became stronger and stronger, and
they no longer needed the political backing that I had
given them, and some of them got so strong that they went
too far. And then the communists had an effect on me
because-- There's a fellow named Bob [Robert] Tasker, and
John Bright, and they wrote the picture "The Big House."
Bob Tasker became very friendly to me, and he was really a
very nice guy. We were down at a club on North Spring
Street, it was a Spanish club [ Bomba Club] , and he said to

me, "Sam, you've been picked by the cream of the cream to
go places." And I said, "Well, that's fine. Bob." He
said, "There's only one trouble." And I said, "What's
that?" He said, "You're not a member of the Communist
Party," And that's the first I've ever heard that. It
kind of opened my eyes. And Bob Tasker was a big
communist, it turned out, and so was John Bright. And Bob
Tasker was killed in Mexico City later, but the communists
had picked me out as a young liberal to go places; they
were going to get me if they could. So I began to see
things then, and I could see the maneuvering. In 1940,
when I ran for United States Senate against Hiram Johnson--
who had always fought the League of Nations, which I was
for and my father had been for; he was an isolationist--!
could see the war just as clearly as I could see my hand
before me. It was so obvious to me that we were going to
be in the war. England was in it alone then; France, of
course, and Belgium and those countries had been overrun.
But I thought we should declare war on Hitler. We weren't
in the war yet, the United States. And I ran for the
United States Senate, and my platform was-- [" Isolation has
failed; stop Hitler now."]

TAPE NUMBER: I, SIDE TWO
AUGUST 15, 198 5

RUDD: Continue.

YORTY : Well, there was a young fellow who was very helpful
to me in my campaign for reelection in 1938, and when I ran
for the Senate I told him I would help him run for the
assembly. But he said, "Steer clear of communists, people
like that." And right away, I heard back from the editor
of a liberal paper in Los Angeles and he asked me if I had
told the fellow that, and I said yes, but I realized then
that this young fellow was an infiltrator, he was a
communist. So my eyes were opened a little more. But the
fellow who contacted me, who was the editor of the liberal
paper, also turned out to be a communist, but he was a
renegade communist. When I was investigating communism, I
found out his party name, which was different, and I called
him by it one time, really shocked him. But he'd been
called before the communist disciplinarian, a fellow by the
name of Dr. Parker. He had another name, real name [Dr.
Tashjian] . But anyway, he was the disciplinarian of the
Communist Party [of the United States], and they would call
these people in and threaten them if they didn't stay in
line. This editor had been called in, I found out, and
threatened. The system was to isolate, expose, and
expel. They'd isolate you by telling lies about you to all

your friends, and they'd expose you as having been a
communist, and expel you from the party. Isolate, expose,
expel; that was the way they worked. And this fellow had
been called in. But he was a delightful fellow. He later
worked for the city for a long time. I think he got clear
away from them. But he was editor of this little liberal
paper. I was very shocked that this kid turned out to be a
communist because I liked him, and he had worked very hard
in my campaign, and was very bright. So, people don't
realize how the communists infiltrate, and today people are
blind to what's going on.

RUDD: Then you say it's still running as rampant?
YORTY: Well, they're more clever now. They're very
rampant. The people don't know, and there's no use to tell
them, because they don't believe you. They think you're
seeing the communists under every bed. And really,
practically, there are communists under every bed. [tape
recorder off]

But I was a great admirer of Winston Churchill in
those days, and I remember William Gibbs McAdoo was head of
the U.S. President Lines, which had then been taken over by
the government, and he'd been appointed. He was a son-in-
law of President Noodrow VJilson , and he was a senator from
California for a while [1933-39]. And I went to him for
some help, and he said, "Young fellow, you have no chance

of being elected, but you're the only one telling the truth

about the war."

RUDD: Really? And when was this?

YORTY: This was 1940.

RUDD: 1940s. Well, let's go back to L.A. A man named

John [W.] Baumgartner--

YORTY : Baumgartner, yes. He was a city councilman [1933-

39]. And I think he was a, I'm pretty sure he was a member

of the Water and Power Commission board [193 1-33].

RUDD: We can check that out.

YORTY: Yes, I think I'm right about that.

RUDD: Now, how did you get involved in Water and Power?

YORTY: Well, by working for them on the Boulder line

transmission right-of-way.

RUDD: I mean, why did you switch from your haberdashery,

you might say, to--

YORTY : Oh, well, it was during the Depression, you know,

and you were glad to get any kind of a job. And I was very

pleased when I got this job in the Water and Power

Department. I got, I think, two hundred dollars a month,

or something, which I regarded a very big wage then, and I

got my expenses when I was out of town checking out this

land. And we were told not to hurry because it was federal

money, and we didn't want our jobs to dry up too soon, and

neither did the department. So we took our time about

investigating the land values.

RUDD: So who were you involved with then in Water and

Po we r ?

YORTY : Joe Gallagher's the one who got me the job.

RUDD: Joe Gallagher? And who was he?

YORTY: Well, he was an agent, a land agent. And he later

formed a very successful company buying rights-of-way from

big oil companies and everything. He was a very bright

fellow.

RUDD: So when you were involved with the Hoover-Boulder

Dam situation, did you travel between here and Las Vegas?

YORTY: Not from here to Las Vegas. I was in San

Bernardino a lot. We stayed in the California Hotel there

because we worked from there a lot of the time toward the

line both east and west, the land values.

RUDD: Now, is this how you got to know John [Randolph]

Haynes?

YORTY: Yes, I got to know John R. Haynes. When I worked

at Water and Power, and I admired him because he was sort

of the boss in Los Angeles on water and power issues. He

was a fine man, a great doctor, and very wealthy. I've

forgotten how I personally got so friendly with him just

working there. But anyway, I remember going to his house

one day to see him, and he was smoking a cigarette, which

surprised me. And I said, "Dr. Haynes, I'm surprised to

see you smoke a cigarette." And he said, "Don't ever

start." He said, "I don't inhale cigarettes at all. They
say the nicotine is bad for your heart, and there's an oil
in tobacco that's bad for your throat." I've never
forgotten that.

RUDD: And when was this, in the thirties?

YORTY: Nineteen thirties, yes. But anyway, in those days,
the Water and Power Department was not so big and powerful
as it is now. I guess you're not interested in how the
Power Department started, but it started because water from
the Owens Valley came by gravity to Los Angeles. They used
some of that gravity to start manufacturing power. And
Scattergood was the first-- E. [Ezra] F. Scattergood was
the first power manager. But anyway, then I got in the
office there examining titles to this land that we were
buying, and I'd studied some real estate law before that so
I knew a little about it, and I studied a lot of titles.
And when I was in the office there, that's how I got better
acquainted with Scattergood and with Dr. Haynes, And
finally they sent me over to a fellow named Ray Davidson,
in a campaign they had to pass a bond issue, some water
bonds or power bonds, and Ray Davidson was the greatest PR
man in Southern California. So I worked with Ray. I was
paid by Water and Power, but worked with Ray Davidson on
the bond issue. I learned a lot from Ray. Ray was a
Jewish fellow, and I remember one time--this is kind of

beside the point — we went to lunch together, and there was
some gefilte fish on the menu. I said, "Well, I don't like
gefilte fish." And he said, "You a Jewish boy, you don't
like gefilte fish?" I said, "I'm not Jewish, are you,
Ray?" He said yes, and he looked like Napoleon, he was
dark-haired. So that was the first time I ever knew he was
Jewish. He was married to an Irish girl, who taught my
wife to cook.

But anyway, then somehow we were going to have another
bond issue, and we were afraid the [Southern California]
Edison Company would beat us, as they had sometimes,
because it took a two-thirds vote to pass a bond issue in
those days, because there were liens on all property in the
city, and that takes two-thirds vote. Somehow, they sent
me over to see Harry Joe Bauer, the president of the Edison
Company and talk to him. And I went over and talked to
Harry Joe Bauer and told him that we wanted him to support
the bond issue. After we talked he said, "Well, you tell
Scattergood that I'll support your bond issue, and I don't
want a fight. But tell him if we have a fight, I fight to
kill." And Harry Joe Bauer supported our bond issue. He
was chairman of the bond issue, and it passed. And Harry
Joe Bauer and I became good friends.

RUDD: That's interesting. And he was head of what
department?

YORTY : He was head of the Edison Company.

RUDD: Edison Company?

YORTY: Southern California Edison, which was a rival of

the city in those days.

RUDD: It seems like you were traveling in the circle of

some very influential people.

YORTY: Yes, I was, yes.

RUDD: And what do you owe this to, your charisma?

YORTY: I don't know what, just eagerness to get ahead and

do these jobs, that's all.

RUDD: That's nice. Frank Shaw was somewhere in your life,

and as I recall, you campaigned for him, and he lost the

first time. Is this right?

YORTY: No.

RUDD: Or did he win?

YORTY: I've forgotten now, but he's the one that appointed

Joe Gallagher, who gave me the job at Water and Power, and

Joe Gallagher had campaigned very hard for Shaw, so Shaw

must have won that campaign. I think that was about, oh,

1932 or '33. But then when he got in office, there were

some scandals developed in the police department. There

was a murder committed on a policeman, and it was supposed

to be some kind of an inside job. I've forgotten all the

details now, but the guy was prosecuted. And Joe Shaw was

Frank Shaw's brother. And Joe Shaw, they claim, was trying

to sell everything in city hall. And he got his brother,
Frank Shaw, in very bad. So there came a recall on Shaw,
and they were looking for candidates for the recall, and
there was an outfit here headed by Clifford Clinton and Bob
[Robert] Schuler, who was a minister, I forgot what they
called the organization then. But anyway, they were
backing the recall, and it came down to two candidates:
Fletcher Bowron and Sam Yorty. And labor was for me, of
course. A meeting took place down at Clifton's Cafeteria,
and I was sure that I was going to be chosen. I was across
the street in Loew's State Theatre, and some of the
liberals in the meeting double-crossed me and went over to
Bowron. One fellow who's still considered a liberal, who
fought to the very end for me, was Stanley Mosk, in those
days. He's a member of the [California] Supreme Court
now. I can't think of his present name, but he's very
well-known. Stanley Mosk, it was then. He changed his
name. No, he was Maury Mosk then, he's Stanley Mosk now.
That's right. [laughter] But anyway, he fought for me to
the very end, then up about 120 votes for Bowron to 67 for
me. And then, of course, in a recall in those days, the
person being recalled could run for reelection on the same
ballot. All he had to do was get more votes. So the Shaw
people contacted me and offered me large sums of money if I
would run. But of course I refused that. So it was Bowron
against Shaw, and Bowron won.

RUDD: Bowron must have been a lot older than you then.

YORTY: Oh, yes, he was. I was pretty young then. But

these people picked me out to run , so--

RUDD: Well, you must have had something.

YORTY: Well, I don't know what it was, but anyway, they

backed me. I'll never forget Stanley Mosk because he stood

up to the very end. He's a member of the California

Supreme Court.

RUDD: Your personal political desires, what were they at

that point in your life?

YORTY: Just to get elected and get ahead.

RUDD: I mean, did you have any dreams of what you would

like or what you would hope for?

YORTY: No, nothing particular, just to get ahead in

poll tics .

RUDD: That was-- Politics, you knew, was going to be your

life?

YORTY: Well, it was till the senate campaign where I was

so badly beaten and I knew I was right, because we did get

in a war, and I was in the war. But then when I came home

from the war I couldn't even find an office to practice law

in, and some fellows that had just been starting out in the

law business when I left for the service were very

prominent. One fellow let me use his library to start

practicing law. Then a fellow called me up in 1949 and

said, "Hi, assemblyman." And I said, "Well, Gene [Eugene]
Blalock, what in the world did you call me assemblyman for,
it's been so long?" And he said, "Haven't you heard the
news?" And I said, "What news?" He said, "Assemblyman
John Lyons died, and there's a vacancy, and you're the only
one in the district who can go up there late in the session
and know what's going on."

So I just laughed at him. I went to bed, and I was
thinking over how it would be to be back after almost ten
years, and I called him up in the morning and said, "I
think I will run if I can get some support." So I first
went over to the Teamsters union, and there was a fellow
there who was a PR guy, but he was kind of the boss of
Teamsters, and he said, "You file, we'll support you." So
that was my first real backing.

Eleanor Chambers became my campaign manager, and I've
forgotten how that came about. Of course, she became a
lifelong friend, and a very brilliant woman. But anyway,
then the communists, who had a fellow named [Judge William
M.] Byrne, whose brother, [James T.] Byrne filed, and he
was a prominent Catholic. So the communists filed a woman
against me; they wanted to split the liberal vote and
defeat me. Byrne went down in the Jewish district and told
them I was a Catholic. And he went in the Catholic
districts and told them I was a Jewish. This helped.

Anyway, I won the election. The special election's when I

went up to the assembly, and of course, I served that term

out, practically a term, before I went to Congress [in lySO]

RUDD: Very interesting. Let's digress a little bit. Your

mother, by iy37, was living here? [tape recorder off] I

was asking you, by this time, in the late thirties, your

mother had come to move to Los Angeles? What brought her

here, was it you and Enid?

YORTY : Yes, that's why. In the meantime, she remarried,

because all the kids had left home.

RUDD: And what was her husband's name?

YORTY: Barrett. Richard Barrett.

RUDD: Did she go into business here, or was she--

YORTY : Yes, she bought an apartment house lease and--not

buy the property, she bought the lease on it.

RUDD: Did her husband work, or did he--

YORTY : Well, he was a gasmaker in Lincoln, and I think he

got a job out here as a gasmaker for a while. But then I

think they quit making gas that way, they started using

natural gas, and so he became a night watchman at the Water

and Power Department.

RUDD: You must have helped him get that position.

YORTY: Well, I don't think I did. He got the most votes

for Baumgartner, who was running for the council, and he

got the pledge sheets. And my [stepfather] turned in the

most pledge sheets of anybody in the campaign, so he didn't

need any help from me.

RUDD: How did he get involved in doing this, this

political activity? Was it he, too, liked politics?

YORTY : Well, I don't remember. I probably got him to go

to work for Baumgartner.

RUDD: I see.

YORTY: But he did so well, he got out and tramped the

precincts and turned in a lot of carry cards.

RUDD: How long did your mother live?

YORTY: Well, she lived till I was mayor, and about a year

after that, but she was in a home because she had a

stroke. Sometimes she didn't know me and sometimes she

did. It was very sad. I had to go there every day for the

first year I was mayor.

RUDD: When did you meet your wife?

YORTY: In 1938.

RUDD: Vi/e'll get into that one next time.

YORTY: Okay.

RUDD: Before we close, I asked you this before, but I

can't help but think there must be a lot more to it: in

telling about your personal political desires, I mean, in

your wildest dreams, did you ever think you would be the

mayor of Los Angeles?

YORTY: Oh, not especially mayor of Los Angeles. I just
wanted to be in politics, be a member of the legislature,
the Senate, the United States Senate, of course, or
governor, or something. I just wanted political office.
RUDD: By being that, by being in those kinds of
situations, what were your hopes to do, to make life
better, to control? What did you--

YORTY: Oh, just to do something about bringing about the
things I believed in.

RUDD: Yes. Very simple, and very well stated. In what
we've talked about today, is there anything else that you
would like to add?

YORTY: Well, except getting back to the legislature, I was
so disgusted with the communist machinations that I saw
that I formed a committee, California [State Legislature
Joint Fact-Finding] Committee on Un-American Activities,
and they appointed one liberal on the committee with me,
and three conservatives. And I wrote out all the questions
I was going to ask a witness before the hearings, and I
gave them to all the members so I couldn't be accused of
any smear or anything, T was very careful about it. And we
started exposing the communist, Dr. Tashjian. That's the
one that T said called him Dr. Parker. He was the
Communist Party disciplinarian.
RUDD: Tashjian?

YORTY : Tashjian. This came to me now, because I think of
people I called before the committee, and he was one of
them. Of course, he denied everything, you know. But in
those days, if you didn't answer the question, "Are you
now, or have you ever been a member of the Communist
Party?" you could be charged with contempt. You couldn't
take the Fifth Amendment.
RUDD: Really?

YORTY: So, we had a lot of them tnat did that. And the
union, then, the State, County and Municipal Workers of
America was badly infiltrated, and then the few communists
in the movement were influencing these young kids not to
answer the question, because if they could get them not to
answer, then they expose the communists. So we charged a
lot of them with contempt, like nineteen; they were
convicted. And then Governor [Culbert Levy] Olson pardoned
them all. But it was quite a melee. And they were really
taking control of relief organizations in California.
RUDD: Really?

YORTY: They were opening in each little city, they'd
appoint a communist, and the communist would go and form a
cell, and they'd have meetings and try to get other people
interested. We broke that all up, and we turned relief
over to the state administration. Took it away from the
state, I mean. We took it away from the state and turned
it back to the counties.

RUDD: Well, let me ask you, do you think you were a
precursor to the Joe McCarthy era?

YORTY: Well, long before McCarthy, but I didn't handle the
things like McCarthy did. I was very, very cognizant of
how Martin Dies had handled the first Un-American
Activities Committee, the federal one [House Committee on
Un-American Activities (HUAC)], because Martin Dies was a
demagogue. One time when I was running for reelection for
the assembly in 1938 and Cumerose was running for governor,
and John Gee Clark of Long Beach was running for reelection
to the assembly, and Ellis [E.] Patterson was running for
lieutenant governor, suddenly it came out in the Los
Angeles Times that we'd all been denounced as communists,
just a couple of days before the election. We couldn't
figure out what happened. We didn't have time to answer,
but we were all elected, or reelected. And it turned out a
criminal named [Arthur James] Kent [alias Margolis Scott
Kent, "the red burglar"] had been induced to make an
affidavit that we were all communists. This affidavit was
flown to Texas where Martin Dies was a congressman. He put
it in the files of the committee which made it privileged,
and that's where the Times got it. And he was promised to
have his sentence commuted if he did it, and his sentence
was commuted. This is one of the foulest things I've ever
heard of in politics, and the Los Angeles Times was part of

that, and that was the foundation of much of my trouble

with the Los Angeles Times.

RUDD: Really? That's interesting. Did you have good

backing over the years with other papers, the Hearst

papers, or anything?

YORTY : Well, sometimes I had the Hearst papers. There was

a political editor of the [Los Angeles] Examiner (morning

paper), Carl Greenberg, who was very fair. And all I

remember is I think he treated my campaign fair. I don't

remember if they supported me at all at that stage. Later

they did. But Carl Greenberg later became political editor

of the Los Angeles Times.

RUDD: Really? Have you had a good time doing everything

you ' ve done?

YORTY: Oh, yes, certainly. I've enjoyed it.

RUDD: Would you have done it differently?

YORTY: No, I don't think so. I shouldn't have run in 1940

for the United States Senate, but I was so determined that

the United States would play a part in stopping Hitler that

I just couldn't believe that people could be so blind.

RUDD: People said about you that you were years ahead of

your time in a lot of different instances.

YORTY: Yes, that's been my trouble, one of my troubles.

RUDD: Isn't that a shame?

YORTY : Yes, it's a shame, really, but somebody has to

start things off.

RUDD: Is there anything else you'd like to say at this

time?

YORTY: No, not at this time.

RUDD: All right, fine. Thank you.

TAPE NUMBER: II, SIDE ONE
AUGUST 28, 1985

RUDD: Sam, I'd like to go back and ask some questions from

some of the things that we had discussed last time. You

remember you had mentioned Humpy Campbell?

YORTY: Yes, very well.

RUDD: What I'm wondering, you mentioned that he was a

teacher of sorts. What did you learn from him?

YORTY: Well, salesmanship. I worked under him. He was a

sales manager of the Leon's Shirt Shop in Lincoln,

Nebraska .

RUDD: Did you feel you learned, though, something to carry

on in what you did--

YORTY : Yes, he was a very good salesman.

RUDD: Very good. You also mentioned that you had gone to

auctions when you first came to Los Angeles.

YORTY: No, I didn't go. J. Gould Dietz did.

RUDD: Oh.

YORTY: The man whom I went to live with for a few days.

RUDD: Oh, I see. How did you get your job at Water and

Powe r [ Depa rtme nt ] ?

YORTY: I got it through Joe Gallagher. And Joe I think I

met in the Shaw campaign. I think Shaw was elected in 1932

or '33 — '32 I believe. And Joe had worked for Shaw in the

campaign, and Joe's the one that got me hired. Joe was a

friend of mine. I don't remember how I first met Joe.

RUDD: Okay.

YORTY : Wait a minute on those dates. I'm wrong about

that. [tape recorder off] Then I went to work for the

Water and Power. Joe Gallagher got me the job.

RUDD: Joe Gallagher. Were you impressed with any of your

instructors at Southwestern University?

YORTY: Well, not much. There was one professor of

contracts named Gallagher, who turned out to be a

communist. And I used to notice that he'd make little

cracks in his lecture on contracts. He was a good

teacher. But then, we had a debate team and he set up for

us to go down to some meeting which was very left-wing, and

my position was that the United States should not disarm.

And the other side was that the United States should

disarm.

RUDD: Should disarm?

YORTY: Should disarm. And I took the opposite side, and

everybody booed. [laughter] But the other person who

impressed me very much was the debate coach. And I've

forgotten his name at the moment, but it's in the book.

RUDD: So, your teacher was named Gallagher as well as your

friend Joe Gallagher?

YORTY: Yes.

RUDD: They were both Gallaghers?

YORTY: Yeah.

RUDD: Very good. How did you feel that technocracy would

help the world?

YORTY: Well, I wasn't sure, and nobody else was. We just

felt that if they applied technical knowledge to the

industries that we could produce a lot more and maybe get

out of the Depression.

RUDD: Can you name any of the people that you knew who

were affiliated with the Communist Party? You mention it

so much that I'm amazed myself.

YORTY: Well, I didn't know at that time, but later when I

investigated communism, of course, I had former communists

testify before the committee, as it shows in my report.

And they had been people that had infiltrated the Communist

Party and had left it. And some, like Marion, oh, she was

part of the FBI that infiltrated the Communist Party, and

she was ostracized and isolated, exposed, expelled, all

that, so her neighbors wouldn't speak to her or anything,

till it was finally revealed that she was a member of the

FBI to infiltrate the Communist Party. And those people

all testified before my committee.

RUDD: Does this still prevail? I mean--

YORTY: Does it still prevail?

RUDD: Yes.

YORTY: Well, it still prevails, but not as well known now

because they hide much better than they used to. They used
to carry books, and I had a Communist Party passbook given
to me by one of the former members. I've still got it.
And they had certain things in there that they had to
believe in and swear to, the Communist Party, and to obey,
and all that sort of thing. Then they abolished the
passbook, and then they made a rule that if you're ever
asked if you're a member of the Communist Party, you are
immediately expelled so you can say you weren't a member.
They had a lot of tricks like that. But now they're more
clever, and the propaganda in the United States is much
more subtle than it used to be.

RUDD: Okay. Were you ever considered a "fellow traveler"?
YORTY: No. I was never considered a fellow traveler,
except maybe by some people who didn't understand. But
that was because I was pro-labor and pro-liberal in many
ways. For instance, like the old-age pensions. There was
no old-age pension when I went to the legislature. And in
1936 I voted for the old-age pension, and I think I was a
co-author of the bill. So things like that. A lot of
people who were extremely right-wing would look upon you as
a fellow traveler because they didn't even know what the
Communist Party was. But I never was one of them.
RUDD: Okay. What is your definition of communism?
YORTY: Well, communism is a closed dictatorship from

Russia that believes in Marxist-Leninism, and they believe
in dominating the whole world. And they haven't given up
that idea yet; they're still trying to do it.
RUDD: Does it differ, today, than from what you thought
about it in your younger days when you were first involved?
YORTY: No, it's no different today, but people don't
understand it as well. And they're still trying to
dominate the world. But it was, it looked like it was just
one country then, the Russians, but now they've split off
from China and Yugoslavia, and it's kind of split up now.
It's been a failure every place, you know. The capitalist
system has proved to be much more productive. We were
supposed to go downhill, according to the communists, and
then they'd take over easily, but we haven't done that.
And we're still strong, and still strong militarily, so I
think in the long run we're going to win, because for
instance, in Russia, they -had to build a wall around it,
and you can't get out. And eventually there's going to be
a lot of--there is trouble there now, but we don't know as
much about it, because they don't allow the free press
there. So we don't know about the troubles they have.
They know about all our troubles, and they exacerbate them
if they can. But we don't know about their troubles.
RUDD: Conmunist control of relief activities, was it local
or at a state level?

YORTY: That was state. That was a state level, and they
were gradually getting control. Now, this is a bit
complicated because when Olson was elected governor in
1938, I went up there with him before he took office. And
I remember he walked down the hall with me in the state
Capitol, and I said to the governor, "I'll do what I can
for you." And he said, "Well, I would like to ask you to
do me a favor. I want to make [H.] Dewey Anderson director
of relief, and I want to make Phil [Sheridan] Gibson
director of finance." He said, "Suddenly they've started a
big smear campaign against Phil Gibson. They're saying he
was a big corporation attorney, and a lot of things that I
never heard them say before." He said, "Suddenly this
[has] come about, and I wish you'd talk Dewey into being
director of relief so that I can make Phil Gibson director
of finance." And I said, "Well, sure, I'll do it."

So, I got Dewey Anderson up in my room at the
Sacramento Hotel, and I told him he ought to be a team
player and not insist on being director of finance, that
the governor wanted to make him director of relief. And I
finally talked him into it. And that made Phil Gibson
director of finance. And Phil later became chief justice
of the California Supreme Court. But it turned out that
the next guy in line for director of relief if Dewey didn't
take it was Bill [William J.] Plunkert, and Bill Plunkert

was a communist. So when Dewey Anderson became director of
relief, Bill Plunkert was his second in command, in charge
of personnel. He began hiring communists like Rose Segure
and others around the state as the state leaders in the
state relief administration. They were setting up cells in
the various towns like Stockton, and other places, and
having meetings, not saying they were communists, of
course, just setting up cells to have liberal meetings.
And so it turned out that they had infiltrated so badly,
that when I got through with my committee investigation and
published my report, we abolished the state relief
administration and turned relief back to the counties.
RUDD: Very good. Thank you. One last thing, did you
support Fletcher Bowron as the recall--

YORTY : Yes, very much so, because it was between Fletcher
and me to be the candidate on the recall. And when a group
really double-crossed me, in a way, but they went over to
Fletcher Bowron, and he won by a rather small majority.
And then the Shaw people, of course, tried to get me to
run, because if I had run, that would have split the vote,
and Shaw would have been reelected, because then you ran on
the recall, but you also could run for election at the same
time. So I really supported Fletcher Bowron.
RUDD: Very good. All right, let's go on to the questions
for today. In 1936 you went into the state assembly, you

were elected. It was the Sixty-fourth District. What was

your affiliation at that point?

YORTY: I was a Democrat.

RUDD: Democrat?

YORTY: I had been a lifelong Democrat, so had my mother

and father.

RUDD: Family support, I remember you mentioned, and I've

read that Enid and her friend went out and helped you.

YORTY: Work the precincts. My sister put up most of the

money, too. I think we had $1,100 for the campaign.

RUDD: And you ran against Harry Lyons?

YORTY: Harry Lyons was a Republican nominee, but my big

problem was to get the Democratic nomination. And I got

that, and then ran against Harry Lyons. Harry Lyons had

been the assemblyman from the district.

RUDD: One of the interesting things that I read was that

after Enid would go from house to house, or apartment to

apartment, she'd come back and convey things to you. I

think you had her write down addresses of people and you

wrote these people--

YORTY : Well, they made pledge cards, and they had the

people that would sign a pledge card to me, that would vote

for me, and then when they brought them in at night, we

would use a mimeograph machine, and send a mimeographed

letter to all the persons who had pledged to vote for me,

and asked them to remember to vote, and ask their friends

to .

RUDD: When you won the election, which you did do, you
were identified as a "crusading liberal." How do you feel
about that?

YORTY : Well, I really didn't have any identification when
I was elected, because not very many people knew me. I'd
only been in California about nine years, and I was listed
on the ballot, I think, as a manufacturer, because we had a
cosmetic business then. So there wasn't anything
particularly liberal about the election or about the stands
I took, but I got known as a liberal because I was pro-
labor, and because I saw the plight of the old people--
particularly my father-in-law, who used to lose his job
every year and then get hired back again for the new model
work at Ford. They had no seniority. And I saw the
treachery, the desperate position of the old people during
the Depression, and I'd been through it, too. That's
enough to make anybody liberal.
RUDD: Okay.

YORTY: And incidentally, I was a friend of Dr. Francis
Townsend and went to his annual meetings for years after I
was elected. Dr. Francis Townsend was really the author of
the Social Security Act, because he believed in giving $200
a month to everyone, I think it was over sixty, or sixty-

five, I think it was sixty, because he said we didn't need

their production, but we needed their consumption.

Roosevelt had to do something about it, because the

Townsend movement became so powerful that it became a

threat to any politician. So Roosevelt started the Social

Security system as an offset to the Townsend Plan.

RUDD: I would like to backtrack for just a second. You

mentioned your family was in a cosmetic business.

YORTY : Yes, well, we had, my sister, her husband and I had

a little business called "Laline" for L.A. line, and we

made some cosmetics, some shampoo, and things. It started

off pretty well, but it wasn't very successful.

RUDD: Now this is Enid?

YORTY: That's Enid, yes.

RUDD: Okay. And what was her husband's name?

YORTY: Early.

RUDD: His last name was Early?

YORTY: His last name was Early, Ellis Early.

RUDD: Very good. Did this business last long?

YORTY: Well, no, because I ran for the legislature. I was

running the business.

RUDD: In '36 you were also known as a writer of

legi slat ion .

YORTY: Well, that would be later, because I was elected in

•36, but I didn't take office till '37, the '37 session.

RUDD: All right. And you were for pro-union, labor?
YORTY: Yes, very much so.

RUDD: Was this a general concept of people, or were you
always an iconoclast that seemed to touch things before
other people noticed they should even be aware of things?
YORTY: Well, that's what the people have always said, that
I was ahead of my time. I wanted to declare war on Hitler
before the American people wanted to even think about going
to war, so I think that's true. And I had seen the plight
of the old people. Of course, Roosevelt was president
then, and I was very inspired by his address from Chicago
when he went there, the first president to go to the
convention and accept the nomination. Before that they
used to nominate you, and then they'd notify you at your
home port. But he went right to Chicago to accept the
nomination, and [later] made the [inaugural] speech,
"nothing to fear but fear itself." And that inspired me,
and I was very much for Roosevelt. And of course, in 1936
I was on the ticket with Roosevelt. That's how I got
elected .

RUDD: I see. So Roosevelt was someone, a model, to look
up to.

YORTY: Well, he was someone that I appreciated very
much. I didn't vote for him for a third term, because I
didn't believe in a third term. And besides that, when he

was running for a third term, I was saying, "Let's declare

war on Hitler," and he was saying, "Our boys will never

again fight on foreign soil," and I didn't believe he

thought that. I'm pretty sure he knew we were going to

f ight .

RUDD: Let me ask you, we've talked about your

confrontation with the Communist Party. What about your

confrontation with the Ku Klux Klan, did you have that

experience?

YORTY : Well, I had always been against them because my

father in Lincoln, Nebraska, was very much against them,

and they were very strong in Lincoln at one time. He said

it was just an organization to reelect Coolidge, in his

opinion. But another kid named Grady and I, very young

kids, maybe nine or ten years old, we sneaked up through

the bushes to a Ku Klux Klan meeting where they were

burning a fiery cross, and we were scared, but we got down

again without them seeing us. So I was always very much

against the Ku Klux Klan.

RUDD: You were reelected in 1938, and that, you said, was

when Roosevelt-- No, Roosevelt came in--

YORTY : '40. He ran for a third term in 1940.

RUDD: You wanted a unicameral legislature.

YORTY: Well, they had a unicameral in Nebraska, and George

William Norris, who was one of my heroes, a senator from

Nebraska, had sponsored the unicameral legislature. I went
back there and made a speech to them, and I admired the
operation. Actually, when you look back on the foundation
of our government, you know, the Senate of the United
States was formed after the House of Lords, and the House
of Representatives after the House of Commons. But when
the Constitution was adopted, the senators were not elected
by the people, they were chosen by the governors. They're
supposed to be statesmen, just like in the House of
Lords. So I couldn't see any sense, and I still don't see
any sense, in having a Senate and a House of
Representatives both elected by the people, because they're
just politicians elected by the people. And so in the
state of California, they had a system that they called the
"federal system": the state senators were elected by the
counties, and the assembly was elected by the people. Now,
some senators didn't represent any people at all, really,
because the counties were not very populous. But I thought
it best to abolish the state senate--it was a waste of
money — and just have the state assembly be the main body.
I still think that would be right.

RUDD: We've talked about unemployment compensation,
protection of civil rights. What was your feeling of
capital punishment?

YORTY : Well, I was very ambivalent about that. I was
against it at one time on religious grounds, but I believe
in it now.

RUDD: Fine. We've talked about the communists and the
KKK. What was your feeling of the Japanese at that time?
YORTY: Well, I had no feeling about the Japanese, but the
United States Navy sent an intelligence officer to me and
told me that they thought the alien Japanese fishermen were
a danger to our security because they could map the waters
where they were fishing off our coasts. And so I
introduced the bill on behalf of the navy, but they didn't
openly, not that time, they were secretly telling me
that. So, I introduced a bill to abolish the fishing in
our California waters by the alien Japanese fishermen. I
ran into a lot of trouble, particularly by the fishing
industry. So I told the navy, "If you want to pass this
bill, you're going to have to admit it's your bill." So I
called Commodore Gannon of the Eleventh [Naval] District in
San Diego, and he sent an intelligence officer [Captain
Zacharias] to Sacramento, who appeared before the committee
and said the navy wanted to eliminate the Japanese who are
not obligated to this country — because they were alien,
they were Japanese--wanted to eliminate them from fishing
in California waters. And the fellow-- They sent this
captain in the navy, and he later became an admiral and

broadcast in Japanese to the Japanese islands from

Hawai i .

RUDD: All right. In reference to the Japanese, how did

you feel about the incarceration of them?

YORTY: Well, I still think that it was necessary for their

own protection, because the people of this state were so

incensed after Pearl Harbor, that it wouldn't be safe to be

a Japanese out on the street. So they had to be

incarcerated for their own protection.

RUDD: Thank you. While you were young and you were in the

assembly, did you alienate many legislators?

YORTY: Well, some, yes, but I don't think so very many. I

remained personally friendly with all of them. But there's

a lot of jealousy up there, and some were just jealous.

When I wanted to form the un-American activities committee,

they put one liberal on with me and three conservatives.

But I liked that, because I had nothing to hide about what

I wanted to do. I used to write out all the questions I

was going to ask the witnesses, with the witnesses' names,

before they were subpoenaed, and I asked those questions,

and then let everybody else ask a question if they wanted

to.

RUDD: Were you one of the younger, or youngest--

YORTY: One of the younger, yes.

RUDD: How old were you then, about twenty-eight?

YORTY: Twenty-nine, I think.

RUDD: Twenty-nine. Let's talk about in '38 you met your
wife. What is her name, or what was her name?
YORTY: Her name was Elizabeth Hensel, and she was from
Chicago, and had come out here with her mother and brother
for a Notre Dame football game on a special train, then had
gone to Palm Springs to have a little vacation before they
returned to La Grange, Illinois.
RUDD: How did you meet her?

YORTY: I met her in the post office in Palm Springs. She
was there sending a bunch of postcards and stamping them,
and I asked her if she'd like some help. I've forgotten
what she said, but anyway, I stamped a few of the postcards
with her. And then she went outside, and I followed her a
little ways, I've forgotten what, but somehow I got to
talking to her, and she introduced herself, and I
introduced myself. And she asked me if I'd like to come
meet her mother and brother, and I said yes. That's how it
started .

RUDD: How much longer did it take for you to get married?
YORTY: About two weeks. [laughter] It was only about
three days before I decided I'd like to marry her, but I
had to come back to Los Angeles to make arrangements for
the wedding, because I was a member of the legislature, and
I couldn't just do it right off, you know. I had to tell

people, and-- And so we had a rather large wedding in Los

Angeles. Beside that, she was a Catholic, and I wasn't

then, and I had to go to a priest who was a good friend of

mine and take instructions and be married in a church at a

side altar.

RUDD: VVhere were you married?

YORTY : In the Catholic church down on Occidental Street in

Los Angeles.

RUDD: Do you remember the name of the church?

YORTY: [Church of the Precious Blood]. It's still

there. I remember the name of the priest that married us.

Father O'Halloran, who later became Monsignor O'Halloran.

He was a good friend of my mother's.

RUDD: Then did you two go up to Sacramento?

YORTY: Well, first we went back to Palm Springs, then to

Sacramento .

RUDD: Where did you live in Sacramento?

YORTY: Well, I don't remember the street, but we had a

big, old, cheap apartment. A lot of space, but it was very

cheap. But it was all I could afford then. And so she

went up there with me when I went up ahead of time with

[Governor] Olson before I took office.

RUDD: How often did you return to L.A. from Sacramento

when you were an assemblyman?

YORTY: Oh, I used to return about every weekend, usually.

RUDD: And they have a recess, too?

YORTY: Oh, yes. But I had a De Soto, and I used to drive

down here and drive back.

RUDD: While you were in the assembly in 1939, you decided

you wanted to run for city council.

YORTY: Well, some people decided they wanted to run me.

And it was a very interesting situation. I don't remember

exactly what caused me to decide to run. But anyway, they

insisted that I be a candidate. So I remember running,

yes .

RUDD: Who were some of those people that wanted you to do

that?

YORTY: Oh, I don't remember now, from the district mainly.

RUDD: Now is that the Sixty-fourth District?

YORTY: Yeah, it was the same district, yes.

RUDD: Okay.

YORTY: That was, I think, the twelfth councilmanic

district .

RUDD: Okay. You lost to the incumbent, [John W. ]

Baumgartner?

YORTY: Yes. I got the nomination against him. There were

three candidates, and the same old gang that had eliminated

me for the mayor's race ran a candidate, and I beat him,

and I got beat by Baumgartner. Baumgartner had a real

machine in the district.

RUDD: Was he a Democrat or a Republican?

YORTY: Well, it was a nonpartisan race, but he was a

Democrat. He was quite a nice fellow, too.

RUDD: Thank you. In 1940, you ran for the seat in the

state senate.

YORTY: No, United States Senate.

RUDD: Oh, United States, OK.

YORTY: That was why, when I said isolation has failed to

stop Hitler now, I knew just as well as the hand before my

face we were going to be in the war. I knew that if we

didn't go in. Hitler was going to conquer the world. It

was up to us to stop him.

RUDD: You lost to Hiram Johnson. Was it a difficult

battle?

YORTY: No, it wasn't because I didn't have much money, and

he had a big name. He'd been a good governor, but a

terrible senator, because he's one of those four men that

Woodrow Wilson accused of being, oh, four headstrong men

that fought the League of Nations and caused it to be

defeated in the United States Senate.

RUDD: That's interesting. Upon this loss, you withdrew

from public life. The year before you had taken the bar

[examination]. This was here in California, and you went

into private practice. What was it like being an attorney?

YORTY: Well, I liked it at first. I was quite successful,

and I enjoyed it. I had some reputation for having been in

the assembly, and some people came to me and I represented

them, a lot of different kinds of cases.

RUDD: Was there any particular kind of law that you were

interested in?

yORTY: Not at that time. I just did anything that people

wanted to get done, you know.

RUDD: Were you in with a group of lawyers?

YORTY: No, by myself.

RUDD: And where was your first office?

YORTY: It was at 215 South Seventh Street, a building down

there that-- I think it's still there.

RUDD: Really?

YORTY: But I shared offices with another fellow, but we

weren't together in the practice.

RUDD: Did you miss politics at that point, do you

remember?

YORTY: Oh, I think so. I don't remember too well, but I

was real busy with the law and kind of excited about being

a new lawyer.

RUDD: In 1942, you won the Democratic nomination for the

assembly seat, but you withdrew to join the army.

YORTY: That's right, yeah, joined the air force.

RUDD: The air force. Where did you go to officer's

training school?

YORTY: In Miami Beach, Florida.

RUDD: And I understand you came out with honors.
YORTY: Well, I was a valedictorian of the class, yes.
RUDD: Where did you serve once you graduated?
YORTY: Well, I kept calling the fellow who was going to
make assignments to tell him I didn't want to be assigned
to the United States, and he said, "Well, don't worry,
lieutenant, you're going to go overseas." So when I got my
orders, they sent me to Hawaii, to Hickam Field. I didn't
consider that a war zone, so I complained about that and
asked to be transferred. So I finally succeeded in getting
transferred to the Fifth Air Force down in Australia. I
was [in] the army airwaves communication service then,
working on the codes and ciphers, and various secret
things. They used to lock you in a room, and you didn't
dare tell anybody what you were doing. Anyway, I didn't
like it just being in Australia, I wanted to be in the
war. So I went over to a colonel on MacArthur's staff and
explained my situation to him, and he said, "Well, son,
you're way out of channels," But he said, "VJe need
somebody with your background for intelligence work. And
we don't want to take the Amgot [Allied Military Government
of Occupied Territory] people, because MacArthur doesn't
like the way they're trained. He wants to train his own
people." So he said, "I'll have you transferred." And he
said, "Your major over there who's in charge of army

airwaves won't have anything to do with it because it'll be
an order from General MacArthur." So I was transferred to
the Fifth Army Air Force. It was just the army air force
then. And I was sent to New Guinea, Port Moresby.
RUDD: How long were you there?

YORTY: Oh, about two years. When I first went up there,
they said white men could stand it for only six months.
And after six months they said you could stay a year, after
a year they said eighteen months, and after eighteen months
they said as long as your health held out.
RUDD: Were you impressed, if one can use the word, with
this kind of a situation? Did you feel like you had really
done something worthwhile for your country?
YORTY: Well, I did, sure, because it was worthwhile. We
were fighting the enemy. And toward the end, they decided
to have some Philippines civil affairs units to help the
Philippine people in the liberated area of the
Philippines. And I was the first officer borrowed for that
training and sent down to Brisbane for six weeks to study
the Philippines. And then after that, I was assigned to a
Philippines civil affairs unit that we had set up of mostly
Filipinos, to go into the Philippines with MacArthur. And
they sent me up to Hollandia [now Djajapura] and the Sixth
Army was at Hollandia then, but they were on the beach, and
they didn't want us to be seen because we had the Filipinos

in our Philippines Civil Affairs unit, and they would be
tipped off where we were going, so they put us up in the
hills with no tents, nor anything else and left us up there
till we got on the landing ship tanks [LSTs] to go to the
Phil ippines.

RUDD: Was your health all right while you were there?
YORTY: Yes. I was getting very tired, though. Very
tired .

RUDD: Tired of the army, or just tired of the —
YORTY: No, just tired, just tired from the strain. I only
weighed 136 pounds and, you know, you perspired constantly
in New Guinea, night and day. When they finally would be
in a place for a while, and be able to set up some towers
for water and take a shower, you'd take a shower and come
out and you're all wet again anyway.
RUDD: Yeah.

YORTY: And we had tents there with the water rushing under
them. You know, we'd have to hang our clothes up on a pole
in the middle of the tent because the water rushed along
the ground under your cot. And when we'd be in a place
long enough to have floors, we'd put floors in the men's
tents first so the officers didn't look like they were
taking advantage of the situation. There were a lot of
mosquitoes, of course. We had to sleep under mosquito
bars. Finally we went to a place called Tsili Tsili, and

there I was intelligence officer of a squadron. I had a
big bulletin board, and my family used to clip all the
newspapers and send them to me, and I'd put these clippings
up on the board so that I could keep the fellows in the
squadron kind of in touch with the United States, what was
going on. And I formed what they called my "spit and argue
club," where I'd pick certain officers to debate, and I'd
help both of them with both sides of the question. There
was a write-up about that in the paper. I've got it
someplace here. But anyway, one night about three o'clock
they awakened me to ask me to come down to the tent, the
squadron office down at the tent, and I went down there and
my files had been ransacked. And so I wasn't just sure
what had happened. We tried to find out. Well, as it
turned out, the task force intelligence officer had lost
his mind, went crazy, and was down there ransacking all the
files. Well, the colonel, who they called "Photo Hutch,"
in charge of this second air task force, then picked me out
to be the intelligence officer for the whole task force,
and that meant that people came in to work there who ranked
me. They told them if they didn't want to take orders from
me, they'd just be transferred out. So I was doing a
colonel's job as a captain in the second air task force,
which was the biggest air task force in the world.
RUDD: How many people were beneath you'

1 ■?

YORTY : Well, I don't know, but we had several squadrons of
fighters and squadrons of bombers. And I had just been
with fighter squadrons before that, but the task force
included reconnaissance and fighters and bombers and
everything else. But old Photo Hutch wasn't there too long
because he had a bad case of malaria and had to be
evacuated. They called him Photo Hutch because Fighter
Hutch was the commander of the first squadron that I was
assistant intelligence officer for.
RUDD: Did you fly very much?

YORTY: No, they prohibited intelligence officers from
flying, because if they caught you, the Japanese, they'd
grind your teeth and do a lot of things, if they found out
you were an intelligence officer, so we were prohibited
from flying .

RUDD: That's interesting. [tape recorder off]
YORTY: No, the intelligence work that I had to do in the
task force was mainly at night when the pilots had come
back and claim they'd shot down [an] airplane, and I'd have
to pick out the one that I thought had the best proof that
he did it. But I had to work in a tent with a light above,
an open bulb, and the bugs were so thick that they would
black out the light and I'd have to shoot them with a bug
equalizer, it was, and they'd come flying down.
RUDD: Really? So how long were you there?

YORTY : Well, I was there altogether about two years.
RUDD: Two years. And you came back as a captain.
YORTY: Yes.

RUDD: Was the war over then?

YORTY: No, it wasn't over. We went to Leyte Island, and I
was supposed to land at Dulag, but we landed at Tacloban by
mistake, and everybody else was at Tacloban. And the
Filipino people were so glad to see us. I had studied a
little Tagalog (the official language in the Philippines)
on the ship, and when we got there they all spoke
English. [laughter] And those who didn't speak English
spoke Visayan, and they spoke East Visayan, which is
another kind of Visayan, so I didn't get to use my Tagalog,
which was very hard anyway, didn't know much.

When we first got there, the major who was in charge
of our Philippines civil affairs unit disappeared. Because
the Filipinos were so glad to see us, they were getting out
beer, and some were selling it, and some were giving it
away to-- But he disappeared, and we were stuck on this
fighter strip at Tacloban, and I was sure the Japanese were
going to come in and bomb us. I wanted to get my squad
[away]. So I took charge of the squadron, and took them
off in a bunch of weeds, and set up camp for the night, and
boy, that was the most mosquito-infested place I've ever
seen in my life. But anyway, he came back, I think he'd

been drunk. He wasn't a good commander of the unit. And I
remember then we set up a little camp, and he went and got
some chickens, and we were frying them, and these poor
Filipinos could smell the chicken. And they were hungry
because they'd been on the short rations by the Japanese,
and I got kind of mad at him for doing that. And then he
got out by one of the cars that we had there, a little
jeep, and took out his private parts and started to urinate
with a [Catholic] sister standing there watching him. And
I said, "Damn you, major, if you don't cut that out, if you
do that again, I'm going to report you." And he said, "You
can't do anything to me, I'm a West Pointer." And I
couldn't, either, because he was a West Pointer.
RUDD: Really?

YORTY : They stuck together. But General [Bonner Frank]
Fellers was commander of the whole Philippines civil
affairs unit, and he was also MacArthur's, they called him,
military secretary. I never heard of that before, but he
was right with MacArthur all the time. So he sent me to a
place called Tanawan to reestablish the government. And I
went down there. And I saw a clipping about that the other
day, where I spent three hours telling the leaders of the
community to get busy and set up conmittees: set up a
committee on schools, a committee on this and that, and
reestablish the government. And I had a desk there with a

sign on it, "advisor." Then I appointed a mayor who was
not from the community, but had been a school teacher in
Cebu, but I could see was an able guy. And Kangliong, who
had been the guerrilla commander on Leyte Island, wanted to
appoint one of his guerrillas to be mayor. And I didn't
think this fellow had the ability to be an administrator,
so I insisted on the school teacher in Cebu. About that
time MacArthur came down to look over the rest of Leyte
Island with Kangliong. I went with MacArthur and I told
MacArthur the problem I had about appointing the mayor, and
he sided with me immediately, and this fellow was appointed
mayor. Then I found a building where they could have a
room in the basement, and I got some marines who could
teach school, and we found some of the schoolteachers who
had been there, and we started the first schools in the
liberated area. And then I suddenly was recalled back to
Tacloban. A guy who'd been sent out there who later became
head of the Americans for Democratic Action, I can't think
of his name right now [Joseph Rauh] , but he reported that I
was taxing the Filipinos and taking the money myself.
Well, I had inaugurated a tax system, a 10 percent payroll
tax, because I told them they couldn't rely on the United
States forever for their expenses and they should tax. So
they were taxing. General Fellers called me back to
Tacloban, and when he heard the story, he was so disgusted.

he said, "Well, you stay here and help me plan for
Manila." And General Fellers and I became very good
friends. And he took me over in MacArthur's office,
headquarters building, and showed me a report of
MacArthur's meeting with Roosevelt in Hawaii, and said,
"Don't let anybody see what you're seeing." And I got to
see that report. And then we had a celebration returning
the liberated area--

TAPE NUMBER: II, SIDE TWO
AUGUST 28, 1985

RUDD: We were just speaking about this--
YORTY: Who, Kangliong?
RUDD: Um-hm.

YORTY : Well, he went with us on the trip around Leyte
Island. He was the commander of the guerrillas for that
area so naturally he went along.

RUDD: You mentioned a president who was part Japanese?
YORTY: He was a mestizo, which is a Chinese-Filipino, and
his name was Sergio Osmena. And we turned the liberated
area of the Philippines, the first liberated area, back to
him in this celebration. And I'd been working out there,
and I stood right behind MacArthur, right by him, not at
the same level, but right behind him, that's the picture
I've got in there. I was worried at the time, because
MacArthur's right hand was shaking a little bit, and I
didn't know that MacArthur had palsy then, but I thought
maybe he was kind of nervous, although I can't imagine him
being afraid of anybody. But there were some snipers out
there yet, and there were kamikaze airplanes that came down
right out of the harbor there, trying to hit one of our
warships, but they shot him down before he could get near
it. The navy gunners were very good about that. So
anyway, then I was walking down the street in Tacloban, and

a warrant officer said to me, "Well, captain, did you see

your picture with MacArthur?" And I said no. And he said,

"Well, I took the picture. Would you like to have it?" I

said, "I certainly would." And so he gave me the picture,

and he said, "Why don't you apply for a rest and

relaxation? You have so many more points than these other

people here with the Sixth Army because they were down in

Australia when you were in New Guinea, and if you'd apply

you could go immediately." I said, "Thank you." So I

applied, and my points were added up, and they sent me home

for rest and relaxation. Guess where I went before I came

home? The place I'd hoped never to see again, back to New

Gui nea .

RUDD: Really?

YORTY: To take the ship home.

RUDD: A ship home. They didn't fly you home?

YORTY: No, we took a ship home, and the staterooms were

all used by wounded soldiers, and we were down in the

hold. They put a big canvas up to bring air down to us so

we could stand it down there in the heat. And I didn't

care. I was glad to be headed home, I'll tell you.

RUDD: How long altogether were you in the army, or in the

air force?

YORTY: Three years.

RUDD: Three years. When you returned--

YORTY : There's another interesting sidelight to that.
When I was in New Guinea, the intelligence officer-- The
ships used to come in that were manned not by the navy, but
by, not the coast guard either, but by merchant seamen.
And they got $125 each and every time the air raid
[warning] went off while they were in port. Of course,
they had one navy gunner on each ship, and I used to go out
at noon to give them instructions in case of an air raid,
mainly just to turn off all the lights and just lie low.
And usually I'd get a meal out of that, a decent meal,
because we didn't have any decent meals in New Guinea. But
they had eggs, they had a lot of things, so that's why I'd
go at noon. But this one officer on the back of one of the
ships was named Pat [Edmund G. , Sr . ] Brown, and he said,
"You know my brother, don't you, Pat Brown?" And I said,
"No." And he said, "Well, he was just elected district
attorney of San Francisco." That's the first time I ever
heard of Pat Brown. And he had a hard time to arrange for
me even to get a meal. He had a bad captain on the ship.
But I've always been interested in that because I'd never
heard of Pat Brown, and he started going ahead in politics
while the rest of us were going in the army.
RUDD: Was he older? Was he older than you?
YORTY: I don't think much older.
RUDD: Did he ever serve?

YORTY: Yes, he is older, he's five years older.

RUDD: Five years older?

YORTY: No, he never served.

RUDD: I see. In 1945 you ran for mayor, and you were

sixth out of fifteen candidates.

YORTY: Yeah, I don't remember all this, I [don't] remember

the campaign too well because I'd just gotten home.

RUDD: Was John Anson Ford in this? Do you remember?

YORTY: I don't remember whether John Anson Ford ran or

not. I remember him as a supervisor, but I don't think

John Anson Ford ran for mayor because Bowron would be

running then.

RUDD: In '45?

YORTY: And he was part of the Bowron crowd.

RUDD: Well, let me veer, because this man, in some of the

things I've read, he's in your life for a long time. Jack

[B. ] Tenney.

YORTY: Yes, Jack Tenney was president of the Musicians

Union, Local 44, AF of L [American Federation of Labor].

He was very liberal, and he'd been elected mainly because

the fellow who ran against him was a dry. And Arthur

Samish was the lobbyist for the liquor industry, found this

out and sent for Tenney, and put up some money for him, and

he got elected. Well, of course, he was a good labor man,

president of the Musicians Union. So when I had the

committee appointed on un-American activities, the only one
I asked to be on there was Jack Tenney, because I didn't
want the committee to be accused of being against labor.
Because the State, County and Municipal VJorkers, a union,
was badly infiltrated, and I knew I was going to have to
take them on, so I wanted a union guy on the committee. I
asked for Jack Tenney to be on it, and he was. And later--
Jack was a real liberal guy, and he was a good friend of
mine. He composed "Mexicali Rose" when he was a musician
and sold it very cheap to get some money, but it was still
a popular piece. He wrote both the words and the music,
but he gave credit for the words to a prostitute who put up
the money to get the song published. Anyway, something
happened to Jack at the union, I don't know what, but he
changed completely. He became very anti-Semitic. And the
union, you know, the Musicians Union has many Jews, and
they elected him, and they were good friends. Most of his
friends were Jews. But suddenly, I don't know what
happened to him. This happened, of course, to him while I
was gone in the service. Because he stayed in the
legislature, was elected to the state senate.
RUDD: When did you first meet him, what time period?
YORTY: Well, about 1937, I guess. But then when I left
office, he formed the same ccmmittee in the [state] senate,
and it became the [California State] Senate Committee on

Un-American Activities, but he didn't handle it like I
did. He went after the communists, but I think he saw some
Jews in the Communist Party, and from that he got the idea,
I guess, that all Jews were kind of communists. I don't
know what happened to him. But it's very bad, he really
lost his mind.

RUDD: Well, I remember reading something about the two of
you, you were discussing something, whether you should
change sides or not, because I guess you saw yourself as
somewhat like a Democrat and somewhat like a Republican.
But you decided to stay Democrat, and he decided to become
a Republican.

YORTY: Well, I believe that's true. I think he did become
a Republican. I was gone so much at that time that I'm not
very clear on just what happened, and maybe I'd know more
about what happened to Jack if I'd been here and been in
touch with him, but I wasn't.
RUDD: Is he still alive?

YORTY: No, he died. He took pictures of my wedding. He
was a camera enthusiast, and he took pictures on sixteen
millimeter film, and he edited the film, and all that. He
had beautiful color pictures of the wedding. Of course,
there were a lot of prominent people there, and he knew
them all, because he was in the legislature, too. And he
wouldn't give me the copy. He gave me a black and white

copy which I still have, but the interesting copy was a
color copy, because it had Monsignor [O'Halloran] with his
bright robes, and everything, and I understand it got
burned in a garage fire that he had, that happened to him.
RUDD: Oh, my.

YORTY : But he really went crazy. He divorced his wife and
married one of his secretaries.

RUDD: When you didn't make the mayor's race, you went into
private practice again, and for the first year you were in
criminal law?

YORTY: Well, I was partly in criminal law. But I took a
course in psychiatry at UCLA at night, and I took the
bibliography and read all the books, so I was more
knowledgeable than most lawyers about psychiatry. Oh,
boy! They started sending clients to me from the jail.
One would tell the other, and I got several off, then. I
made up my mind I'd never take any more cases like that.
RUDD: After that you decided to become a corporate lawyer,
either with corporations or with oil companies.
YORTY: Well, both. I was West Coast counsel for the U.S.
Hoffman Machinery Company, which made cleaning and dyeing
equipment. And I was special counsel for Signal Oil. They
had the staff counsel, and they also had O'Melveny and
Myers. But they assigned certain cases to me that they
didn't want the others to handle. And I moved into their

offices with them, because Harry March, who was vice-
president, became a very good friend of mine and was
godfather of my child.

RUDD: Is this when you got to know Armand Hammer, at this
point?

YORTY : No. I don't remember exactly how I met Armand
Hammer, but I think I was mayor and I heard about the
Occidental Petroleum Company. They had some problem that
he came to me about. And he wasn't very well known in Los
Angeles, although he'd made a million dollars and had a big
history of Russia, and whatnot, and was a great
entrepreneur. But he wasn't known and I got him to join
the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce. They didn't know
him. But I liked him and liked his wife, and we became
good friends.

RUDD: Good. In 1949, there was a special off-year
election, and you regained your seat in the assembly.
YORTY: Well, that was one of the things that's interesting
about life, is the timing and the luck. Because in 1949 I
was very enveloped in the law; I didn't want any more
politics. And a fellow named Gene Blalock, Eugene Blalock,
who was a former deputy district attorney, but now he was
attorney for Forest Lawn Cemetery, he called me up and
said, "Assemblyman, how are you doing?" And I laughed,
"What do you mean, 'assemblyman'? It's been a long nine

years since I was assemblyman." He said, "Haven't you
heard the news?" And I said, "No." And he said, "Well,
John Lyons died, and it's the middle of the session, and
you're the only one that can go up there and know what was
going on. So we think-- We've been meeting and think you
ought to run." And I said, "Well, I'm not interested."
So I went to bed that night and got to thinking it
over, about [how] it would be kind of interesting to go
back to the legislature. Some of the fellows I'd served
with before were still there. And so I went over to the
Teamsters union, and they had a public relations man [Ray
Lahney] who kind of bossed their politics, and I told him
that these people wanted me to run, and could he get me
some support, and he said, "We'll support you. You run and
we'll support you." So they did, and Eleanor Chambers
managed that campaign. And the communist [James T.] Byrne
ran, and he was, I think, a Republican. But the communists
ran a woman against me, they wanted to split the vote, make
sure I didn't get in. But we won the special election. I
went back to the legislature.

RUDD: How did your wife feel about picking up and moving
back there?

YORTY : Back where, to Sacramento?
RUDD: Um-hm.

YORTY: She didn't go back there with me. She stayed here,

we had a son then.

RUDD: When was your son born?

YORTY: Nineteen forty-six.

RUDD: Nineteen forty-six. And his name?

YORTY: William. William Egan .

RUDD: In 1950 and 1952 you were elected and reelected to

the U.S. House of Representatives.

YORTY: That's right. And there's an interesting sidelight

to that, because in 1950-- In 1952 I represented the Watts

area and a lot of that's the black district. They

gerrymandered me after my first term and gave me all the

Democrats so they could set up little Republican districts

because they controlled the legislature then. I think they

did, anyway. I had a big district. They used to say it

looked like a kangaroo playing a piano, outline thing.

[laughter] But anyway, I represented that district, and

was very strong there. So Gus [Augustus F.] Hawkins also

wanted to run for Congress. And Gus Hawkins had been

elected on the Sheridan Downey sweep in 1934 to the

legislature. And so we left up to labor to say which one

of us should run, and they decided it wasn't a black

person's opportunity yet, and so Gus Hawkins withdrew, or

didn ' t run .

RUDD: He was a black man?

YORTY : Yes. And he's still in the Congress.
RUDD: Really?

YORTY: He later got elected. And he's the only person I
know now who has held office before I was elected, because
he was elected in 1934 with Sheridan Downey; that was a big
movement in California. And then they set up this
[congressional] district down in the Watts area, and he was
elected there [1962], and he's been automatically reelected
ever since.
RUDD: Really?

YORTY: He's chairman, I think, of the labor committee of
the House of Representatives. He's a very good friend of
mi ne .

RUDD: Okay. This was from the Fourteenth Congressional
District?

YORTY: Well, that was the Twenty-sixth then. I
represented the Fourteenth the first term and the Twenty-
sixth the second term.
RUDD: Same place, though?
YORTY: V^Jell, they gerrymandered it.
RUDD: I see.

YORTY: A lot of the same, but they left my home in the
Fourteenth .

RUDD: Some of the issues that you took to Congress were a
claim on the tideland oils?

YORTY : Yes, because the Tidelands decision, the Supreme
Court had ruled that the federal government owned
everything from the high tide mark on out, and we contended
that the states owned the three mile limit. And I worked
very hard to get the quitclaim deed to the states, because
I wanted it back for California, naturally.

RUDD: And then there was the Colorado River water rights?
YORTY: Yes. I fought very hard for that.
RUDD: And what did that entail?

YORTY: Well, it's rather complicated, because California
was entitled to basically 4.4 million cubic feet of water a
year from the Colorado River, That was the basic
allotment. And then there was Allotment A and B that
amounted to some couple million more acre-feet. And the
upper Colorado wasn't using their water, so we got that.
And in Arizona they weren't using theirs so we got that.
But they wanted to develop the upper Colorado, and they
wanted to grow wheat and things that were already under
price supports from the federal government, so I didn't see
any sense in that, take our water away to grow more price-
support crops. So I fought for California on that, and
then the Arizona Project came up, and that was a big
project. We had to battle it on the [House] Interior
Committee, of which I was a member,
RUDD: What is that Arizona Project?

YORTY: Well, it's being constructed now. It's about
ready. It'll supply a lot of water for the city of Phoenix
and make more growth possible in Arizona, because without
water, they can't do anything, you know. [Barry] Goldwater
was a powerful senator who was for it, trying to put it
through, but we blocked it for a long time. Eventually
Goldwater won and it was enacted, but that was to take a
long time in the future. It's still not completely
constructed, but it has deprived California of this A and B
water, this supplemental water. We still get our original
4.4 million acre-feet of water a year.

RUDD: Also, you were known to champion the military, in
particular the air force, while you were in —
YORTY: Well, yes. Well, when Eisenhower was elected, he
wanted to cut the air force back from 140 wings to 120, I
think. And I wrote the air force and asked them what that
would do to the air force. Well, they had several
congressmen [who] had written to them, but they picked me
out to give me the information, and so I really led the
fight against the cuts in the air force that Eisenhower
wanted to make. He really was making devastating cuts in
the air force, not just the fighter planes, but in the
planes the quartermaster needed to haul supplies, and all
that, he was really cutting it back. But I fought him, and
[General] Hoyt Vandenberg was a member of the Joint Chiefs

of staff for the air force--and by that time it was air
force, not army air force; they'd been separated. He
became a good friend of mine, Hoyt Vandenberg, and I worked
with him. He was dying of cancer, but we didn't know it
when he testified before the Senate committee. I was back
there, and I remember he put his head down on the table
when they had a little recess, and Time took a picture of
him; and that was a big picture, this four-star [general]
showing his head down. We didn't know he had cancer so
bad. He died during the fight.

And then the next fellow who took over, they called us
over to the Pentagon to say they'd resolved the difficulty,
and the air force chief of staff winked at me, then
unveiled these things, said they'd gone to 128 wings
instead of 140, but they'd gotten a lot back. It was just
a compromise, it was all on our side, just a saving face
for the Eisenhower administration. But that was a big
fight, yeah, that was a big one. That's where I got--well,
one of the ways, I got so well acquainted with Sam Rayburn,
whom I adored. I've got a big picture of him in there. He
was my best friend back there. Of course, he was for
quitclaiming the oil lands on the coast, too, because Texas
had a lot of them, and he appreciated my work in that
fight. I remember when I went to speak upon the air force,
I said, "Well, Sam, I shouldn't make this speech because

I'm so new here. George [H.] Mahon is the chairman of the
committee handling it, and George is a swell fellow." He
said, "No, you're prepared, and you make the speech." So I
did, and George Mahon had to allow the time for me, because
the chairman of the committee allows the time.

And then, of course, before that, Truman was the
president when I was there. I got the idea that we should
draw the boundary of the United States of America by
Congress. And that would have automatically returned the
tidelands to the states, because the tidelands, three miles
out, were the boundaries of the state, state jurisdiction,
federal government. So if we could draw the boundaries of
the United States of America, the state lines would be
used. Anyway, I went in to see Truman, and said I had an
important matter to take up with him. A guy in Los Angeles
had prepared a book of children's rhymes. He was a
Catholic, and he had made it so these rhymes were parallel
with the Catholic religion. For instance, he had like,
"There was an old woman who lived in a shoe, who had so
many children because she wanted to," and that's the way he
went through the book. Well, he had a special book for
Truman, very well autographed and everything. He was well
known and he gave it to me and he said, "Next time you see
the president, I want you to give this to him." So I went
in to see the president about this drawing the boundary of

the United States, and I showed him this book and told him
the name of the fellow--! can't think of his name right
now, either--and he was delighted. He said, "Oh, I love
poetry. I've got Tennyson back here, and I keep a Tennysoir
set in the airplane when I travel, and I read it." I said,
"Well, the only poem that I know is on page eighty-seven,"
I think it was, and he turned to that, and I said, "The old
woman who lived in a shoe, had so many children because she
wanted to," and he liked that, then he started reading some
of the other poems. I said, "Well, Mr. President, my
fifteen minutes is up, and I haven't had a chance to talk
to you about my business." He said, "It's all right, son,
I'll give you more time."

So then I told him about drawing these boundaries, and
that would return the tidelands to the states. I don't
think I told him that, but he was smart enough to know
that. So I said to him, "Well, Mr. President, what do you
think of my resolution?" He said, "Well, son, I don't
think much about it. I'm thinking of Missouri now."
[ laughter]
RUDD: Really?

YORTY : Yes. Truman and T became good friends. When we
had a tax bill in the Congress, I voted against it, and
several of us who were sort of on the liberal side, labor
side, all voted against the tax bill, and I felt so bad

about it when T went home that night I couldn't sleep. I
called the White House at seven o'clock in the morning and
asked if I could talk to the president. T told them who I
was, of course, and he came to the phone, and said, "Hi,
Congressman. I know what you called about, about that tax
bill." He said, "It's a bad bill. I don't blame you for
voting against it, but tell my friends to vote for it
because we need the money." So I went back to the House
and I told our group to vote for it. And, god. Time
magazine was after me, they'd heard what I did. And they
took pictures of me outside the Capitol, in the Capitol
hall, and every place else. And I was sure I was on the
cover of Time when it came out, about an inch high,
[laughter] But Truman and I became good friends, and when
he fired MacArthur-- Of course I loved MacArthur and I had
served under him, but I thought MacArthur should not defy
the president. So I think I made the first speech (the
Congressional Record would show whether it was first or
not), defending the President and saying that MacArthur was
a great general, but he should not defy the president. So
later MacArthur came back and made that speech about "Old
soldiers never die, they just fade away," and tears were
coming down my eyes--I was a congressman then. And so
later I saw the president after he had left office; I said
to him, "Mr. President, you know, I wonder why you fired

MacArthur, because I loved my general, and I defended you
for firing him." I said, "Why did you fire him?" He said
to me, "He lied to me. He lied to me. He told me the
Chinese wouldn't come in, and they did. So he lied to
me. So I fired him."

So later. General [Edward Leon] Rowny, who is now our
United Nations representative, was on my TV show, and he
told me that MacArthur did tell Truman that the Chinese
would not come in, because he was there, and heard it. He
was assistant CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] director
then. So--

RUDD: So what did MacArthur say? What did this man say
that MacArthur said?

YORTY : That the Chinese would not come in if we went to
the Yalu [River]. And the Chinese had said if we went to
the Yalu, they'd come in. We had taken practically all of
North Korea, you know. We were up [at] Pyongyang, in the
capital, and just went on to the Yalu, and they flooded
across there. And we didn't have the kind of bombs we have
now, and our fellows would fly down the Yalu River, they
couldn't hit the bridge, so they'd fly across and go over
it, across the Yalu. They could hit the bridge because
they could bomb along it, but they couldn't hit it going
down. They came to me, as they knew I'd been air force,
and told me. And so the Chinese flooded in and drove us

clear down to a little beachhead on Pusan before we got

enough strength to drive them back. And we settled at the

forty-fourth parallel.

RUDD: It must have been a very exciting time of your life

to have participated in the army, or in the air force,

and--

YORTY : Well, I'm always getting into things, you know.

RUDD: Oh, I know. Do you remember Charles Wilson? He was

the secretary of defense?

YORTY : Yes, secretary of defense, yeah. He was one I had

to help fight. He wanted to cut the air force. He was the

one who said, "What's good for General Motors is good for

the country," or something like that.

RUDD: At that point, maybe all through, I keep getting the

feeling that you never were concerned about how other

people thought of your opinions. You just had your

opinion, and you were willing to speak it.

YORTY: Oh, certainly.

RUDD: And many times the elder statesmen weren't too

pleased?

YORTY: V\/el 1 , I don't remember any instance like that,

except Eisenhower wasn't pleased on my opposing his cuts in

the air force. But I never talked to Eisenhower about

it. Eisenhower was very different from Truman. Of course,

I was a Democrat then, and T could always see Truman. If

I'd call over there, I'd see him almost immediately. But

Eisenhower, I couldn't see him that way. And of course,

FDR was "Our boys will never again fight on foreign

soil." I was certainly differing from him in those days.

I've always admired the prime minister of Britain, Sir

Winston Churchill, and he was saying other things at that

time , too.

RUDD: Had you come in contact with him as well?

YORTY: No, I didn't, except when I was in the Congress, I

just met him at a reception. I'd always admired him, and

when I was valedictorian of my officers class, I quoted

Winston Churchill in the contest they had for

valedictorian .

RUDD: And this was from the air force?

YORTY: Army air force, then.

RUDD: Army air force. How did you keep your constituents

back home aware of what you were doing in Washington?

YORTY: Oh, I kept sending them information, but I had two

people here in my office. I had Eleanor Chambers and Ethel

Bryant, who was a black girl, and they used to send out the

releases from Los Angeles. I'd send them the information,

and they'd draw up the releases. And I don't know, we kept

people well-informed on what was going on. And I was in

the newspapers a lot.

RUDD: This Eleanor Chambers, she was quite a woman, wasn't
she?

YORTY : She was a remarkable woman.
RUDD: And when did you first come and talk —
YORTY: Really a political genius. I can't remember the
first time I met Eleanor, but she managed my campaign in
1949 to go back to the legislature. And then she managed
both my campaigns for Congress, and also my campaign for
the [U.S.] Senate, which I should have won; it wasn't her
fault I lost. But then I decided-- I kind of thought about
running for mayor again in 1960. I couldn't make up my
mind. I thought, you know, I didn't want her to get
involved in another campaign, because she used to get paid
by PR people to help them in political campaigns. So I
wrote her a note and said, "Don't take on any other
campaign, because I may need you." And that's all I wrote
to her. She's up at Cambria. She had a home in Cambria
then, and had retired. And so then I went down to the
courthouse on a case and ran into Everette Porter, who was
a black attorney, another friend of mine. And he said,
"Well, Sam, why don't you run for mayor? I'm attorney for
the Baptist League," and he said, "We'll all support you if
you run." And I said, "Well, I don't know, but I don't
think so, Everette."

Then when I decided to run, I went down and filed for
office, and the picture I have with the five people who
were the only ones who were for me for mayor. Dr. [Keith]
Kenyon, and oh, another fellow. Bill [William] Brown, and
oh, a few of them [Edith Cetto, Betts Yorty, Tom Murray,
Jade Synder] and the secretary of the law office. I have a
photograph of it; it's in the office in there, just a few
of them. But anyway, that was announced in the paper, and
I went home about five o'clock--and that was in the [San
Fernando] Valley, here--and there was Eleanor Chambers with
a suitcase. She had heard the news on the radio,
immediately got in her car, drove to Los Angeles, and never
went back to Cambria until I was elected.
RUDD: How wonderful.

YORTY: She was a wonderful woman. And I made her the
first woman deputy mayor in the history of the city of Los
Angeles .

RUDD: What kind of political background did she have?
YORTY: Well, her husband was a historian who taught over
at use [University of Southern California], and I don't
know, she got into politics some way, because I know they
used to hire her to campaign. And of course, I never did
hire her, she just campaigned for me. But she was the
first woman deputy mayor. And the councilmen loved her.
Any mayor who is worth a darn in the city of Los Angeles is

going to have trouble with the city council, because they
all represent their little districts, and none of them
represent the whole city as the mayor should do. Now we
have a weak-mayor, strong-council form of government,
unfortunately, and the council has all the power. So the
only way the mayor can be strong is to battle the council
on things that he thinks should be-- Like the lobbyist
registration act. I had to fight the city council on that,
because they didn't want the lobbyists to register. And
the act as I finally got it passed had so many holes in it,
I'm kind of ashamed of it. But anyway, it was a job to get
it through. And that's where I got in trouble with the
council, is on things like that. But the council all loved
Eleanor Chambers. They called her "Mother."
RUDD: Really?

YORTY : So she kept good relations with them. And I had
good personal relations with many of them, but politically,
I had to fight them. When I got the county to take over
the health services, the city was paying millions of
dollars a year for health services, and tKere was a law on
the books that it could be turned over to the county if the
city so voted. And so I wanted to turn it over to the
county and save all that money, and get the building, the
health building, back for the city, which is a good
building. It's now sitting on First Street, City Hall

South. But I had a big fight with them over that. I

remember one councilman said, "Well then, I can't, when

they want to complain about a restaurant in my district, I

can't do anything about it." That's the way many of them

think, you know. It was a big battle, but I finally won

that, too.

RUDD: Good. Well, let's just go back a little bit before

that. In 1954 you abandoned the seat in the House and ran

for the Senate.

YORTY: That's right.

RUDD: Against Kuchel?

YORTY: Yes, Kuchel, yeah.

RUDD: Thomas Kuchel? Do you think you lost the race

because of the Republican landslide?

YORTY: Well, mainly because of a Times smear, and because

of the Republican landslide, because Goody [Goodwin] Knight

was very popular. And Goody Knight was running for

governor, and Goody Knight was for me for the Senate, and I

was for Goodwin Knight, but we were on opposite parties, we

couldn't do anything for each other. And he barely pulled

Kuchel in. But I had this unknown, Richard Graves, for

governor, heading the Democratic ticket, of course.

RUDD: What was the smear that the Times was--

YORTY: Well, I put out a franking piece to the Democrats,

or, not the Democrats, but everybody in the state, telling

about the Democratic Party, not mentioning the Senate, or
anything. But I franked it and put it out, and it was
widely distributed, and the Times put out an article
claiming my cost was $40 million, or some outlandish
thing. And they put that out just before the election,
[laughter] And I lost in Los Angeles County. I carried
the Bay Area and much of the state.

RUDD: In 1956 you ran again for the Senate, but the
Democratic party chose Richard Richards?

YORTY: Well, they chose Richard Richards after I told them
they were wired, stacked, rigged, and packed. The
California Democratic Council, they didn't want to support
me in 1954, but a woman who was the boss of the AFL, she
went to, oh, [Alan] Cranston, who was starting up his
California Democratic Council, and told him if they didn't
nominate me, labor would walk out of their convention. So
they had some calls they could make, and they had the whole
thing wired, and they changed their mind very quickly and
nominated me. But there was a professor [Peter Odegard]
from UC [University of California] that the liberals wanted
to put up then, and he started like he'd like the
nomination, but all these kids got around him. He said to
me, "When I saw all those communists wanting me to run, I
didn't want to do it." But later when I quoted him, he
denied that he'd said it, but he did say it. But Cranston

and that gang didn't want me, except that this Thelma

Thomas of the AFL told Cranston, "Either you're going to

nominate Yorty or labor is leaving this convention."

RUDD: You said somebody was from the UC system?

YORTY: Yes, a professor over there.

RUDD: Where, UCLA?

YORTY: No, UC Berkeley.

RUDD: Okay. You returned to your law practice again after

Richards--

YORTY : Well, next convention they had-- See, I had seen
them operate when I got the nomination, how they could wire
around. And Richard Richards was a left-winger, and he was
going to run, and I was pretty sure that he could get the
nomination with their support. I was so disgusted. I got
up and withdrew my name, and said, "You're wired, stacked,
rigged, and packed," and went. And they yelled and

hollered, but then Cranston and that gang wouldn't let me
withdraw. They wanted to vote on it anyway to give

Richards the vote. So they nominated him, of course, and

he got the Democratic nomination. But I had led the ticket

in 1954, and I was certainly entitled to run again, but you

can't deal with those people.

RUDD: In 1960, it said you endorsed Richard Nixon over JFK

[John Fitzgerald Kennedy) for president.

YORTY: That's right.

RUDD: And even though you're a Democrat you didn't go for
JFK. Why?

YORTY: No. Well, I knew JFK. I'd served in Congress with
him, and he was just kind of a pretty boy around there. I
remember him coming down when I was sitting with Sam
Rayburn one time, and he started to tell Sam Rayburn
something about it, and Sam Rayburn knew so much more than
he did that we just laughed when he went back. But anyway,
then his father decided to buy the nomination for him.
Now, the one his father wanted to make president was Joe,
who was killed in the Second [World] War. The next one was
JFK, who was a nice guy, but the father bought the
newspapers, and bought, just bought everything. And I have
one friend, whose name I won't mention, who went on his
payroll, who went around with [Lyndon Baines] Johnson, but
he was on the payroll of JFK's father. And the old man had
told him, "Money doesn't mean anything. Spend anything you
want." And so he used to spy on Johnson and take the
messages back there, what they were doing. But he's still
alive or I'd mention his name. But anyway, I didn't like
this idea of buying the presidency. And besides that, I
felt Johnson was the solid one. He was a senator and had
worked very well as a bipartisan when Eisenhower was
president, he worked very well with him. And I thought
Johnson had a lot more stature and experience. So I was

100

originally for Johnson and helped Johnson's campaign. I
was in the Biltmore Hotel when Johnson called a little
group of his people in. I was sitting on the floor, there
wasn't any room in there. And he said, "Well, I've decided
to take the nomination for vice-president." And he said,
"I wanted you to know before the press gets it." I was
wishing he wouldn't take it, but he did take it. And of
course he became vice-president, and was a very good friend
of mine. When he became president, he had a luncheon for
me in Washington, D.C., with all those senators, everybody
there.

RUDD: Really? What about Richard Nixon, was he a likable
man, an intelligent man?

YORTY : Well, to me he was very intelligent, and he was
always very likable. He was kind of aloof, and sort of
hard to know at first, personally. But he was always
likable, and he was also a good--

101

TAPE NUMBER: III, SIDE ONE
SEPTEMBER 11, 1985

RUDD: Sam, what did you have to say before our third
interview?

YORTY : Well, I want to talk about the last interview we
had, the second one, when I talked about being sent to
Tanawan on Leyte Island in the Philippines to reestablish
the government. Somebody from up above sent word when I
put on a tax that I told the people forming the government
that they couldn't depend on the United States forever for
their finance, that they ought to put on a 10 percent
payroll tax to pay the expense of government. And whoever
told this story about me from above said that I was keeping
the money. Well, General Bonner [Frank] Fellers who was
head of the whole operation found out it wasn't true, but
he told me that the person who made that statement was
Colonel Joe [Joseph] Rauh. And he said that Colonel Rauh
had been commissioned a colonel and sent to MacArthur
against his will by the administration in Washington, and
Joe Rauh was a big leader of the Americans for Democratic
Action, which was a liberal organization, and he caused me
that trouble. And General Fellers was so disgusted he told
me just to come back to the main headquarters and start
planning for Manila.
RUDD: Did you have a lot of flak from it?

102

YORTY : No, that was the end of it, because it was all up
to General Fellers, and he found out it wasn't true at all,
that the tax was to support the government, not for me. It
was a ridiculous charge, but typical of the kind of charges
that a fellow like Joe Rauh would make because of his
liberalism and the fact that I'd fought the communists so
hard .

RUDD: Okay. Is there anything else you'd like to say
about the last interview?

YORTY: No, that's all. I couldn't remember his name last
time, and I remembered later [tape recorder off].
RUDD: When we left on the last tape, we were talking about
1960 and John Kennedy's attempt to become president of the
United States, and you had written a paper, "I Cannot Take
Kennedy." Do you still feel the same way about Jack
Kennedy today, or the Kennedy family?

YORTY: Well, there was no difference. I was not against
Jack personally, because I knew him and I liked him, but I
was against his father trying to buy the presidency. And I
was for Lyndon Johnson, whom I thought was much more
experienced and much more able than Jack Kennedy.
RUDD: In your article religion played a part. What I
would like to know is, say, if a Jewish person or a black
person were to run for mayor--or for governor, pardon me--
YORTY: Or for president.

103

RUDD: Yes.

YORTY : Wouldn't make any difference, I never paid any

attention to race or creed or anything like that. It was

just I didn't believe-- Because I was for Al Smith in 1928,

who was a Catholic, so that has nothing to do with it. But

I just resented old Joe Kennedy spending so much money to

buy the presidency for his son.

RUDD: I'd also read in other things that you also accepted

the same--well, maybe not exactly the same attitudes or

ideas, but Eleanor Roosevelt and Harry Truman also had the

same feelings that maybe he wasn't mature enough?

YORTY: Yes, I sort of remember that, not very well, but I

do remember that some of the mature Democrats thought that

he wasn't ready.

RUDD: Do you think this caused any problems for you in the

future?

YORTY: Oh, I don't think it caused any problem comparable

to the fact that I fought the communists so hard. There

are so many liberals who gain their status by attacking

those who attack communism, and they ingratiate themselves

with the extreme left wing that way. Because they don't

want to say anything for the communists, but they just

attack people who fought communism, and they get

established that way.

104

RUDD: Richard Nixon ran against Kennedy in 1960. I know
you backed him. Did you really feel he could have handled
the job at that time?

YORTY : Oh, certainly. Nixon was a very capable fellow,
and he's proved that now, of course. But he had more
experience than Kennedy, and he didn't have the kind of
backing that Kennedy had through his father. And of
course, I was very disappointed that Johnson was not the
nominee, although he was the nominee for vice-president.
RUDD: I also read that Hubert Humphrey was in that contest
also, probably in the earlier times, during the primaries.
YORTY: Well, I don't remember whether Hubert Humphrey was
in it or not. He certainly was not in it in a major way,
because it turned out to be between Lyndon Johnson and Jack
Kennedy. And I was very much for Johnson.
RUDD: In 1961 you became mayor of the city of Los
Angeles. Do you consider this, since you had already been
in Congress in Washington, D.C., did you consider this a
step up or a step down by becoming the mayor of Los
Angeles?

YORTY: Well, it was neither; it was just a different kind
of job, because being a legislator and being the executive
are two different branches of government, and it was a
chance for me to do something for the city and to get in
the executive branch.

105

RUDD: When you decided to go into the '61 election, did

you have a feeling that this was your time and you were

going to do it?

YORTY : Well, of course you always feel that way, that it's

your time. But I was just thinking about running because I

thought [Norris] Poulson was not a good mayor. He was just

a stooge for the Los Angeles Times. I thought about

running, but I was down at the court one day and ran into a

black lawyer [Everette Porter] who was a friend of mine,

and he said to me, "Sam, why don't you run for mayor and

we'll all support you?" And that was a big event in my

decision.

RUDD: Well, we'll pick it up from there then. Do you feel

that you had the Democratic backing?

YORTY: No, I didn't have Democratic backing. I was a

Democrat, but it wasn't a partisan election. I advertised

that I was a Democrat, of course, but I don't think that

played much of a part in the election.

RUDD: Where did your money support come from?

YORTY: Well, I practically didn't have any. I don't

remember now who contributed, but I didn't have any money

to speak of. I worked very hard and I had the support of

some community newspapers, but all the major newspapers, of

course, were against me because they always go along with

the downtown crowd, and the downtown crowd was naturally

106

all for Poulson. But I had a public relations fellow, Irv
Edelstein, that represented a homeowners' group, and they
were very much against something that Poulson had done. I
went in to see Irv Edelstein about getting his support, and
he asked me who was managing my campaign. I said, "Well,
nobody," and he said, "Well, I'll help you." I said,
"Well, Irv, I don't have any money," and he said, "I won't
charge anything; I don't want any money."

So he more or less helped in the campaign, and of
course, the campaign manager was Eleanor Chambers. But he
handled the public relations.
RUDD: And from what newspaper was he?

YORTY : He wasn't any newspaper, he just was a freelance
fellow who represented some homeowners' group.
RUDD: I see. I had also read where Norris Poulson
originally had said he wouldn't run again because his
health had been bad, and then he was convinced to run and
then got a terrible case of laryngitis.

YORTY: Yeah, Norrie had a bad case of laryngitis. And
Norrie and I were friends before this time. When he ran
for mayor the first time, when the Times ran him, he came
to me and asked me if I'd like to run, and I told him no.
I didn't want to run that time because I was new in
Congress. But we didn't have any personal trouble. We
were on the same committee in Congress, and we traveled to

107

Alaska together as part of the committee. I liked

Norrie. He did have a bad case of laryngitis. And one

time when I was at City Hall to challenge him on something

for a debate or something like that, I put out my hand to

shake hands with him, and he wouldn't shake hands with

me. The papers all took pictures of that, and I think that

hurt Norrie. I asked him later why he did that and he said

he did it on the advice of his attorney.

RUDD: That's interesting. I also read that you were very

good on television and radio, and this really enhanced your

chances .

YORTY: Well, that was in the finals, but getting a

nomination was the first problem. And they had another

opponent in there named McGee, and I was afraid of him

splitting the vote and getting it for Poulson.

RUDD: That was Patrick McGee, the councilman, right?

YORTY: Yeah. But I beat him. And then after that then I

did get some money, but I've forgotten where it came

from. But there were some interests here who were against

Poulson and willing to support me. I did get on

television, which they said I used very effectively.

But one thing about that television: Irv Edelstein,
who I told you was handling my PR work, told me to get on
television, and he took half hour broadcasts. He said just
[to] go ahead without a script, because I don't like to

108

work from a script. So I stacked all the files and just

talked extemporaneously for half an hour on my

broadcasts. I found out that half an hour went very fast--

because really it's only twenty-eight minutes or so--and I

wouldn't get to the bottom of the files. But people did

tell me that it was very effective.

RUDD: Did you know many of the people on the city council

at this time?

YORTY: No, I didn't know them. I didn't have any friends

in there who were real personal friends. Art [Arthur K.]

Snyder helped me a lot in the finals, and a fellow named

Harold Henry, and I think [Karl L.] Rundberg, and maybe

some others, T don' t remember, but they were the ones who

were kind of on the out with Poulson, and the Times, and so

they were supporting me.

RUDD: I also read that you won the support of the

homemakers, especially discussing rubbish.

YORTY: Well, that was a big issue, and it was a very

effective issue, because up to that time the homeowners

were forced to separate their cans from the other rubbish

and put them in a separate container, and they were only

picked up once a month by a private company that didn't pay

them anything for saving them and giving them to them. And

if they missed the one month, they had to save them for two

months. It was really a nuisance. And so I was against

that and said I'd abolish it, and that had a big effect.

109

RUDD: Wonderful. Now, somewhere else I read, it had
quoted you as saying you had been in the rubbish business
at one point in your life?

YORTY: No, I wasn't in the rubbish business. I owned a
piece of property that turned out to be a good place for a
dump, and I turned it into a dump. It wasn't a very
profitable one, but anyway it paid for the property. That
was the Times' propaganda, that I was in the rubbish
business. But actually, what the Times never said, and
what I've never told anybody to this day: There was a
piece of property, Lopez Canyon, out in the Valley that was
surrounded by federal property. And I filed on the federal
property to keep it from getting into the private hands,
because I could see that this big canyon would make a fine
dump. It was surrounded by federal property, and I filed
on the federal property, and I had an option to buy this
big canyon property, because I could see it was a great
place for a dump. So when I got elected mayor, I never
told anybody about it, but my filing on the federal
property kept some other private owners from getting it,
and then I just let the city take it and didn't pay them
anything. And the fellow who had the dump, I let him sell
it to the city without exercising my option. So the city
gained a tremendous amount of money by my action.

110

RUDD: Oh, that's interesting. Also, I understand that you
had great support from the Valley people. You didn't want
everything to be down in the city, or big city
operations. Are you familiar with what I'm trying to say?
YORTY : Oh yes, I know. I appealed to the outside
communities on the fact that downtown was running
everything. It ran the newspapers and the little group of
landowners down there. And so I did appeal a lot to the
Valley, and of course, I was the first mayor elected from
the Valley. I hadn't lived out there very long, but I did
live in the Valley.

RUDD: Also, you gained minority support?

YORTY: Oh, I had tremendous minority support because I had
represented the Watts area, the South Central Los Angeles,
or the black area, in Congress, and I'd treated them very
well and represented them well. They knew me and they
liked me and they supported me, and I think the Mexican-
Americans voted for me, too.

RUDD: Can you tell us about this: it was originally a
$2.2 million lawsuit, I guess, against Poulson, and then it
grew to $4 million? Comments about the fact that you
smeared Poulson and you were acting like a big city
politician, like [Richard] Daley. And you'd been accused
of having Las Vegas connections.

Ill

YORTY: Oh, I don't remember that lawsuit. Was it actually
filed, or-- I don't remember anything like that. The only
thing was, it came out in the paper that I had been offered
a job as a mediator in Las Vegas at a salary of $50,000 a
year, which was a big salary in those days, to handle the
dispute between the entertainers and the hotel owners,
because the hotel owners claimed that they were really just
operating the hotels to pay for these entertainers who got
so much money for entertaining at Vegas compared to what
they got other places. They offered me a job over there to
mediate that dispute and handle it, but I didn't want to go
to Las Vegas. That's where that story started.
RUDD: Was there animosity between you and Poulson?
YORTY: No, not before the campaign. And there was no
animosity on my part during the campaign or after, but he
took it a little personally.

RUDD: I see. After the election there's changes like
there always would be. How did you change your staff from
what was there with Poulson? Did you keep any of his
people or did you bring in all your own?

YORTY: Well, I brought in all my own except on the police
commission. I kept all but one of his police
commissioners. He had appointed a doctor to the police
commission, and I appointed another doctor who was a
Mexican-American. Dr. Bravo it was, Francisco Bravo I

112

appointed. And he was not particularly friendly to Police
Chief [William] Parker at the time I appointed him, but
after he was on the commission a while, he wanted to have a
statue made for Parker when Parker left the police force,
he was so fond of him, saw what a good job Parker was
doing.

RUDD: Well, what I'm talking about is your immediate staff
in your offices. Were there any noldovers from Poulson
that stayed around, or did you just bring in absolutely
everybody new?

YORTY: No, there might have been some civil service
employees that stayed, but I, of course, appointed my own
staff. I appointed two deputy mayors, [Joseph M. ] Quinn
and Eleanor Charabers--there was authority for deputy mayors
before that, but they'd never been appointed. And then I
had my ov/n staff. Dorothy Moore was my secretary. She was
a girl who helped in the campaign that was a secretary to a
congressman in Washington when I was there. And of course,
Eleanor Chambers selected much of the staff, and Joe
Quinn. But I appointed a lot of commissioners and had the
names all ready to go before I took office.
RUDD: Really?

YORTY: I had a meeting, a press meeting about every week
and introduced the names of the new commissioners that I
intended to appoint. So it was a great change.

113

RUDD: Were these people you had always known? How did you

go about finding these people?

YORTY : Well, I got some names fran the universities. I

said when I was running for mayor that I would give the

universities some chance to help in the government. I did

that, and some people I knew and some I just had

recommended to me .

RUDD: How many commissioners were there at that time, do

you have any idea?

YORTY: Oh, a hundred and some. There were about five on

each commission.

RUDD: And you said Parker. Did Parker have anything to

say about the commissioners that were picked for the police

department?

YORTY: No, because I only appointed one police

commissioner originally. And I appointed this black that

asked me to run for mayor, I appointed him to the police

commission. There wasn't a black on there. I've forgotten

who he replaced, and how I happened to have a vacancy so I

could appoint him. But it took a lot of courage for a

black to serve on the police commission then because there

was a lot of agitation there about the police. There

always is that, you run into that. But he did a very good

job and I was very proud. His name was Everette Porter.

RUDD: Everette Porter. He's the black man that--

114

YORTY: Yes.

RUDD: --asked you to run?

YORTY: Yes, and he later became a municipal judge.

RUDD: Okay.

YORTY: And of course, Gilbert [W.] Lindsay, who is now a

city councilman, supported me in the black area, and so did

his brother. Well, I guess his brother wasn't so active

then, but Gilbert Lindsay supported me. He managed the

black area for me.

RUDD: Really? How interesting. Did you get support from

Pat [Edmund G. , Sr.] Brown, who was governor?

YORTY: Oh, no, I never had any support from Pat Brown.

RUDD: You're both Democrats, right?

YORTY: Yes, we were both Democrats, but a different kind

of Democrat.

RUDD: I see. What about council? I know that we have a

weak-mayor, strong-council kind of a--from the city

charter.

YORTY: Well, the only support I had in the council were

some councilman who didn't get along too well with the Los

Angeles Times and Poulson.

RUDD: I mean, when you wanted something passed that you

really wanted, did you have to struggle to get council--

YORTY: Oh, yes, I had to put a lot of pressure on the

council because I was quite popular in the city then, the

115

new mayor, and quite a change from Poulson with his
laryngitis and his passive attitude. So I had to bring
this pressure to bear from the mayor's office through
publicity and whatnot. T had to do it. Any mayor who's
any good in Los Angeles is going to have some trouble with
the council, because they just represent districts and the
mayor represents the whole city, and he's got to look out
for the whole city and not just the various districts.
RUDD: Now, I'm going to ask you something that is very
subjective, and maybe you can't answer it, but maybe others
have said something to you and you'd know: was there a
difference of the feeling with you in city hall as opposed
to Poulson?

YORTY: Well, I think it was a complete change, because
when Poulson was in there everybody knew that the Los
Angeles Times ran him, and I was very independent.
RUDD: What about Roz [Rosalind] Wiener Wyman?
YORTY: Well, Roz Wiener Wyman had been a friend of mine,
and Eleanor Chambers, my deputy mayor, went to Roz and told
her that we wanted to run her for the city council. That
was when I was a congressman. And so we were good friends
and she got elected to the city council. But she'd been
very close to Poulson and the Times, so she started to
oppose me when she was in the city council. I had a news
conference every week, and she started having a news

116

conference right after that to oppose me. And so I,
politically, had to be against her. Then when the election
came up where she was running for election she was badly
defeated.

RUDD: Was she a strong person in council in her day?
YORTY: Well, pretty strong. She was young and Jewish, and
so she had some big support on the religious basis. And
also she was young and intelligent and quite a-- She fought
very hard to get the Dodgers to Los Angeles, that was the
biggest thing she did. But of course, Kenneth Hahn was
very active then, too. But anyway, she just opposed me on
general principles because she was for Poulson and the
Times.

RUDD: I've read that you had hoped to bring a black into,
or you would have liked to have seen a black come into the
Tenth Council District.

YORTY: Yes, I heard that there was an ex-policeman out
there named [Thomas] Bradley, and I thought that it would
be a good idea to have a black on the city council. So I
started to work for him, and Chief Parker came to me and
said, "Mayor, you're making a mistake." And I'll never
forget this. He said, "He was no good as a policeman, and
he'll be no good as a councilman." So I laid off then and
didn't support him any more.

117

RUDD: How was it coming in new and working with the
department heads that had been around for a long time?
Were there any problems?

YORTY : Well, I didn't have any problems with them, but I
called a meeting, I think once a week, of all the
department heads and talked to them about my policies and
listened to theirs. And I got along fine with them.
RUDD: Are you responsible for bringing Cal [Calvin]
Hami Iton?

YORTY: Yes, he was planning commissioner, I think it was
in Indianapolis, I'm not sure, but he took a civil service
examination and passed first, and I appointed him.
RUDD: Do you think Cal has gotten a beating, you might
say? Do you think he's been put--

YORTY: Well, he's had some unfair criticism, but anybody
who's planning commissioner of this city is going to have
some trouble because you can't please everyone. And Cal
did a good job, particularly with the downtown, where it
was just beginning to go ahead and build bigger buildings,
and he allowed for space around them which is now there.
He had a good idea, he was a good planning director, and I
was pleased with him. One time I said he was too much of a
dreamer, but he replied back that sometimes you need a
dreamer.

118

RUDD: We mentioned a little bit Chief Parker, and he was

outspoken about race, and I don't know about religion, but

I read somewhere where you asked him to kind of cool it.

YORTY: Well, I might have, I don't remember. He was very

outspoken and there had been a lot of propaganda against

him in the black district. Maybe he was a little

prejudiced, I don't remember, but I might have told him to

cool it. But we were very good friends before he left

office .

RUDD: Was anyone else around city hall that outspoken?

YORTY: Oh, I don't remember that, no.

RUDD: OK, this is before affirmative action and equal

employment?

YORTY: Oh, yes, long before all of that started.

RUDD: And did you find, did you see that the blacks or the

Mexican-Americans were not moving in as much as they are

today?

YORTY: Well, I moved a lot of them in for the first time

in the history of the city of Los Angeles. I appointed one

to the police commission, one the the fire commission,

civil service commission, and to the commissions that I

thought were important to them. And I integrated the city

fire department. I went over to a fire station where I'd

heard there was one black member and I said, "Where's the

Negro member?" That's what we called them then, Negroes.

119

They said, "He's in the boiler room drinking his coffee."
I said, "Why doesn't he drink his coffee out here?" They
said, "Well, we don't eat together in the mess." So I went
back to city hall and issued an order that they'd all eat
together or I was abolishing the mess. And the chief of
the fire department. Chief [William] Miller, came to me and
said, "Well, Mayor, you've got to give us some time." I
said, "Chief Miller, your time's up." That put an end to
that.

RUDD: We talked about Dodger Stadium, and I guess, from
what I gather, the biggest thing that Norris Poulson ever
did was bring the Dodgers to Los Angeles.

YORTY: Yes, that was I think the biggest accomplishment in
his administration. They had a vote on it, you know, and
the people voted for it; a small margin of victory, but
they did vote to let them into Elysian Park.
RUDD: Did L.A. have a sense of boosterism about this,
where they really felt proud to have the Dodgers here?
YORTY: Well, the people who liked major [league] baseball
were glad to have them here, as I was, but there were a lot
of people against the way they got the property at Elysian
Park. There was a lot of opposition, and they had to oust
some Mexican-Americans who lived down in Elysian Park, and
there was quite a fight over it. But I was for the
Dodgers; I thought it was a good thing for L.A.

120

RUDD: Did you ever have any problems with the owners or

anything?

YORTY : Oh, no, they were very good friends; they still

are. The son is, and old Walter O'Malley was a good friend

of mine. He became a good friend after I was mayor.

RUDD: Were there problems in getting the Music Center [of

Los Angeles County] into Los Angeles?

YORTY: Yes, they had a big fight over that. Mrs. Dorothy

[Norman] "Buffy" Chandler was heading up the group and

raising money to build the Music Center, and Phill Silver,

an attorney here, had filed a lawsuit trying to block it.

And Phill was a good friend and supporter of mine. So when

I got elected mayor I got Phill to agree to drop the

lawsuit and went over to the court with him to make sure he

did it. I thought maybe he'd change his mind after he got

over there he was so much against it. But anyway, I got

him to drop it, and Mrs. Chandler was very grateful for

that.

RUDD: Did you find that Los Angeles was kind of behind the

times culturally?

YORTY: Well, it was behind culturally and economically and

from the standpoint of status; it was a very big city, but

not as well-known as San Francisco. I decided to give it

an international reputation, so I formed the sister cities

program. That was a program recommended by President

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Eisenhower, and I formed many additional sister cities and
visited them, and brought their people here, and tried to
give the city an international reputation.

RUDD: This was a benchmark year. I think you really, for
yourself, this is when you became known throughout the
world, starting with '61. What I was going to ask before
is, did you feel a satisfaction, not just for yourself, but
that you were taking hold?

YORTY: Yes, I knew I was taking hold and I was changing
the city, and I think making it better. And of course, I
did get the zoo built. The city didn't have a zoo, you
know.

rUDD: No kidding?

YORTY: And they had a bond issue for $7 million to build a
zoo, but they'd never built one, and the Times wanted to
put it down in Elysian Park where the Dodger Stadium was,
and it would have taken almost all the $7 million to get
the land ready down there for it. So I got Charles
Luckman, an architect, appointed to look for a place to
build a zoo, and Luckman found a place out in Griffith
Park. There was a good, suitable place. So he was the
architect on the zoo, and he developed a very clever system
of building blocks, but putting them together in different
shapes, so the buildings were all built by the same blocks,
but they looked different. He built the zoo for the $7

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million plus, and got it open on time, and that was the
first zoo the city had had. And of course, I built the
convention center downtown; the city had no convention
center. It had no art center, and I built the art center
up in Barnsdall Park. And I built the children's art
center also up there. And we had plans for an equestrian
center which has now been built, but we didn't get it
built, we ran into money trouble. But we picked the site
that we're building on it. And I wanted to build a tennis
center out in the Sepulveda Basin. And we raised quite a
bit of money for that, but not enough, and we didn't get
that built.

Also, wanted to do something about the Venice area.
The Venice area has some old canals, and they were filled
with rubbish and everything, and old houses. And I was
arranging new plans for that. We had a hundred contracts
with different people to take over their property. We were
going to make the lots fifty-foot lots instead of twenty-
five. We were going to widen the canals and give them an
entrance to the ocean; instead it was blocked. And we had
great plans there, and we got sued by Howard Hughes over
that, too, because he had some property down there he
thought would be affected. I never will forget Howard
Chappell of the Public Works Department, president of the
[Public Works] Commission, came to me one day and said.

123

"Mayor, we've got a hundred contracts expiring, and we just
can't renegotiate all those hundred contracts." So we had
to give up on that Venice thing. We were opposed there by
the councilwoman who was down there wading around in a
stream and claiming that if we carried out our plans for
the park it would affect the mussels, or something, in that
stream. It was all ridiculous, but that's what she did.
There were a lot of people down there on dope and whatnot,
and there were coffee shops that were really communist-
operated, and they all fought us, and so we just didn't
get-- That's one thing that should have been done in this
city and still should be done, but now nobody has shown
much interest in doing it.
RUDD: This is Venice?

YORTY : Venice is one of the most beautiful beaches in the
world if it were properly used and properly built up.
RUDD: Okay.

YORTY: And of course, I revised the plans for Pershing
Square. They used to have a lot of benches along the
sidewalk there, and a girl couldn't walk along the sidewalk
without being followed and remarks made to her. We revised
the plans for it and put those benches around the fountains
in the middle. We made slightly slanting sidewalks so it
was uncomfortable for people to go stand. And made it
possible for people to use Pershing Square, to walk through

124

it and everything. T remember a girl in the checkroom at
the Biltmore Hotel one day said to me, "Oh, thank you.
Mayor, we appreciate that." But there were a lot of women
in Los Angeles who appreciated that because we got all
those bum characters to either not go to Pershing Square or
sit around the fountain. But the board of supervisors--
T ' ve forgotten what supervisor said it to me--"Well, what
did you do that for? Now they're coming down to the board
of supervisors' meeting." [laughter]
RUDD: Had you other political aspirations?

YORTY: Oh, you always have political aspirations, yes. I
wanted to be something more than mayor, you know.
RUDD: T mean, did you try for the Senate, or consider it,
or anything like that?

YORTY: Well, I always wanted to serve in the Senate, but I
tried for it, oh, I've forgotten when, now. Well, I was
the Democratic nominee for the United States Senate in
1954. And I think I told you that before, I lost to Kuchel
in a close vote because Goodwin Knight was a popular
Republican governor who pulled Kuchel in with him, although
Goody Knight was for me and I was for Goody, but we
couldn't come out for each other. But that was the closest
I ever came to being elected to the United States Senate.
And that I should have won, but the Tiroes ran a big smear
about the millions of dollars I'd cost the nation by a

125

franking privilege, which is greatly exaggerated, but it
was a big smear put on at the last minute.

RUDD: During your first term, or your first year, you were
in the hospital; you had eye surgery?

YORTY: Well, I'd barely taken office. Poulson had a
little dark office down in City Hall. And he had a big
chair in there that he could sleep on, because he'd go down
to the City Hall often and be there for breakfast, and then
he'd go in and sleep. But anyway, I went in and tried to
see in that office, and I couldn't see. So I went to an
optometrist and he examined my eyes, and gave me some
glasses, but he said, "Mayor, that left eye doesn't respond
very well. I think you better watch it." So I went to a
ophthalmologist and after a couple weeks he called me in
his room and said, "I'm sorry to tell you you've got a
detached retina," and he said, "If you don't do something
about it, you'll go blind in that eye." And he said, "I'll
have to put you in bed for six weeks with your head in one
position." And I said, "Well, I can't do that now, I'll
have to go blind, because I just got elected mayor, and I
can't spend six weeks in the hospital." And he said,
"Well, I had a classmate at USC [University of Southern
California] who is now at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear
Infirmary, and I've heard that he has a new system that he
can drain the water from behind the retina and then operate

126

on it without the six weeks." So he called the doctor at
the Massachusetts Eye and Ear on the phone, and he said
yes, that he could do it. So I went back to Massachusetts
Eye and Ear, and had it operated on, and was back home in
about four or five days. The name of the doctor who
operated was Dr. Taylor Smith.
RUDD: Taylor Smith?

YORTY: Taylor Smith. He's deceased now, but they told me
that he used a Schepens technique, and the nurses told me
that he was better at the Schepens technique than Dr.
Schepens. My protocol officer I had appointed wrote me
this letter which you can have, but the paragraph that is
very funny is-- Well, I'll read this one paragraph from
her.

RUDD: Very good, all right.

YORTY: And she said, "They tore the hell out of Sam's
office, excuse me, because"-- This is not in the letter,
but I had arranged to get this office made larger and
lighter so I could see when I got home. So she wrote me
this letter and said, "They tore the hell out of Sam's
office, excuse me — "

127

TAPE NUMBER: III, SIDE TWO
SEPTEMBER 11 , 1985

YORTY: [Continuing to read from letter] "This is one time

that we scooped the reporters. It happened so fast that,

when these reporters came in, their mouths fell onto the

floor. Not one of them was ahead of the other.

Wheelbarrows were going down the hall, people were running

around harum-scarum. Tape measures were going from ceiling

to floor, and the reporters were all standing by just

looking up at the ceiling. Wish I had a picture to show

you. Eleanor and I were hysterical." That's the end of

the paragraph.

RUDD: Who is the letter from?

YORTY: It's from Helen Mackey Hedges, who was the first

protocol officer of the city, who served without pay.

RUDD: Did your office look much like it does today?

YORTY: Well, today is the way I had it remodeled, yes.

RUDD: It is?

YORTY: It's very nice, it's larger and we had a bath put

in there, and now you can see. It was just a little dark

office, just a little cubbyhole back there when I took

off ice .

RUDD: Really? That's interesting. At the end of 1961,

you had three headaches that had not been solved:

finances, transportation, and the rubbish collection. What

128

do you recall of any of these? What was going wrong with

the rubbish collection?

YORTY : Well, the rubbish collection was always just a

matter of getting it changed so they could put the cans and

everything in one container. And I had to fight with the

city council, but I finally got that through because the

people were with me on that. And finances are always a

problem, but I solved the financial problem. I don't

remember it was so acute, but it always seems to be a

problem. And what was the other problem?

RUDD: Transportation.

YORTY: Well, transportation has been a problem in this

city for a long time, and I worked on trying to solve it,

but I never did get a new transportation system built, and

they still don't have one.

RUDD: Well, when people talk about transportation, do they

usually mean the highways, or do they mean, you know,

traffic?

YORTY: Well, the freeways are run by the state.

RUDD: Okay.

YORTY: And I called the state engineer in, I think his

name was Deaver, and told him that I thought we ought to

leave room down the center of the freeways for a public

transportation system, and he said, "Oh, we don't want to

do that, we'll just double-deck the freeways." And that

129

was the end of that. But transportation has now been
turned over to a separate body, that's separate from the
city, and the mayor just appoints some of the commissioners
to it. But I tried to improve the system, and I always
wanted to build it, but I never did. That's one thing I
could not solve and it's not solved yet.

RUDD: Would you have wanted a metrorail, or one of these,
what do they call them in England, the tube? Or in San
Francisco, BART [Bay Area Rapid Transit]?

YORTY: Well, I never thought of that because for one thing
it's so costly, and it would take a huge system, many miles
to cover the city. The one they propose now, they're
talking about this four miles which wouldn't do anything
but send a tunnel out to Alvarado Street, and what would
you do when you go clear to Alvarado, where would you park
your car? They had a tunnel that started at Glendale
Boulevard and went into the city, to the subway terminal
building. That would be about as good as the one they're
talking about building now for four miles. But after the
four miles, they plan on extending it to the Valley, which
would be another twenty miles or so, and be so costly, and
it won't help the whole city, it will just help the people
on the corridor. So I just can't see this present
system. But the present mayor, Mr. Bradley, when he ran
against me, he said, "Give me eighteen months and a shovel

130

and I'll solve the transportation problem." Well, he's now
been there twelve years and they still haven't solved it.
RUDD: Do you see, since you were mayor, a great change
because of added freeways and things? Has this brought the
community closer together?

YORTY : Well, there hasn't been a great change. The
freeways haven't been so prominent in the construction
that's gone on, they were mostly here. The Hollywood
Freeway had to be widened, there was a bad bottleneck. And
some of the others, more outside the city, had to be
developed, but there isn't much change except that the ones
outside the city have made it easier to get into the city
and to get through the city. It's important that you get
through the city without going through the downtown area,
and to some extent, that's been accomplished, but
otherwise, there isn't anything much that's changed.
RUDD: Well, I read somewhere, and I'm not sure who the
author was, but it was something like, "It's the freeway
system that brought fourteen small communities together to
become one large Los Angeles." Do you believe that?
YORTY: Well, it never has become one large Los Angeles.
There's only one center and the central city has to be the
hub. But otherwise, this city is different from others.
It's a lot of communities, [they] used to say a lot of
communities looking for a city, but it's still a lot of

131

independent communities, and where people work and shop and
live in a community, many of them never go downtown at
all. And the downtown area has changed completely, you
know. It used to be people went down there mainly to shop,
but all these shopping centers in outlying areas have
changed that now.

RUDD: Okay. On this rubbish collection, what was your
ultimate goal, what were you hoping to get for these people
so they didn't have to separate their garbage?
YORTY: Well, I was hoping that eventually, to conserve,
like aluminum, we could separate it at the dump. And there
have been several people [who] have tried to do that; it's
never been done successfully. I did develop for a while a
separate voluntary collection, called the Saturday
collection, where people could take the tin cans and
bottles to certain areas of the city if they wanted to
volunteer to do that, and I had the city service open to
receive them. We collected them for a while but it didn't
really pay off because the people weren't that interested.
RUDD: Did you increase dumps and things like this?
YORTY: Oh, yes, we bought this big dump that I had an
option on. I never did exercise the option, even tell
anybody that I had it. But he sold that to the city and
that's been the main dump in the Valley there for a long
time now, but it's filling up.

132

RUDD: Okay. After your first year, your first term, were
there any really highlights that you look back at?
YORTY : Well, I don't remember what happened the first term
as against the second so well. But I was proud of the city
moving ahead internationally and getting better known and
building the big buildings we were building downtown. That
was partly my fault, but mainly it was private enterprise
because in the 1950s they had removed the height limit of
thirteen stories because they were always afraid of
earthquake, and they developed these earthquake-proof
buildings. I remember one big building when we had an
earthquake and they had a seismograph on each floor to
record the movement, and the architect [Albert C. Martin
and Associates] came over to me and showed me by the
seismograph that he had predicted exactly the amount of
movement that would take place. So these big buildings
sway a lot during the earthquake, but it would take a very
big earthquake to damage them. The City Hall was damaged
in that earthquake, but the architect came to me about it,
had a lot of plastering and a lot of other things to do,
but we repaired it.

RUDD: While you were there in the first term, I guess if
you want to say during all the terms, was City Hall South
built during that period?

133

YORTY : Well, I don't remember whether it was that
period. I planned City Hall South along with, of course,
the planning department, the other departments because we
were so crowded in City Hall. But I also got City Hall
East turned over to us when I consolidated the health
services because it was a health building, and now I think
it's the civil service personnel building.
RUDD: Oh, City Hall South?
YORTY: No, that's City Hall--

RUDD: No, City Hall South was the health building and now--
YORTY: Oh, yes, City Hall East is the one that I built
from scratch.
RUDD: I see, oh.

YORTY: And we built the causeway across the second or
third story over to it and built new offices in there for
the city administrative officer. And we also built the
fire department communication system. They used to have
various communications offices out in the various areas and
we consolidated that down three or four stories in City
Hall South. We built it down below so it couldn't be
disrupted in any kind of a turmoil or earthquake, and it
worked very well. And we also planned the consolidated
communication system for the police department.
RUDD: I see. When you were in City Hall, when was Parker
Center built?

134

YORTY : Oh, that was built before I became mayor. I think

it was--I don't remember having much to do with Parker

Center.

RUDD: And it was named for Chief Parker. Was this the one

that was with you?

YORTY: Yes.

RUDD: It was named for him while he was there?

YORTY: No, I think after he was dead. Now, Chief Parker

was chief of police as long as he lived, and one night he

went to a meeting of the United States Marines and they

were standing up applauding him and he dropped dead.

RUDD: Oh, my.

YORTY: Well, if you have to die, that was a wonderful way

for Chief Parker, who was a wonderful patriot, to die. He

was a great chief, and he really made the Los Angeles

Police Department into the best police department in the

world. And he made it corruption-proof and very efficient;

he was a great administrator.

RUDD: Who followed him, [Ed] Davis?

YORTY: No, Tom Redd in.

RUDD: Reddin?

YORTY: Yeah, Reddin.

RUDD: Okay.

YORTY: I appointed Chief [Thad] Brown to take Parker's

place because Brown agreed not to take the civil service

135

examination for chief, because I didn't want anybody to

have that advantage. So the civil service examination was

given and Chief Reddin was appointed.

RUDD: I see. He couldn't have been there too long.

YORTY: No, he wasn't there very long because he took a job

on TV and I told him, I said, "You know, you ought to have

a long, unbreakable contract if you leave here."

And he said, "Well, I've got it."

So he left and he went over to KTLA as a newscaster,
but it didn't turn out very well.

RUDD: Before we close is there anything else that comes to
mind about your life as mayor in the early years?
YORTY: Well, nothing except that the Times was so happy
with me as mayor after the editorial about "There's Nothing
Left But Hope" which ran in the Times the day after I was
elected. And I've got a copy of the editorial in a
permaplaque . But they were so pleased with me they
supported me for a second term.
RUDD: That's very good.

YORTY: I don't know whether it was so pleased with me or
so displeased with Jimmy [James] Roosevelt who ran against
me, but anyway, they supported me.

RUDD: Oh, he ran against you for the second term?
YORTY: Uh-huh.
RUDD: What was he doing?

136

YORTY: Oh, nothing. T don't remember what he did. He was
in the loan business or the insurance business. But the
reporters asked him where Hansen Dam was. He named some
wrong place; he didn't know, he didn't have any idea where
it was. [laughter]

RUDD: You had a reputation that some people called you
"Traveling Sam." When did you decide that you wanted to
invest time in other places?

YORTY: Well, I wanted to give the city an international
status, and I had been very well traveled before I ever
became mayor. But I didn't travel as much as the Times
made out; the Times would make me out as a traveler if I
went to Beverly Hills. [laughter] But they don't do that
with the present mayor who travels much more than I did. I
did develop the sister city program, and I visited most of
the sister cities and they responded by visiting here.
RUDD: Which ones are they?

YORTY: Well, the only sister city when T became mayor, the
only one that was active at all was Nagoya in Japan. And
Eilat in Israel had been made a sister city, but just made
a sister city in name. But I visited, and appointed a
committee, and activated the city, and visited Eilat, and
had the mayor of Rilat visit here. And I had a sister city
of Salvador in Brazil, and I went down there and they came
here. That has never been a very active sister city

137

program. But I made Berlin a sister city program and
visited Berlin. They had a Los Angeles week in Berlin
where we took a group back there and had a style show and
all that, show off our products. And that's still very
active, the committee is still active. I made a sister
city in India, a very large city [Bombay] in India, and
that was successful. And I was going to make the first
sister city back of the Iron Curtain in Romania, but I
don't know, I didn't want to present it to the city council
because there's so much demagogue ry down there it might
have made out I was trying to make a communist city a
sister city so I just didn't go ahead with that, although
they passed a motion in the sister city in Romania
accepting Los Angeles as their sister city.
RUDD: Really?

YORTY : That was kind of t;oo bad because it would have been
interesting. But anyway, let's see, I made some other
sisters, I don't remember them all right offhand, but quite
a few sister cities, and we got a lot of publicity about
it.

RUDD: Eto these communities help develop us with commerce
and things like that?

YORTY: Oh, yes, it's good to have sister cities, it's good
for tourism, too. We got a lot of publicity in those
countries when we became a sister city and made them more

138

friendly to us, you know, more friendly to the United
States and to the city of Los Angeles. It was a very good
prograin and the present mayor has said he wasn't going to
do anything about it, but he's tried to carry it on and
revive it a little bit.

RUDD: Did you travel to Washington, D.C., very often?
YORTY: Well, not very often, but I went there whenever
there was any business that affected the city. And
President Johnson, of course, had a big luncheon there for
me when I was elected. He had [Everett] Dirksen who was a
big Republican, and members of the Senate and House there,
and they gave me a big ovation and that sort of thing, but
it was very nice of him to do that because he knew that I
had always been his friend. I visited with him several

times.

RUDD: And you were mayor of the third-largest city in

Ame r i c a !

YORTY: That's right.

RUDD: And Time wrote about you.

YORTY: Yes.

RUDD: Were you proud to be the mayor of Los Angeles?

YORTY: Well, I think anyone would be proud to be mayor of

Los Angeles because it's a great city and there haven't

been that many who've been in the office of mayor here,

only about forty, I guess. So I was proud to be mayor,

yes.

139

RUDD: Good. Is there anything else you'd like to say

before we close?

YORTY: Is this the last interview?

RUDD: No, oh, no!

YORTY: No, there isn't anything else I want to say

today. [tape recorder off]

Pusan in Korea was made a sister city, and that was
very successful. Also Mexico City.

RUDD: Did you have many chiefs of state come to L.A. , I
mean beyond that?

YORTY: Quite a few, yes, quite a few. We had the prime
minister of Japan here and the president of [South] Korea,
and we had the president of Mexico, as a matter of fact two
presidents of Mexico. The [United States] State Department

liked my protocol office, and the job that Eddie [Edward

A.] Martinez was doing as protocol officer; they

complimented me on his work, and they used to always route

important visitors through Los Angeles if they visited any

city other than Washington, D.C.

RUDD: Has there always been an office of protocol?

YORTY: No, I formed the first protocol office.

RUDD: Do you know how it was handled before you?

YORTY: Oh, they just didn't handle it. Los Angeles wasn't

very well known in spite of its size.

140

RUDD: Do you suppose it had, pardon the expression, a

"hick" way of looking? It was not particularly grown, or

mature, or sophisticated?

YORTY: It was unsophisticated from the standpoint of world

politics, from the standpoint of the mayors. They had

always been rather limited individuals.

RUDD: Are you saying they only looked at what they had

here and they never looked beyond?

YORTY: Well, I don't know what you mean by that, but they

didn't have a world point of view and they were very

limited in what they could see the city could become.

RUDD: Anything else?

YORTY: No, I think that's all.

RUDD: All right. [tape recorder off] You said there are

still others that you had--

YORTY: Well, the mayor of London, not the head of a

government, he's an honorary person. And I had two mayors

visit here from London. They only hold office a year. The

first one came with his whole retinue, and the second one

just came in a civilian suit without anybody being in

accompaniment. I asked him why that was and he said,

"Well, we can't officially call on you twice till you

return the visit." They had invited me to return the visit

to London, to be honored there, but they wanted to make it

in December and I thought it would be very cold there, so I

141

didn't want to go. But we had, as I say, important

visitors all the time.

RUDD: Now, was a red carpet kind of a thing given to these

people?

YORTY : Oh, yes, I usually had a dinner for them and had

the sister cities, if we had a sister city in the country,

they would always have a luncheon or a dinner and make a

big fuss over them, give them a chance to make a speech.

RUDD: The council must have been proud of these times

also.

YORTY: VJell, I don't know as they were ever so proud of

it, but they did take part in it. Some were very active

like [Karl L.] Rundberg with Nagoya in Japan, he loved

it. He was very active in that.

RUDD: Very good.

YORTY: Well, Princess Margaret [of England] visited here,

but she was just a princess, not the head of any

government. Of course I had the fellow who is now king of

Spain visit here, and I had Nehru, the prime minister of

India visited. But Nehru just wanted to go down and see

Disneyland, so I told h im I thought he came here not to

visit us, but to see Disneyland; he just laughed. But

there were a lot of visitors of that caliber.

RUDD: V'/hen Khrushchev came to town--

142

YORTY: Well, I wasn't mayor then. Mayor Poulson was in

office when he came to town.

RUDD: That's right, it was in the fifties.

YORTY: Yes.

RUDD: That's right. Anything else?

YORTY: No, that's enough for now.

RUDD: That does it. [laughter]

143

TAPE NUMBER: IV, SIDE ONE
SEPTEMBER 27, 1985

RUDD: Sam, the 1960s was a turbulent era. I'd like to

focus in on the national scene first and to see how Los

Angeles fit into things that were happening on the national

scene. First of all, on the civil rights movement, was

there anything here that reflected problems one way or the

other?

YORTY : Well, I don't think so. You know I integrated the

fire department and brought a lot of blacks in the city

government. I brought Mexican-Americans, or anyway.

Latinos in the government, and of course, I had many more

Jews, too, on the city council, and strangely enough there

hadn't been many before, although [they are] some of the

ablest people in Los Angeles. And I got people recommended

by the universities and gave a broad outline to the

government of the city. I think it was later affected in

the national scene; I think we were more or less among the

first here.

RUDD: Really? Now, affirmative action falls under this,

doesn ' t it?

YORTY: Well, that came much later.

RUDD: It did?

YORTY: Affirmative action, yes, I was out of office when

that started.

144

RUDD: Another thing, many things that happened in the
sixties were some deaths of some very important people.
John Kennedy was killed in the early sixties. What kind of
an effect did it have here in Los Angeles?
YORTY: Well, it didn't have very much of an effect,
naturally, because the national administration didn't
affect the city that much. But the people here were
shocked and saddened, of course, by John Kennedy's
assassination, which I don't think has ever been explained
properly to the satisfaction of the people. Of course,
that didn't provide for very much change nationally because
Lyndon Johnson became president then and Lyndon Johnson was
a good friend of mine whom I had supported for president.
RUDD: Martin Luther King [Jr.] was also killed in that
era. Had he been here to Los Angeles?

YORTY: Well, he came here once right after the riots.
RUDD: The Watts riots?
YORTY: Yes, the Watts riots.
RUDD: I see.

YORTY: And I had a conference with him, had Chief
[William] Parker in with me, and Chief Parker and one of
Martin Luther King's assistants got in kind of an argument,
but Martin Luther King and I got along fine. But he
promised me he wouldn't blame the police department for the
rioting, and he went out to my news conference, which I had

145

already scheduled, and he blamed the police for the

rioting. And I had to sit right down after him and say it

wasn't the police that caused the rioting.

RUDD: That's interesting. Robert Kennedy was also killed

in the sixties and he was killed here in Los Angeles. What

kind of police protection did he have here?

YORTY : Well, we offered him police protection, and we

would have gladly given him police protection and he should

have accepted, but he didn't want the police around at

all. In Fresno he had ordered the police away from the

airport where they came out to protect him because he

didn't want to be associated with the police department.

So we had an extra car around the Ambassador Hotel where he

was killed, but that's all. If our detectives had been

with Bob Kennedy when he was shot, he wouldn't have been

shot because he would have kept his schedule. Instead of

that, he changed the direction, I understand, and started

to go out through a kitchen or something, and that's where

he was shot. If he had consented to our protecting him, I

don't think he would ever have been shot.

RUDD: Did you have any problems with him here on a

personal level? I know you didn't get along with his

brother, John Kennedy.

YORTY: Well, I got along fine with his brother, I just

didn't support him for president, but we were good

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friends. Bob Kennedy's staff went downtown in Los Angeles
and they stopped at every green light and went through the
red ones, and we piled up the tickets on them. But when
Bob Kennedy was shot, of course, we dropped all that, but I
think they were deliberately trying to cause some kind of
ruckus in Los Angeles.

RUDD: There was another death in the sixties that was
interesting and I'd like to know your feelings about it.
Marilyn Monroe also died and there's always been rumor that
she had an affiliation with the Kennedy brothers. Do you--
YORTY : Well, I don't think that's a rumor, it's more or
less been established now. You know she sang John
Kennedy's birthday song at his birthday party and all that,
and there's no doubt that she had a close liaison with the
Kennedys. But the night she died Chief Parker told me that
Bob Kennedy was seen at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, and
that's all he said. I sent to the police department for
the record of what happened, their records, after Chief
Parker died, but they said they didn't have any records.
And lately it's come out that they did have them. But they
say now that it was in the personal possession of Chief
Thad Brown, whom I appointed after Chief Parker died. They
claim not to have anything now, but they say that some
things they destroyed ten years ago because the city
council had ordered all these things destroyed, so I don't

147

know what ever happened. But it's been a mystery and I'm
not sure that it would ever really be put to rest, but
anyway, for now, as far as we know, her telephone was off
the hook to Peter Lawford's home — he was a brother-in-law
of the Kennedys--and she died of an overdose of pills. But
there's one thing that I think ought to be explained, and
that is why her personal maid was sent to Europe right
afterward, after her death, by the Kennedys with all
expenses paid. God knows how much more money they may have
given her, but she's never talked.

RUDD: That's interesting. Something else that happened in
the sixties was the youth rebellion, the hippies, and I
guess looking at life from a different point of view than
it had in previous years. Sex and drugs were a large part
of this rebellion, if you want to call it that. Did you
have hippie movements down here?

YORTY : Well, we had a lot of kids demonstrating on the
Sunset Strip, which is really in the county, but it
affected Los Angeles, and I went out there to see what they
were doing and they said, "Well, we like you, Mayor, but we
don't like somebody else," and I just talked with them.
I've got a picture of myself with this gang, but I didn't
see that they were anything unusual. They didn't seem full
of drugs to me, and of course, sex wasn't involved. But
they just, I don't know, they just wanted to raise cain.

148

They did, on the Sunset Strip, and they wrecked the values

on the Sunset Strip for years. It's taken till about now

for the Sunset Strip to recover its former prestigious

attitude .

RUDD: Are you saying that the sixties and the youth are

the ones that helped Sunset Strip deteriorate?

YORTY : Oh, yes, they did. It went right down for a long

time, but I think it's come back.

RUDD: Now, I had been in San Francisco and seen the hippie

movement up there. Ha ight-Ashbury and that, was it this way

down here as much?

YORTY: Well, no, not nearly as much. No, Haight-Ashbury

was supposed to be a bunch of homosexuals and lesbians, and

we didn't have that here at the time.

RUDD: What about Vietnam?

YORTY: Well, Vietnam was a big factor in everything and it

was not very well understood and not accurately reported

here. And unfortunately, the press never did tell the

whole story, that we were not in that war to win it. Old

[Robert] McNamara had a lot of phony ideas; he was the

secretary of defense. He wanted to build a fence across

the seventeenth parallel and a lot of things like that.

But he's admitted now that he never did think that we could

win the war, and he had no business telling people that he

thought we were winning and all that.

149

As a matter of fact, of course, I went to Vietnam
several times, and a good friend of mine, Johnny Van of the
CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] --who wasn't known as CIA,
but he was CIA--and he took me all around Vietnam. John
had a lot of exposure there for ten years and was really
very well known in Vietnam and everybody from Vietnam in
the higher echelon knew him. But anyway, Johnny Van read
in the newspaper that--at that time Johnny Van was a
battalion commander down in the delta area of Vietnam — and
he read in the paper that McNamara said we were winning the
war. He resigned his commission as a colonel, combat
colonel, and came back to the United States and made 150
speeches in which he tried to point out to people that we
were not winning the war and we couldn't win it under
McNamara 's rules. So then he went back to Vietnam, hired
back there by the CIA. Of course, I went all around there
with him, but I knew the truth about Vietnam and I knew the
rules they were fighting under--like they had an area
around Haiphong there, around Hanoi, that we couldn't
bomb. It was a ridiculous way to fight a war. When we get
in a war, we should fight it to win, and they weren't
fighting to win this war. As a matter of fact, the
American troops were never defeated in a battle there; we
won every battle that we fought, and the Tet offensive was
played up here as a big success, and it was a big

150

failure. But they kept talking about things like My Lai
where some innocent Vietnamese were killed, but they didn't
talk about what happened up in the former capital in
northern South Vietnam when the communists took over
there. They slaughtered a lot of people and just buried
them in mass graves. That was, I can't think of the name
of the former capital [Hue] there at the moment, but it was
above Da Nang. But anyway, those things were not reported
and the press did not handle the Vietnam War properly.
RUDD: How did Lyndon Johnson's Great Society affect us
here? Did it at all?

YORTY : Well, it had a big effect. One thing, it aroused a
lot of hopes because he said we're going to abolish poverty
and all that. But Sargent Shriver was in charge of the
program and he did such a poor job that a group of mayors,
and I was among them, had a meeting with the vice-president,
Hubert Humphrey, to complain about Sargent Shriver. And
Hubert Humphrey agreed with us that it wasn't being handled
right.

RUDD: Now, did Johnson ever travel out here?
YORTY: Oh, yes, he was out here mainly when he was
campaigning, and of course I campaigned with him here.
RUDD: Now let's move on to the local scene.
YORTY: As a matter of fact there is one interesting thing
that happened: I had lunch with former President

151

Eisenhower down in Palm Springs and he said to me, "Well,
you can tell your friend Johnson if he wants to talk to me
about foreign policy, I'll be glad to consult with him, but
not to mention domestic policy because we're 180 degrees
apart." And I conveyed that to Johnson, and he did stop in
Palm Springs on his way, I think it was on his way out to
the Pacific, and consulted with Eisenhower about Vietnam.
RUDD: That's interesting. On the local scene, one of the
largest things, I imagine, that happened in the sixties was
the Watts riots, and can you give us some background?
YORTY: Well, I think I did that before, didn't I?
RUDD: Well, I don't remember if we went into it.
YORTY: I think we did.

RUDD: Well, I would like to ask you some other questions
about it.

YORTY: Okay. Well, you know how it happened. The Highway
Patrol followed the suspect into the city and he was
accused of drunk driving. They didn't take the suspect and
get out of the area like our black police officer [Ronald
Farwell] told them to when he arrived there. He said, "Get
your suspect and get out of here." But they fooled around
and they finally arrested the suspect's brother and his
mother and put them in the car. They were taking them off
to jail. And then when the Highway Patrol started to
leave, a motorcycle officer was spit on, and he got out and

152

grabbed a girl there who had on a white outfit from a
beauty shop, but she looked pregnant. By that time they
had the mob pretty stirred up. And if they had taken the
suspect and gotten out of the area as our police officer
told them to, it wouldn't have happened. But it was just a
spark that set it off. There's no doubt there were
conditions there, particularly the unemployment and all
that sort of thing, and agitators, that were going on. A
supervisor called a meeting down there in the afternoon and
he wanted to settle the whole thing, but instead of that a
young black boy got up and said "We're going to burn
Beverly Hills, we're going to burn Glendale, burn baby
burn," and that started the whole thing off. It
skyrocketed after that, but the rioting-- And of course,
they started looting and breaking windows and all that, and
so it just got out of hand. We wanted the National Guard
to come in because we didn't have enough police officers to
handle it, and Chief Parker called the governor's office
for the National Guard, but the governor was in Greece. If
he'd have been here we would have gotten the National Guard
immediately. That was Pat Brown, but [Glenn M.] Anderson
was lieutenant governor and he said he wanted to confer
with the black ministers before he called out the National
Guard. And so Chief Parker said, "We don't want a
conference, we want the National Guard." Anyway, we didn't

153

get the National Guard that day and the next day it got

worse. It was a strange riot; it was stop-and-go because

they'd all get real tired about two or three o'clock in the

morning and they'd go home and sleep till two o'clock in

the afternoon and then they'd come out and start rioting

again. But finally we got the National Guard and that put

it down.

RUDD: Do you think these people got overheated because of

the lack of employment, the bad housing, and--

YORTY : Well, there's always unemployment in the Watts area

and there's more unemployment among the blacks than there

is among the whites, but because you're out of a job

doesn't mean you have to riot. And so it's been, it was a

factor, yes. And housing, I don't think the housing in

Watts is so bad; not nearly as bad as other places I've

seen in the world.

RUDD: Where were you when all this happened, when the

riots began?

YORTY : Well, I was right here in Los Angeles, and I had a

speech scheduled in San Diego and I came back from there,

and then I had a speech scheduled at the Commonwealth Club

in San Francisco for the next day and I decided I'd better

go up there because it looked like we were panicking

here. So I went up there and made the speech and conferred

with Mayor John Shelley and got on a plane and came right

154

back. So I was practically here all the time, and the
propaganda that I wasn't here is propaganda put out by the
Los Angeles Times.

RUDD: What was the McCone Report?

YORTY: Well, the McCone commission [Governor's Commission
on the Los Angeles Riots] was appointed by the governor to
look into the rioting and they made a long report and
pointed out the factors that caused it, like unemployment
and so forth, and that's all. And they just recommended
that we try to handle it, which we certainly did.
RUDD: Did you know this John McCone?

YORTY: I hadn't met John McCone, I didn't know him very
well .

RUDD: At one time I heard he was head of the CIA.
YORTY: CIA, yes. And he was a fine man, incidentally.
RUDD: Now, when did Martin Luther King [Jr.] come? After
the riots were over?

YORTY: Right after the rioting, yes.

RUDD: Was there a lot of black religious upheaval over
this, I mean, a lot of people very upset because of this?
YORTY: Well, not religious upset, but we were all upset
because we didn't like the spectre of having the rioting in
Los Angeles. Since we were the first city, they started to
blame us for it, but for a while there was rioting in all
the big cities and they found out it wasn't the fault of
Los Angeles that this started.

155

RUDD: Somewhere the following year there was a

subcommittee report in Time magazine of September 1966,

where you and other mayors of large cities were called to

Washington, D.C.

YORTY: Well, I think I was certainly called, and I think

that the time they had the committee set up to investigate,

they thought it was just Los Angeles that had rioting and

they were going to try and blame me, and it was a Bob

Kennedy deal. And when I went back there, a young

reporter, I think his name was [Carl] Rowan, a black

reporter, was covering it in Washington because the

Associated Press couldn't send a reporter from here back

there. But Rowan reported very fairly, and as a matter of

fact he started his article with the fact that Bobby

Kennedy said to me, "Oh, Mayor, I hope these black men will

have the same opportunity you and I have had."

I said, "Well, Senator Kennedy, I hope they have the

same opportunity I had, but there's no chance they'll ever

have the same opportunity you had." And he started his

story with that remark.

RUDD: Abraham Ribicoff was also on that committee.

YORTY: Yes, I don't remember his part in it, but he was

very critical and he was a Kennedy person and so he sort of

resented me. I don't remember. I knew Abe Ribicoff, I

served in Congress with him, but I don't remember that

episode with him.

156

RUDD: Do you think Bobby Kennedy was giving you a hard

time more so because of the fact that you didn't go along

with his brother?

YORTY : That's right, yes, no doubt he was antagonistic.

But I saw him later in the office back there, and that was

after Marilyn Monroe's death. Chief Parker and I went back

and Chief Parker got in right away, and Bobby Kennedy was

very nice to him, and he was nice to me then.

RUDD: That's interesting. Now we're going to backtrack a

bit. In 1964 you ran for mayor again and James Roosevelt

was your opponent.

YORTY: Yes, he was.

RUDD: How and why did he, I mean, who was he a cover

pe r so n f o r ?

YORTY: Oh, I don't think he was a cover for anybody.

Jimmy's always been kind of ambitious about politics, and

he just ran because he wanted to be mayor of Los Angeles as

a stepping stone. But Jimmy's a good guy and in the

campaign I knew I was going to beat him. One time some

reporter asked him where Hansen Dam was and he named it in

the wrong place. He made a joke about that last time I

talked to him.

RUDD: Is he still alive?

YORTY: Oh, I think so, yes. He was a fine fellow, he was

a marine during the war.

157

RUDD: Now, he was FDR's son?

YORTY: Yes, FDR's oldest son.

RUDD: The oldest, okay. In that campaign, was it

relatively easy for you to--

YORTY: Well, it was relatively easy because even the Los

Angeles Times supported me against Jimmy Roosevelt, so we

had a kind of a quiet period where we got along for a

while. That was just for a little while.

RUDD: You and the Times?

YORTY: Yes.

RUDD: Property tax must have been a big issue in your

second term?

YORTY: Well, it always was a big issue, and the property

taxes were too high. I tried to find other forms of

taxation to take the load off the property owners, and T

reduced the percentage of property taxes from about 25

percent--see, we get our property tax back from the county

which collects it, and the city of Los Angeles got about 25

percent when I became mayor--and I had it down to about 20

percent when I left, but I was trying to get out of the

property tax business, and I kept saying that and trying to

get the council to go along with other forms of taxation to

reduce the taxes on property because I could see this

revolt coming. It finally did, of course, when Proposition

13 was passed. [tape recorder off]

158

RUDD: Do you think that, were you in any way a precursor
to the Howard Jarvis Proposition 13?

YORTY : Well, yes, I kept talking about getting Los Angeles
city out of the property tax business because I wanted to
eliminate the property tax in the city if I could do it,
because property taxes were too high and they kept getting
higher. I passed the tax on the utilities at 5 percent,
but [Thomas] Bradley's increased that to 10 percent. But I
would have gone for a tax to pick up the rubbish, that was
my next step. But they've never done that, and if they had
done that, they wouldn't have had to reduce their police
department like they have now.

RUDD: That's interesting. I understand in some of my
research that Councilman [Ernani] Bernardi was also
interested in this. On the city-county health merger,
that's where Bernardi was involved in trying to help put
this program together. Did it offset a lot of money by
letting the county take care of the health program?
YORTY: Oh, yes, that was one of the things I did to get
the burden shifted to the county from the city because it
was ridiculous for the city to have its own health system
and the county to have one too, and the state law provided
that we could shift it to the county any time we wanted to
if we passed a law. So I had a big fight with the city
council because some of the councilmen said they wouldn't

159

have any influence with the restaurants if they got in

trouble and they couldn't come to the councilman to get out

of it and get help. But anyway, I fought the city council

over it, but I finally got it through and that reduced the

taxes some more in the city and also got us back the big

building of City Hall South, we call it now. That whole

building was the city health department building.

RUDD: What other services besides restaurant surveillance?

YORTY : Well, just general health, like the health

department does now.

RUDD: Now, did we have a doctor, you know--

YORTY: Certainly, doctors and nurses. Had a whole big

payroll.

RUDD: I see. So when did this end?

YORTY: Oh, I don't know when I ended that, as soon as I

got it through the city council. I think that was during

my first term.

RUDD: Okay. And this is where I had read that Councilman

Bernardi had been a big help in trying to get this through

to the council .

YORTY: Well, Councilman Bernardi helped with anything

where he could save money; he was very good about that.

RUDD: Okay. During your time in office, City Hall

expanded. You had City Hall South and then you were also

responsible for City Hall East?

160

YORTY: Yes, we built City Hall East.

RUDD: I've read where--and I could be wrong--$14 million

went into building this?

YORTY: Oh, I don't remember the exact cost, but anyway it

was a good building and I think came within the

estimates. So we got it built and then we got a helistop

that we could use up on top of that. I used to land on the

wing of City Hall, which they considered rather unsafe, but

it saved me a lot of time.

RUDD: Well, in building City Hall East it alleviated a lot

of pressure from space in City Hall?

YORTY: Oh yes. We could automate a lot of city services

there, too, like the fire department and the police

department. The police department was perfected later, but

the fire department while I was still in office. And we

had a computer service, too, down in City Hall East.

RUDD: I was going to ask you about this program Data

Services Bureau [now Information Services Bureau] .

YORTY: Yes, we put that in, put it down in City Hall East.

RUDD: Do you remember when was this, in your first, well,

it would have to be in your second term, wouldn't it?

YORTY: Well, I think so, I'm not just clear on whether the

first or second term, but somewhere along in there.

RUDD: Did you have intentions in the beginning for it to

just work for accounting and taxes and things like this, or

161

did you see it going to be spread throughout the entire

city?

YORTY : Well, I could see that computers were the coming

instruments for administration, so we put in the data

services .

RUDD: It must have been costly.

YORTY: Well, it was costly, but in the long run you save

lots of money. For instance, these dump trucks we have,

these Packard trucks, when I became mayor we didn't have

any Packard trucks. It cost a lot more to pick up the

rubbish than it did, so we phased the Packard trucks in,

the new ones, over a three-year period.

RUDD: Did you build the City Mall?

YORTY: No, but City Mall was planned under me. It was a

project that the planning department, and particularly

Calvin Hamilton, wanted and I wanted it, too, and I

approved it, of course. The plans were made under my

administration; it was completed later.

RUDD: Let me ask you, what was situated where City Hall

East is today? What was there before that?

YORTY: Well, I think there was a little bank, one story

bank. Security Bank, and some other little restaurant, just

really, no large buildings or anything that amounted to

very much.

RUDD: You had to purchase the property?

162

YORTY : Oh, yes, we condemned it.

RUDD: Was there a lot of oil exploration while you were
mayor?

YORTY: Not very much. We leased some property at the
harbor for oil, but they dug dry holes.
RUDD: Really?

YORTY: Yes. Instead of taking money for the lease, we
provided a large percentage for the city, and if it had
turned out we would have had a lot of money, but it turned
out they didn't get anything.

RUDD: I don't know if I'm wrong or not, did you at one time
have hopes of making Long Beach and San Pedro harbors--
YORTY : Well, they should be made one harbor; it's
ridiculous to compete with each other, but Long Beach has
that oil. The mayor of Long Beach [Edwin W. Wade] agreed
with me. He agreed with me and we both recommended it, but
the Long Beach Harbor Commission wouldn't listen to it, and
we just didn't get anyplace with our argument for that.
RUDD: Now, they belong to the county, L.A. County, right.
Long Beach?

YORTY: Well, Long Beach is a city, and it's the second-
largest city in the county. The harbors still should be
combined, but all the drive for doing that has been
dissipated now, and nobody talks about that anymore.

163

RUDD: How is it that two cities, I rnean, would the county
be the one to help you merge if this were--
YORTY: No, the two cities would have to do it, and just
merge the harbors, that's all, not merge the cities. But
it should be one harbor and operated with one
administrative staff and one planning staff. It's
ridiculous to compete with each other when they're right
next door, but of course Long Beach had that oil revenue
and we didn't have that, so they were really unfair
competition.

RUDD: Are you responsible for the convention center?
YORTY: Yes, I certainly am. I wanted to build the
convention center because this city didn't have one, and I
appointed a committee to plan it. Charles Luckman was the
architect, and he gave us an estimate of the cost and drew
the plans. I remember Neil Petrie, who was chairman of the
committee, called me one day and said, "Well, Mayor, we've
got bad news. They want 5.8 percent on the bonds, and we
planned on 4.8 percent. What are we going to do?"

T said, "We'll take it." And we did take it and we
built the convention center.

RUDD: How much money did something like that cost?
YORTY: I've forgotten the exact cost. T think it was
about $40 million. It would cost $150 or $250 million now.
RUDD: Really?

184

YORTY : Oh, yes. And plans are already underway to expand

it .

RUDD: Today?

YORTY: Yes, today. Some people want to discredit me so

they called it a white elephant and all that sort of thing,

but now they're expanding it.

RUDD: Yeah, it's in a peculiar place, isn't it? I mean,

can it really expand?

YORTY: Yes, it can expand. We bought more property than

we needed because we bought some expensive property on

Figueroa Street. We planned on leasing one corner for a

hotel and another for a world trade center, but we couldn't

get the estimates, couldn't get anybody interested in

building either one. But that property's very valuable

now.

RUDD: Don't we have a World Trade Center now?

YORTY: We have a World Trade Center, and they were very

nice. I got them to hold off till I determined if we could

build one down by the convention center. We gave ourselves

a certain amount of time and they agreed. When we couldn't

get it built, why, they built the Trade Center.

RUDD: I see. And who is "they"?

YORTY: Well, they were the entrepreneurs who wanted to

build a trade center. I don't remember their names, but

they were very nice fellows.

165

RUDD: Private industry?

YORTY: Oh, yes, private industry, sure. Well, private
industry was all we were interested in. We didn't want to
build a trade center with city money. We wanted one built
with private money. And a hotel with private money. I
think eventually they may build a hotel down there, but the
whole city is moving that way west and more west than
south, but the convention center did a lot to help that
area and to build up a little bit south; it was kind of
running down then.

RUDD: What do you think of the downtown area? When you
moved here from Lincoln, Nebraska, the City Hall was the
tallest building.

YORTY: Yes, they had a thirteen-story limitation then
which was taken off in 1959. They were afraid of
earthquakes and now they have developed what they consider
earthquake-proof buildings, and I must say that after one
earthquake here in Los Angeles, Mr. [Albert Carey] Martin
[Jr.] , the architect, brought me over the motion pictures
showing me--because they had a seismograph on each floor--
that the building had acted exactly as he had predicted
during the earthquake. Nevertheless, I wouldn't want to be
in a fifty-story building if there were another bad
earthquake; it'd sway but I don't think it'd fall, though I
don't want to be there.

166

RUDD: Do you like the skyline of Los Angeles?
YORTY: Well, I think it was necessary to build it up, but
it may be a little bit overdone now; however, it's moving
west all the time, and Spring Street began to decay. We
were trying to make some plans to revive it; we wanted to
move a new library down there and things like that. But
that didn't come about either.

RUDD: I believe there's new plans for — [tape recorder
off] I understand that while you were mayor, there was
hopes for a new charter. Had you been looking towards
this?

YORTY: Oh, yes, the city needs a new charter. The present
charter is very old, and it gives the council too much
power and deprives the mayor of the power he needs to run
the city properly. Any mayor who's any good is going to
have to fight with city council to get a program through,
as I had a fight with them over the rubbish collection and
over the health department and over the registration for
city's lobbyists and everything. I'd run into trouble with
the city council. And I should have had more authority.
RUDD: I saw that in 1970, Ed[mund] Edelman--he had a Board
of Freeholders group and they redesigned the charter, but
it didn't pass?

YORTY: Well, I don't remember what Eddie did, but there
have been several attempts to amend the charter, but it

167

really should be amended to give the mayor authority to run

the city. The powers are too divided now.

RUDD: You mentioned something a second ago, and I'd like

to talk about it, too. You had a lot of, I can't say

problems, but issues over this lobbyist program?

YORTY: Oh, I had a hard fight with the city council,

naturally; they are under the control of the lobbyists most

of the time, most of them are. They didn't want the

lobbyists to have to register. I insisted on the lobbyist

registration ordinance; the people were back of me on it,

so I finally got it through. But they watered it down so

that I didn't know whether I wanted to sign it or not.

RUDD: Are you confronted a lot by lobbyists? Were you for

them, for the most part?

YORTY: Well, no. [laughing] I was against them because

they were against me all the time.

RUDD: Friends of the council, then?

YORTY: Yes, they worked with the city council, they still

do. But they work with the mayor now and they more or less

control the city and are not having the fights with it,

like I did .

RUDD: Was there a uniform building code under your regime?

YORTY: Well, yes. I've forgotten exactly how much

progress we've made with that, but I wanted to combine it

with a national or state uniform building code, so we

168

didn't have all these different ordinances in the city,

because it's very hard for an architect from out of the

state to cone in here and work with all these various city

ordinances. I think it was the state building code that I

tried to get, yes.

RUDD: Now, would this have been part of the municipal

code?

YORTY : Well, it would have taken the place of the

municipal code in most things. There would be some things

that are naturally very indigenous to Los Angeles and

purely local in character, so you have to control them.

But it would have been a uniform state code, which would be

much better.

RUDD: Were the Santa Monica Mountains an issue?

YORTY: Oh, never much of an issue during my term, no.

RUDD: I don't understand; I hear people in the city

talking about the Santa Monica Mountains, but Santa Monica

isn't part of the city of Los Angeles.

YORTY: Well, the mountain area is, some of it. They

wanted to build a big park there which they've spent some

money on already, but I didn't want to build a great big

park. I wanted a lot of little parks that people could get

to, because we've got Griffith Park, for instance, and I

don't think we need any more great big parks. But we ought

to have a lot more park land that's accessible to the

people of Los Angeles.

169

RUDD: Like Westlake Park, or MacArthur Park, whatever?

YORTY: Well, MacArthur Park was ruined by the developers

of Wilshire Boulevard who filled that lake, which never

should have been done, and I opposed that at the time; I

wasn't in the city government then, but I opposed it. But

that's the kind of park that we need. We need lots more

small parks. And this Watts Labor Community Action

Committee started building some small parks down in South

Central Los Angeles, where people could look out the window

and see their kids playing and keep track of where they

were. But I don't know what's happened to those parks; I

don't know whether they'd been kept up or not.

RUDD: Were you familiar with the Hoover Project around USC

[University of Southern California]?

YORTY: Oh, yes; I was instrumental in that.

RUDD: Can you tell me anything about it?

YORTY: Well, it was very difficult because it meant moving

some black people out of the area, and we didn't want to be

accused of doing it because of being anti-black. So we had

the cooperation of Councilman Billy Mills, who cooperated

with us very much, and we expanded the area for USC, which

was very necessary because it was too crowded.

RUDD: Billy Mills was the councilman from the Tenth

District at that time?

YORTY: No, I don't think it's the Tenth.

170

RUDD: Oh, the Eighth District.

YORTY : Eighth yes, but he was very cooperative and a very

fine councilman and he's now a superior court judge, and

they tell me that he's doing an excellent job as a judge.

RUDD: Now, let me ask you--I didn't think of this — during

the Watts riots, were there any black councilmen there, at

that time?

YORTY: Well, there were none there; I don't think there

were any black councilmen then, except Bradley, and he was

in Spain on a junket; then he heard about the rioting, but

he didn't come back to help us; he stayed in Spain.

RUDD: Was Gilbert Lindsay in at that time?

YORTY: I don't remember whether Gilbert was in the council

then or not.

RUDD: Now, were you involved in any Bunker Hill projects?

YORTY: Oh, yes; everybody was in Bunker Hill because it's

one of the big projects in Los Angeles, and we moved ahead

pretty rapidly.

RUDD: Were you involved--was Angel's Flight there or had

it been part of--

YORTY : No, Angel's Flight was moved out as part of the

Bunker Hill project but it was supposed to be returned. I

don't think it ever has been, but Angel's Flight was a real

historic landmark, and I wanted to see it returned. And we

preserved it so we could return it, but I don't know what's

happened to it now.

171

RUDD: Tom Bradley in--is it 19 69?--became your opponent
for mayor. What do you think was the driving force behind
him getting that much clout to run against you?
YORTY: Well, he had a lot of rich radicals for him who put
up a lot of money and the radical element was always
against me. You have to understand that there are a lot of
ant i-ant icommun ists . Now, by that I mean, you could be
against communists, as I am, and a lot of people get along
with the communists by being against anybody who's against
the communists. And so all those people were still mad at
me for investigating communism in 1939 and '40. And they
thought they had an opportunity to elect him and they put
up a lot of money for him.

RUDD: Was he a formidable candidate or opponent?
YORTY: Well, he was formidable, yes, because of the amount
of money and the propaganda. He hired a propagandist from
New York, big name, I've forgotten his name now. [David
Garth] He made up his commercials for him, and they didn't
care what they said, didn't care how they lied, and they
told a lot of untruths and they got a pretty big vote. But
he didn't carry the [San Fernando] Valley.

172

TAPE NUMBER: IV, SIDE TWO
SEPTEMBER 27, 1985

YORTY: He had retired from the police department and got
his police department pension, which he still gets, but he
didn't emphasize the fact that he'd been a police officer
because he was afraid he'd alienate the black vote if he
did. But in the next election, he played up the police
department connection real big in the white area and, of
course, he carried the black area because he was black.
They wanted a black mayor. I don't blame them. That's all
right, if they wanted a black mayor. But there were a lot
of blacks who were not for him and who have been
disappointed now in his term in office. But he's really
campaigning in the black area today for the governorship,
because he didn't campaign there very hard when he ran for
governor the first time, and he didn't get the votes in the
black area that he thought he was entitled to.
RUDD: Did he have a lot of political savvy when he ran the

first time?

YORTY: No. 'Course, he'd been in the city council, so he
knew about some of the city problems. I don't remember
what his campaign was about; they'd say anything to make
him look good, you know? The New Yorker [Garth] came out
here and made up his TV commercials and he didn't know
anything about Los Angeles.

173

RUDD: Vi/hat are your feelings and attitudes about your
being mayor at the end of that decade?

YORTY : Well, I think most people would agree that it was a
wonderful era because we built a lot of things and paid for
them with a balanced budget. Of course, always; but you
have to have a balanced budget in Los Angeles by law.
Bradley in his recent campaigns has tried to emphasize that
he'd had a balanced budget every year, but we've always had
a balanced budget because it's required by law. So that
was one of the things they did. They'd say he had a
balanced budget to imply that maybe I hadn't had. I always
had a balanced budget because I had to by law.
RUDD: Was it hard to get things that you had wanted on the
budget that possibly the council wouldn't go for?
YORTY: Well, they didn't accept my budget; they made up
their own, too. The city administrative officer has more
to do with formulating the budget than anybody, and [C.
Erwin] Piper that I appointed administrative officer was
very careful about the budget, worked with me very closely
in formulating it.

RUDD: VJell, let me ask you something about Erwin Piper.
How come Piper Technical Center is named after him?
YORTY: Well, because that's one of the projects that was
planned in my administration, and we condemned the land
that it's built on, for that purpose, and had quite a fight

174

over that but we finally got it. We planned the whole
thing and we made the plans and all while I was mayor. But
it was completed after I was mayor, and of course, they
wouldn't want to name it after me, so they named it after
Piper. But he arranged for the financing later; the
scheme, they made a lease-financing arrangement for it.
RUDD: He was with the FBI [Federal Bureau of
Investigation], wasn't he?

YORTY: He was retired from the FBI when I appointed him to
the public works commission, because I'd heard that if
there was any graft going on in the city, it would be in
the public works department. So I appointed the former FBI
operator public works president, and [he] did such a good
job that when the city administrative officer that I had in
temporarily didn't please me--he didn't do a good job--I
called Piper in and told him that I'd like to appoint him
city administrative officer, but I said I want a shake-
hands agreement that if you're not a success, you'll
resign. But I never had to call him on that because he was
city administrative officer longer than anybody in the
history of the city.

RUDD: Even longer than Sam [Samuel] Leask [Jr.]?
YORTY: Yes, longer than Leask.
RUDD: That's interesting. Why did he retire?

175

YORTY: Well, he just got tired of the job. After all,

he's had a few years now, and he was there a long time, all

under me, and then under Bradley for several years, but he

retired.

RUDD: In looking back in the sixties, were there any

really large departmental changes that you made?

YORTY: Well, we had to change the planning department. I

think the planning officer died or something; I don't

remember what happened to him. But we had a civil service

exam, and Calvin Hamilton passed first and his

qualifications were very good, so we appointed him,

RUDD: Wasn't he from back east?

YORTY: I think he was from Indianapolis. I think he was

planning director of Indianapolis; I'm not sure it was

Indianapolis, but I think so.

RUDD: Were any new departments added, besides data

processing?

YORTY: Data service--that was added. And I don't think

there were any departments. We had a human relations

bureau and that was expanding, but Bradley abolished that

when he came into office. So I don't remember any actual

departments being formed.

RUDD: Is there anything else you'd like to say about your

time in the sixties as the mayor?

176

YORTY: Well, nothing except I think it was a very
successful era. As I say, we built the zoo and it's
ridiculous to think of this city without a zoo and without
a convention center. And we built the art center--the
children's art center--and we wanted to rehabilitate the
Venice area, which we almost did, but has never been done
now and it badly needs rejuvenation, and if they want to
talk about urban renewal, they ought to do something about
Venice.

RUDD: Would you like to see it go back to be like the
Abbott Kinney's Venice, with the canals and everything?
YORTY: Well, I was going to widen the canals and give them
an outlet to the ocean; and the people would have ^heir own
docks. We were going to widen the lots; the twenty-five
foot lots, we were going to make fifty feet. We had big
plans for it, hut we had some resistance in the city
council. I remember one city councilman, one woman city
councilman, who went [laughter] down along a creek down
there and waded around with some of those people from that
area and said that the clams would be destroyed if Venice
was rejuvenated. [laughter] Sounds funny now but it's
true; it happened. Because there are a lot of people down
in the Venice area where they're supposed to rent to one
family in those houses, and they get four in there, four
families, and there are a lot of dope people down there and

177

that kind of people were there. And they raised hell. And
so they blocked it. It's too bad that they blocked it. It
ought to be done and I hope someday it will he done when
they get a mayor with some vision and the city council will
go along.

And do you know this spilling of the sewage in the
Santa Monica Bay? Well, I had a project down there to
treat that sewage. I had a fellow down there--Dixon
Collins--who showed one machine, and he took some of that
water and drank some of it afterwards, with his machine to
purify it. But we were right on that project, which has
been abandoned until they started fighting Los Angeles
now. And of course, the Tillman Project out in the Valley
was to take some of the pressure off the sewage being
dumped into the bay. And that project was started under my
administration and the cost was to be about S22 million,
and they delayed and delayed and fooled around about it,
till the last time when I talked to [Donald C.l Tillman
when he was city engineer, he said the project was up to
$75 million. I don't know what it cost, but it just opened
the other day.
RUDD: Oh, really?

YORTY: Yeah. It just opened. These things take a long
time to plan, you know. By the time you get the plans
drawn and all the studies and everything, it takes quite a

178

while. It's like the Olympic Games — Bradley gets credit

for bringing the Olympic Games here, and he had practically

nothing to do with it. Just happened to be mayor when they

came .

RUDD: That's interesting. What communities have grown or

started? Were there any things in the [San Fernando]

Valley that —

YORTY: Oh, the Valley's been a growing area for a long

time, and it was then too, yes. And we had the Hoover

Project and a lot of projects in the city, I think there

were--well, I don't remember how many--but different areas

that need to be rehabilitated, and we got low-interest

loans with federal money to build them up. We had a lot of

that going on.

RUDD: Is there anything else you'd like to say about your

first ten years as mayor?

YORTY: Well, no, nothing more, except I had the greatest

police department in the world and it's smaller now than

when I finished my term as mayor. And the anti-police

police commission has wrecked the morale; the police

department is still a good department because they have a

fine chief, but he's been under terrible pressure from the

mayor.

RUDD: Anything else?

YORTY: No, that's enough.

179

TAPE NUMBER: V, SIDE ONE
OCTOBER 3, 1985

RUDD: Sam, you'd mentioned that something had happened
between you and Edward G. Robinson, the actor?
YORTY: Well, yes, that was when I was in Congress. He
called me from Tennessee where he was playing in Darkness
at Noon, which is a very anticommunist show, and said he'd
like to see me privately in Washington. So I met him over
at the Statler Hotel and he told me that his wife was in
Paris and he couldn't get a passport because of his
communist connections. He said, "I'm not a communist and
they've just used me. They pretended to be my friends, and
I didn't realize that they were not real friends, they were
just using me."

So I said, "Well, will you [testify before the House
Committee on Un-American Activities]?"

He said, "I certainly will." So we called a special
committee. Tad [Francis E.] Walter of Pennsylvania,
chairman, called a special committee of the Committee on
Un-American Activities for the following day. Eddie
Robinson appeared and told his story about how they'd used
him and denied they were communists, but they really were,
as he found out. He said he'd just let them use his house
and everything else, and his feelings were really hurt. So
Tad Walters said to him, "Mr. Robinson, you've been a prize

180

sucker," and I knew that was going to be the headline. And

it certainly was. But Edward G. Robinson told the whole

story about how these communists had fooled him, denied

that they were communists, pretended to be his friends, and

they weren't really his friends, and so we got him the

passport through Miss [Frances] Knight, who was the head of

the passport bureau.

RUDD: What was the year here, approximately?

YORTY: Oh, that was about 19S2, I think.

RUDD: Nineteen fifty-two.

YORTY: Now, Hynda, there's one other thing from the last

interview; we talked about the community renewal agency

[Community Redevelopment Agency] .

RUDD: Community renewal agency?

YORTY: Yeah, and this is quite an interesting incident. I

wanted to appoint a new head of the community renewal

agency, and I wanted to take it out of politics. So I

asked Mrs. Buffum Chandler who she would suggest to head

the agency, and she said a fellow named Z. Wayne Griffin

had headed the Hollywood Bowl committee and done such a

good job that she would recommend him. I appointed him

head of the community renewal agency, and he did a very

good job.

RUDD: This was Dorothy Chandler?

181

YORTY: Yes, Dorothy Buffum Chandler. And that will be a

kind of surprise to people because-- [tape recorder off]

RUDD: Tell me, who is George Putnam?

YORTY: Well, George Putnam is a famous TV and radio

commentator. And of course, not only a commentator, but a

newsman, you know.

RUDD: How were you involved with him? Or were you

involved with him?

YORTY: Well, I don't remember how I first got involved

with him, but he was the highest paid newsman on TV in the

United States at the time. He changed from channel 5 to

channel 11 because he got a bigger contract for money over

there. I went to see him, and we sort of hit it off. The

Los Angeles Times owned channel 11 at the time. But George

Putnam kept putting me on the news every time I ' d go down

there and this was very helpful to me. So he was very glad

when I got elected and we're still very good friends.

RUDD: Now, when did this happen?

YORTY: Well, this was when I first was elected mayor in

1961.

RUDD: What was the radio show "Ask Your Mayor"?

YORTY: Oh, that was on CRS, KNX, the people could call in,

and I tried to be there an hour a week, and they'd just

call and ask me questions.

RUDD: Was this while you were mayor?

132

YORTY: Oh, yes, that was when I was mayor, yeah.

RUDD: I see. Was this anything like "fireside chats" like

FDR used--

YORTY: No, it was just a question and answer. People just

called in; anything they wanted to ask, I'd answer it.

RUDD: And was this through the entire term?

YORTY: No, no, it didn't last too long, because it was too

hard for me to set aside a certain hour, I just couldn't do

it, I had too much to do.

RUDD: What about your TV show ["Sam Yorty"], when was

that?

YORTY: Well, my first TV show was about 1965 [1967], and
that was on channel 9. That was a different show, that
was — Jack Rourke was the producer. He's still a
producer. But he produced the show, and he used to have a
lot of motion picture and entertainment people on with me,
like, we had Bob Hope and others. Then we had politicians,
like the mayor of New York and a mixed group of guests.
But I always started that show with a commentary where I
had a big map of Vietnam and the area, and I used to tell
people what was happening there, to give them the right
stuff, what was going on, the right truth. So the show
lasted a year and we were pretty successful.
RUDD: Where did you get this "right truth" about Vietnam?
YORTY: Well, by being there.

183

RUDD: I see. I understand in 1970 you considered running

for governor.

YORTY: Oh, I probably did. I don't remember exactly

whether it was 1970 or not.

RUDD: Was this against [Ronald] Reagan?

YORTY: I think so. If I hadn't run, the other Democrat

would have gotten more votes in the primary than Reagan

did. But by running against him I caused the Democrats to

split because the fellow running against him was more of a

liberal Democrat when I was a conservative Democrat. So

that really helped Reagan that I ran against him.

RUDD: At one point, and I'm not sure where, there was

political support from the conservative Republicans for

you.

YORTY: Well, I always had their support after my first
term as mayor. They always supported me for mayor. They
didn't openly do it, but the conservatives voted for me,
because it was a nonpartisan race, you know. I think some
clubs did openly endorse me. Republican clubs, I mean.
RUDD: Judge Stephen Reinhardt was quite an individual. I
don't know if he was judge then, but he was head of the
California Democratic Party.

YORTY: Yeah, well, he's always been an extreme liberal as
far as I'm concerned. He always fought me, and he was
appointed to the police commission by [Thomasl Bradley, and

184

he did a terrible job there. And then he was appointed

governor by [Edmund G.] Rrown [Jr.l, T mean, not governor,

but appointed to the bench where he's now sitting.

RUDD: I see. What was this paper he wrote, "I Can't Take

Yorty." Did you ever see it?

YORTY: No, I never saw it, not to this day.

RUDD: In 1972 you ran for president.

YORTY: Yes.

RUDD: Was that a difficult experience?

YORTY: Well, no, it wasn't a difficult experience because

the only statewide newspaper in New Hampshire was for me,

and that was the first primary vote. All the other

candidates were criticizing Vietnam, for our being there,

and I was justifying our being there, but not the way we

were fighting the war. So I was the only one doing that,

and that's really why I ran, to try and draw the issue.

But, oh, McGovern! And also I was against Muskie, who was

a member of the organization called "Members of Congress

for Peace Through Law." They didn't believe in a big

defense, they believed in the United Nations or somebody

backing us up, and that would he nothing. So T wanted to

defeat Muskie, and I did that, but I helped nominate

McGovern, I guess, and he was more left than Muskie, but he

had no chance of being elected against Nixon.

RUDD: How was it when you went to Nebraska?

185

YORTY : Well, it was very good. Naturally, I was received
there very well and received the endorsement of a couple of
newspapers. But we didn't have any money by then because
we weren't raising a lot of money. I conducted a few
debates in Nebraska, and it was very pleasant.
RUDD: Did they look at you as a favorite son?
YORTY: No, I'd been a Californian too long for that.
RUDD: I see. Now, McGovern was against Nixon at that
point, wasn't he?

YORTY: Oh, yes, he was the main candidate. When we got to
California, I withdrew in favor of Hubert Humphrey, who was
a good friend of mine and a different kind of a liberal
because he was anticommunis t. But when I met with Hubert
Humphrey to tell him I was going to withdraw in his favor,
I said to him, "Hubert, there's only one thing I don't like
about your candidacy, and that is you've been a little
critical of Vietnam, and you didn't used to be."

And he said, "Well, Sam, it's been a loser for you,
and it would be a loser for me." I'll never forget that.
RUDD: Now, Johnson was still alive at that point, wasn't
he?

YORTY: Johnson was president.

RUDD: Oh, that's right. What was the Yorty Report
Newsletter?

186

YORTY: Oh, that was after I left the mayor's office. I
published the newsletter for quite a while. It went out
once a month.
RUDD: Was it political?

YORTY: Oh, political, but factual I think.

RUDD: Where did you get funding for something like this?
YORTY: Well, we charged people for it.

RUDD: Oh, I see. In your 1973 campaign for mayor, was it
a different ball of wax this time against Bradley, as
opposed to the one in '69?

YORTY: Well, it was somewhat different, because he kept
emphasizing in the white areas that he was a former
policeman, and I think he was afraid to do that in 1969,
because he must have been afraid that he would lose the
black vote if he did that. He found out that by
advertising himself as a former policeman, that appealed to
a lot of the moderates and the whites and others in the
[San Fernando! Valley, and it was very successful. 2\nd of
course, he had so much money put up from some of the
liberals, because as I say, there's so many anti-
ant icommun is ts . And because I was ant icommun is t, they were
against me, and they could ingratiate themselves with the
real left by being against me without being communist or
even saying they were communist. But the anti-
ant icommun ists really fought me, and of course Bradley had

187

the support of the Communist Party. This fellow [Gus Hall]

who was national head of the Communist Party [of the United

States] actually came out for him.

RUDD: Speaking of communists, would you say that party

infiltration is different today than it was during the

early years of your being a political person?

YORTY: Well, it's certainly more subtle now, and a lot of

liberals are following a Communist Party line, like on

defense, but they're not communists. They don't even know

why they're doing it. But they are infiltrated.

You see, the Communist Party is not a simple party.
You can join the Communist Party because you think it's
good, and people tell you what's good and everything, and
you're not really an inner member of the Communist Party
until they test you out and you become what they call a
"professional revolutionary." Then you know what they're
trying to do to overthrow the United States and other
democracies. But up until that time, all you can see
around is good people wanting good things, and they'll take
on the struggle. Even a tree that's going to be moved,
they'll take on the struggle to preserve the tree, and that
way they meet people and get acquainted with them, and they
think they're just people wanting to stop the tree
removal. Well, in that way they gradually figure out the
ones that are possible to join in the Communist Party.

Then they can ask them to join, and they don't tell them
the real truth for a long time, until they've really tested
them out.
RUDD: Well, do you think the party's become more

sophisticated?

YORTY: Oh, certainly it has. T have one of the Communist

Party books here, and I understand they don't even carry

them anymore.

RUDD: Really? After the campaign, after you lost the '73

election, you joined a law firm. Was this the same law

firm you had been with in your earlier years?

YORTY: No, I didn't join any law firm, I just opened

offices out on Wilshire Boulevard with some other people.

I never did join a firm.

RUDD: T see. What did you specialize in?

YORTY: Oh, just general law.

RUDD: Was there still the bug in you to get involved in

politics, or did you need to heal?

YORTY: Well, I became very busy then and got my TV show,

the second TV show, and I was very busy with that and I

didn't think very much about politics.

RUDD: You switched to become a Republican?

YORTY: Yes, after they nominated McGovern, that was too

much for me. I say T didn't leave the Democratic Party,
the Democratic Party left me.

189

RUDD: Do you still consider yourself a Republican?

YORTY: Oh, yes, I am now.

RUDD: What was your three-hour talk show?

YORTY: I don't remember any three-hour talk show. I had a

three-hour radio show where people could call in. That was

before I had the TV show.

RUDD: Was this the first one we were talking about, the

first radio show?

YORTY: No, it was the second one. This is after 1973.

RUDD: Oh, I see. In 1974 there was a council subpoena

over the city land swap with the Occidental Petroleum.

YORTY: Well, that was just an attempt of some of the city

council members that I opposed and had a fight with, to get

even with me. It was a ] ot of baloney, and it all turned

out to be nothing. But it was a dirty trick and I really

resented it, and I still do.

RUDD: Was this involved with Armand Hammer?

YORTY: Yes, it was over the lease at Pacific Palisades,

which I favored. Bradley used that against me and made out

the big environmental reasons why he was against the

drilling down there. But then lately he approved it.

RUDD: In 1977 you opposed Bradley, is this right?

YORTY: Oh, yes. There was no one running against him that

amounted to anything, and I put my name on the ballot, just

my name, Sam Yorty, not former mayor, not attorney, just

190

name. And just for the name on the ballot, and not
spending any money, I got a lot of votes against him.
RUDD: Really?

YORTY: More votes than [John] Ferraro got after he spent a
lot of money.

RUDD: Ferraro ran at the same time?
YORTY: No, no. Ferraro ran this last time.

RUDD: Oh, this last time. In 1980 you were GOP nomination
for the [United States] Senate?

YORTY: No, in 1954 I was a Democratic nominee for the
[United States] Senate.

RUDD: OK, but in 1980 you weren't a GOP?

YORTY: No. Oh, yes, I'm mixed up. Yes, I ran, and that
one I should have won. This guy, oh, I can't recall his
name [Paul Gann] at the moment, but he's always putting
measures on the ballot. He didn't know a thing about
foreign policy, but he got a lot of money from Juscin Dart
and some people like that who didn't really know what they
were doing by supporting him. I don't know whether they
supported him because they wanted him to beat me and elect
[Alan] Cranston or not, because Justin Dart openly gave
money to Cranston when he ran the time before. And Justin
Dart was a big Republican, so I don't know but what maybe
he was still for Cranston and didn't want me nominated
because I might have given Cranston a real race. But the

guy he supported was just a walkover for Cranston.

191

RUDD: What do you feel about Cranston as a senator?

YORTY: Well, he's very good about tending to his

administration, as far as the people writing to him and all

that, but he's an extreme left-winger, and he shows it all

the time by his votes on defense.

RUDD: In 1931 you again entered the race for mayor.

YORTY: Well, that's the only time I was in it, just — In

1980 you had asked me about then; it wasn't 1980, it was

1981.

RUDD: Let's see, 1980 was the GOP nomination for Senate.

In 1977 you ran against Bradley, and then in 1981 you ran

aga in .

YORTY: No. There's something wrong there because 1977

maybe, but not 1981.

RUDD: Okay. In 1982, who was the Dragon Lady [Tran Le

Xuan, usually known as Mme . Nhu) , or who is the Dragon

Lady?

YORTY: Well, that was the wife of the brother of [Ngo

Dinh] Diem in Vietnam, and she was the widow of the brother

[Ngo Dinh Nhu] of President Diem.

RUDD: Sister-in-law to —

YORTY: To President Diem. And he'd been a partner of Diem

in the administration in Vietnam, and he really caused

trouble for the president there. I think he was sincere,

but he was trying to do a little bit too much too fast.

But of course, the United States connived to get rid of

192

Diem, but in conniving to get rid of him they got him

murdered and really UDset the administration in Vietnam.

It took a long time to straighten it out.

RUDD: Well, was she responsible for anything going wrong?

YORTY: No, she wasn't. Except she had a big women's

organization in Vietnam, and I guess it was pretty

powerful. And she was a pretty strong woman, and she came

here to California later. She was about to have a

breakdown, nervous breakdown.

RUDD: How old a woman was she at that time, would you say?

YORTY: I don't know, I'd guess about forty-five or fifty

but I'm not sure. You couldn't tell her age by her looks;

she was a rather nice looking Oriental. She had a daughter

about seventeen who was a lovely little girl, spoke good

English, and went with her mother, helped her. The

daughter was later killed in Paris.

RUDD: Oh, what a tragedy!

YORTY: It really was, yes.

RUDD: Nineteen eighty-four was a difficult year for you

with your family.

YORTY: Well, yes it was. I lost my son first with cancer,

and then a few months later I lost my wife.

RUDD: Yes, it would be very difficult. You're a very

strong man.

YORTY: Well, you're saying that. I'm not.

193

RUDD: Well, you're a survivor.

YORTY: Well, I'm a survivor, yes.

RUDD: What about retirement? What are you doing? People

are interested in knowing what you do.

YORTY: Well, I'm mainly working on this autobiography

right now. I'm not doing much in the law business. But

I'm going to use these interviews, when you get them

written up, as a foundation for the local part of my

autobiography, but I think I'm going to start dictating on

the international part very soon.

RUDD: Oh, who are you going to work with?

YORTY: Oh, one writer that I have in mind. Now I'm not

sure I want to work with him, but I'll work with a good

writer.

RUDD: Very good. Do you think you'll ever run for office

again?

YORTY: No, no more.

RUDD: No more, why?

YORTY: Well, for one thing, I'm seventy-six years old, and

that doesn't appeal to the voters too much.

RUDD: Do you feel young enough to run?

YORTY: Oh, I feel young enough if I wanted to do it, but I

don't want to now.

RUDD: As Sam Yorty, what do you think you gave to the city

of Los Angeles?

194

YORTY : Well, I gave the city an international reputation,

and I built the city up in a lot of ways, you know, all the

things I built here. Nothing's been done much since. But

I gave it a good police force, I increased the police

force, increased the fire department, gave both those

departments high morale. And wherever I had managers to

appoint, I appointed them nonpoli tical , on their ability

and their records.

RUDD: Okay. One of the last things is what did the city

of Los Angeles give to you?

YORTY: Well, it gave me an opportunity to help the city

and to serve in the executive branch. I'd always been a

legislator before that, but this gave me a chance as an

executive to carry out some things. And if we had the

strong-mayor type of government, I'd have gotten a lot more

done. But the city council was always an obstacle.

RUDD: Do you have any regrets other than, say, the charter

not being what it should be?

YORTY: No, I don't have any regrets because I accomplished

a great deal in spite of the charter and in spite of the

obstacles and the opposition of some of the city

councilmen. But if you'll look at the record you can see

that I accomplished a great deal.

RUDD: Before closing, is there anything else you'd like to

say?

195

YORTY: No, there isn't anything else except I'd like you

to look at that Los Angeles Times editorial which ran the

morning after I was elected. The title was on the front

page, "There's Nothing Left But Hope." I have that

preserved. It's a very funny editorial considering the

Times supported me four years later for mayor again. But I

want it understood that I always got along with Dorothy

Buffum Chandler and she's considered "the" Times. I got

along well with her, but it was her son Otis who took over

as publisher of the Times that caused me the most trouble.

RUDD: In reflecting back, are there any people that you

remember that worked with you in city government that

really stand out?

YORTY: Well, of course, Eleanor Chambers, the first deputy

mayor who was a woman in the history of Los Angeles, and

she was an outstanding administrator and a great

politician, so I said she runs the politics and I run the

city.

RUDD: Anyone else?

YORTY: Well, Ethel Bryant, the first black woman in that

high position was her deputy city mayor, and she did a fine

job.

RUDD: What about Joe [Joseph M.l Quinn?

YORTY: Well, he was one of my partners down there. Joe

Ouinn was a fine deputy mayor and took a lot of load off

196

me. I could give him an assignment, and he'd see that it
was carried out. And of course, the first protocol officer
of the city of Los Angeles, Edward [A.l Mart inez--not the
first one, the first paid one--did a great job, and I kept
getting compliments from the State Department for the work
he was doing. The State Department sent all the important
visitors to Los Angeles. That was partly because we
handled them so well. Of course, when the Chinese came
here from the People's Republic of China, I had an Asian
affairs officer, and she could speak Chinese and went out
with Joe Ouinn and welcomed the ping pong team to Los
Angeles, and that started them off on a good note.
RUDD: Wonderful. Are there any other, any anecdotes,
anything that —

YORTY: Oh, no, there's so much happened that I wouldn't
get started on that because it would take all day.
RUDD: Fine. Thank you very much.
YORTY: You're certainly welcome.

197

INDEX

Alexander and Oviatt's

clothing shop, 16-18
Alien fishing rights

legislation, 58-59
Anderson, Glenn M., 153
Anderson, H. Dewey, 50-51
Angel's Flight, 171-72
Anti-Semitism, 78-79
Arcade clothing shop, 18-19
Arizona Project, 85-86
"Ask Your Mayor" (radio

program), 182-83, 190

Barrett, Richard, 12, 25,

38-39
Bauer, Harry Joe, 33-34
Baumgartner, John W. , 30,

38-39, 62-63
Bernardi, Ernani, 159, 160
Blalock, Eugene, 37, 81-82
Boddy, Manchester, 23
Bowron, Fletcher, 35-36,

51, 77
Bradley, Thomas, 117, 130-

31, 159, 171, 172-73,

174, 176, 178, 184,

187, 190
Bravo, Francisco, 112-13
Bright, John, 26, 27
Brown, Edmund G., Jr., 185
Brown, Edmund G. "Pat,"

Sr. , 76-77, 115, 153
Brown, Thad, 135, 147
Brown, William, 95
Bryan, Charles Wayland, 3
Bryan, William Jennings, 3,

4, 11
Bryant, Ethel, 93, 196
Building codes, 168-69
Bullock's department store,

16
Byrne, James T. , 37-38, 82
Byrne, William M. , 37

California Democratic
Council, 98

California State

Legislature Joint
Fact-f inding
Committee on Un-
American Activities,
40-41, 47, 59, 78-79

Campbell, E. Burton

"Humpy," 13, 4 5

Capital punishment, 57-58

Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA), 150

Cetto, Edith, 95

Chambers, Eleanor, 37, 82,
93-96, 107, 113, 116,
196

Chandler, Dorothy Buffum,
121, 181-82, 196

Chandler, Otis, 196

Chappell, Howard, 123

Churchill, Winston, 29, 93

Civil rights movement, 144

Clark, John Gee, 42

Clinton, Clifford, 35

Collins, Dixon, 178

Colorado River water
rights, 85

Communism, 26-29, 40-42,
46, 47-51, 98, 103,
104, 138, 151, 172,
180-81, 187-89

Cranston, Alan, 98-99, 191-
92

Dart, Justin, 191
Davidson, Ray, 32-33
Davis, Ed, 135
Dempster, Charles W. , 21-

22, 23
Desmond's clothing store,

18, 21
Dies, Martin, 42-43
Dietz, J. Gould, 20, 45
Dirksen, Everett, 139
Dorothy Chandler Pavilion,

121
Durant, Will, 24-25

198

Early, Ellis, 54

Early, Enid. See Yorty,

Enid
Edelman, Edmund, 167
Edelstein, Irv, 107, 108
Eisenhower, Dwight D., 86,

92-93, 151-52
Elections

-city council, 1939, 62
-mayor, 1938, 35-36, 51
-mayor, 1961, 94-95, 106-

12
-mayor, 1965, 136-37,

157-58
-mayor, 1969, 172-73
-mayor, 1973, 187
-mayor, 1977, 190-91
-president, 1972, 185-86
-state assembly, 1936,

51-53
-state assembly, 1949,

37-38, 81-82
-U.S. House of
Representatives, 1950,
83-84
-U.S. House of
Representatives, 1952,
83-84
-U.S. Senate, 1940, 27,

29-30, 36, 43, 63
-U.S. Senate, 1954, 97-

98, 125
-U.S. Senate, 1956, 98-99
Elliot, John B. , 22

Farwell, Ronald, 152
Fellers, Bonner Frank, 71,

72-73, 102-3
Ferraro, John, 191
Ford, John Anson, 77

Gallagher, Joe, 31, 34, 45-

46
Gann, Paul, 191
Garth, David, 172, 173
Gibson, Phil Sheridan, 50
Goldwater, Barry, 86
Graves, Richard, 97
Great Society programs, 151
Greenberg, Carl, 43

Griffin, Z. Wayne, 181
Groundhorst, Martin, 6-7
Grubb, Greta, 5

Hahn, Kenneth, 117

Hall, Gus, 187-88

Hamilton, Calvin S., 118,
162, 176

Hammer, Armand, 81, 190

Handeside, Hazel, 20, 24

Hawkins, Augustus F. , 83-
84

Haynes, John Randolph, 31-
32

Hedges, Helen Mackey, 127-
28

Henry, Harold, 109

Hippies, 148-49

Hoover, Herbert, 19

Hope, Bob, 183

House Committee on Un-
American Activities
(HUAC), 42, 180-81

Hughes, Charles Evans, 4

Hughes, Howard, 123

Humphrey, Hubert, 151, 186

Japanese internment (World

Wa r II), 5 9
Johnson, Hiram, 27, 63
Johnson, Lyndon Baines,

100-1, 103, 105, 139,

145, 151-52

Kangliong, 72, 74
Kennedy, John Fitzgerald,

99-100, 103-4, 105,

145, 146, 147-48
Kennedy, Robert, 146-48,

156-57
Kent, Arthur James, 42-43
Kenyon, Keith, 95
Khrushchev, Nikita, 142-43
King, Martin Luther, Jr. ,

145-46, 155
Knight, Frances, 181
Knight, Goodwin, 97, 125
Korean War, 90-92
Kuchel, Thomas, 97, 125
Ku Klux Klan, 56

199

Lahney, Ray, 82

Laline (cosmetic business),

54
Lawford, Peter, 148
Leask, Samuel, Jr., 175
Leon's Shirt Shop, 13, 45
Lindsay, Gilbert W. , 115,

171
Lobbyist Registration Act,

96, 168
Long Beach Harbor, 163-64
Los Angeles, City of
-budget, 129, 174
-building and expansion,
166, 167, 170, 179
-Angel's Flight,

171-72
-building code, 168-

69
-Bunker Hill

Project, 17 1
-city hall, 133-34,

160-63
-Hoover Project, 170
-Los Angeles
Convention and
Exhibition Center,
164-66
-Los Angeles Zoo,

122, 176-77
-parks, 169-70
-city charter, 167-68,

195
-city council, 96, 115-
17, 144, 167-68, 190,
195
-computerization of

government of, 161-62
-departments and services
-civil service

commission, 119
-Community Redevelop-
ment Agency, 123-24,
170-71, 181
-fire commission, 119
-fire department,

119-20, 134, 144, 195
-garbage collection
and disposal, 109-10,
129, 132

-harbor, 163-64
-human relations

bureau, 176
-Information Services

Bureau, 161
-medical services,

96-97, 159-60
-planni ng

department, 176
-police commission,
112, 114, 119, 179
-police department,
134, 179, 184, 195
-public works
commission, 123-24,
175
-public works
department, 123-24,
175
-sewage treatment,

178
-transportation,

129-31
-Water and Power
Department, 22, 30-34,
45-46
-earthquakes in, 133, 166
-minorities in city
government, 103-4, 114-
15, 117, 119-20, 144,
173
-oil exploration, 163
-sister city program,

121-22, 137-39, 140
-taxes, 158-60
-visiting dignitaries to,
141-42, 197
Los Angeles Chamber of

Commerce, 81
Los Angeles Convention and
Exhibition Center,
164-66
Los Angeles Daily News, 2 3
Los Angeles Dodgers, 117,

120
Los Angeles Examiner, 43
Los Angeles Times, 26, 4 2-
43, 97-98, 106, 109,
110, 115-16, 125,
136-37, 155, 182, 196

200

Los Angeles Zoo, 122, 176-

77
Luckman, Charles, 122, 164
Lyons, Harry, 52
Lyons, John, 37, 82

MacArthur, Douglas, 65-66,

71, 72, 74-75, 90-91
MacArthur Park, 170
Mahon, George H. , 88
March, Harry, 81
Margaret of England,

Princess, 142
Martin, Albert Carey, Jr.,

133, 166
Martinez, Edward A., 140,

197
Massachusetts Eye and Ear

Infirmary, 126-27
McAdoo, William Gibbs, 29-

30
McCarthy, Joseph, 42
McCone, John, 155
McCone commission, 155, 156
McGee, Patrick, 108
McGovern, George, 185-86,

189
McNamara, Robert, 149
Miller, William, 120
Mills, Billy, 170-71
Monroe, Marilyn, 147-48
Moore, Dorothy, 113
Mosk, Stanley, 35-36
Murray, Tom, 95
Music Center of Los Angeles

County, 121
Muskie, Edmund, 185

Nehru, Jawaharlal, 142
Ngo Dinh Nhu, 192
Nhu, Madame, 192-93
Nixon, Richard, 99, 101,

105
Norris, George William, 56-

Occidental Petroleum

Company, 81, 190
Odegard, Peter, 98-99

Olson, Culbert Levy, 41,

50, 61
Olympic Games, 1984, 178
O'Malley, Walter, 121
O'Melveny and Myers, 80-81
Osmena, Sergio, 74

Parker, William, 113, 114,
117, 118-19, 135,

145, 147, 153, 157
Parker Center, 134-35
"Parliament of Man," 24
Patterson, Ellis E. , 42
Pershing Square--renovat ion

of, 124-25
Petrie, Neil, 164
Philippines Civil Affairs

unit, 66-67
Piper, C. Erwin, 174-76
Piper Technical Center,

174-75
Plunkert, William J., 50-51
Porter, Everette, 94, 106,

114-15
Poulson, Norris, 106-8,

111 , 115-16, 120,

126, 142
Proposition 13 (1978), 158-

59
Purdle, E. Ruth, 5
Putnam, George, 182

Quinn, Joseph M., 113, 196-
97

Rauh, Joseph, 72, 102, 103
Rayburn, Sam, 87-88, 100
Reagan, Ronald, 184
Reddin, Tom, 135, 136
Reinhardt, Stephen, 184-85
Ribicoff, Abraham, 156-57
Richards, Richard, 98, 99
Robinson, Edward G. , 180-81
Roosevelt, Franklin Delano,

54, 55-56, 93
Roosevelt, James, 136-37,

157-58
Rourke, Jack, 183
Rowan, Carl, 156
Rowny, Edward Leon, 91

201

Rundberg, Karl L. , 109, 142

Samish, Arthur, 11-lQ
"Sam Yorty" (television

program) , 183 , 189
San Pedro harbor, 163-64
Santa Monica Bay--treatment

of sewage in, 178
Santa Monica Mountains, 169
Scattergood, Ezra F., 32
Schuler, Bob, 35
Seacrist, J .C. , 13
Seacrist, Leslie, 13
Segure, Rose, 51
Shaw, Frank, 34-35, 45
Shaw, Joseph, 21, 34-35
Shelley, John, 154
Shriver, Sargent, 151
Signal Oil, 80-81
Silver, Phill, 121
Silverwood's clothing shop,

16
Smith, Al, 104
Smith, Taylor, 127
Snyder, Arthur K., 109
Social Security, 53-54
Southern California Edison

Co., 33-34
Southwestern University,

19, 46
State, County and Municipal

Workers of America,

41, 78
Synder, Jade, 95

Tasker, Robert, 26-27
Technocracy, 23-24, 47
Tenney, Jack, 77-80
Thomas, Thelma, 99
Tideland rights issue, 84-

85, 88-89
Tillman, Donald C, 178
Tillman Project, 178
Townsend, Francis, 53-54
Truman, Harry S., 88-91,

92-93

Unicameral legislatures,

56-57
Unions, 25-26, 53, 55

United States Hoffman

Machinery Company, 80

University of California,
Los Angeles, 80

University of Southern

California, 19, 170

Van, Johnny, 150
Vandenberg, Hoyt, 86-87
Venice, Call fornia--re-

novation of, 123-24,

177-78
Vietnam War, 149-51, 183,

185, 192-93

Wade, Edwin W. , 163
Walter, Francis E. "Tad,"

180
Water rights issues, 85-86
Watts Labor Community

Action Committee, 170
Watts riots, 145-46, 152-

56, 171
Wilson, Charles, 92
Wilson, Woodrow, 4, 29, 63
World Trade Center (Los

Angeles ) , 16 5
World War II, 6 4-6 5

-service in New Guinea,

66-70, 75-76
-service in the
Philippines, 66-67, 70-
75, 102-3
Wyman, Rosalind Wiener,
116-17

Yorty, Anna Egan (mother),

1-3, 10-12, 15, 38-39
Yorty, Elizabeth Hensel

(wife), 39, 60-61,

82-83, 193
Yorty, Enid (sister), 3-4,

12-13, 15-16, 52
Yorty, Frank Patrick

(father), 1-3, 9-12,

25
Yorty, Kathleen (sister),

3-4, 6, 12-13
Yorty, William Egan (son),

83, 193

202

Yorty Report Newsletter,

186-87

203

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