And a Damn Good Cook

To the 721,000 readers of the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, the week was both grim and racy. It was a week of murder, suicide, kidnaping, drowning, robbery, accident, divorce--an ordinary week. The Herald-Examiner's 40 reporters had once again discovered man's plight and told of it with inky excitement and a taste of gore. Then, in the din and jangle of their city room, they had submitted their findings to City Editor Agness ("Aggie") Underwood, who at 59 ranks unrivaled as the Ma Parker of American journalism.

Matronly and shrill, Aggie seems an anomaly in the Herald-Examiner's mannish, prankish city room. But in her 36 years as a journalist (30 on the Herald-Examiner, 15 as its city editor), Aggie has kept such a muscular grip on the news of L.A.'s seamy side that no one thinks of the greying grandmother as an interloper in a man's world. Years away from her reputation as the town's best crime reporter, she still keeps up a running dialogue with the underworld that helps her paper to impressive scoops. It was Aggie to whom her pal Mickey Cohen gave the Johnny Stompanato-Lana Turner love letters.

Aggie talks tough, works hard and lives simply to stay on top of her job. She is at her desk by 4 a.m. and in bed by sundown, having spent eleven rapid hours coaching reporters, manning her battery of phones, shepherding stories into print. "I demand loyalty, hard work, enterprise --and above all, no lying," she says sternly. "If a reporter is off on a bender while working, I want him to tell me so I can protect him, the story and the paper."

Aggie keeps her staff lively by occasionally firing blanks from a desk-drawer pistol, keeps the boys happy by throwing city-desk beer parties, keeps them loyal by sticking up for them. Her style has brought happy results; the Herald-Examiner is thriving, and the paper is among the Hearst chain's few solid moneymakers.

On the city desk, Aggie was a curiosity at first--the nation's only woman city editor of a metropolitan daily. Aggie still retains that distinction, but now she is much more than a curiosity. Last week the National Federation of Press Women chose her "the most outstanding woman in journalism." To this, proud Hobbyist Aggie added, with a gruff note of femininity: "And a damn good cook, too."

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