California Documentary Project
Inventing L.A.: The Chandlers and Their Times
International Documentary Association
Producer and Director: Peter Jones
The emergence of modern-day Los Angeles during the Chandler era at the Los Angeles Times
This film traces the emergence of multi-ethnic, modern Los Angeles during the single-family reign of four publishers of the Los Angeles Times: Harrison Gray Otis, Harry Chandler, Norman Chandler and Otis Chandler.
Peter Jones, the producer and director of the documentary, said, “Each used the newspaper to pursue their unique agendas and impossible dreams, transforming the composition and character of Southern California itself — and in the process, seducing the nation with a new kind of American dream.”
The film is organized into four parts, with a segment on each of the publishers. “One remarkable story at a time, the film chronicles the ambitious, ruthless, ingenious and often self-serving methods by which each man employed the newspaper to help turn a town of 12,000 residents into a su burban sprawl of 4 million people — and in the process make the Chandlers among the largest landowners in California and the richest families in America,” Jones said.
“Inventing L.A.” will air on PBS in late 2008 or early 2009.