Gene Sherman (reporter)

Sherman covered many stories involving Mickey Cohen, including at least three inter-gang revenge killing attempts, an ineffective bombing of Cohen’s Brentwood fortress house, and shootouts on public streets. At 4:00 a.m. on July 20, 1949, two assassins opened fire in front of Sherry’s café on Sunset Strip in Hollywood, striking Cohen in the right shoulder and wounding two men and a woman. They were rushed to the Hollywood Receiving Hospital; Cohen ended up at the Queen of Angels Hospital. The morning edition of the Los Angeles Times hours later reported the shooting, page 1. The next day, on page 5, Cohen was photographed in a hospital bed. Three police sergeants and a deputy stood bedside to question Cohen about the assault. Special agent bodyguard Harry Cooper, shot twice in the abdomen, had been assigned to Cohen by State Attorney General Fred Howser for protection because the upstart underworld mob leader expressed fear "that Eastern gangsters" were there to assassinate him. Cohen, who owned a haberdashery in Hollywood, had become known as "the dapper racketeer," "the gambling kingpin," "the dapper mobster." He professed surprise to the police at the barrage of bullets: "Some sort of gang war is being investigated. But that’s all news to me. I don’t know anything about it, and I’m in close touch with the East. Talk back there three or four times a day."

Dorothy McLaughlin, who happened to be an older sister of Sherman’s wife Genevieve, was Head Nurse of the large Queen of Angels Hospital and assigned to care for the notorious, celebrity gangster. Had Cohen discovered she was an "insider" he would have been very angry; Sherman had interviewed him several times before and never forgot what Cohen once said - "I never killed a man who didn’t deserve it."

As it was, when Sherman arrived at the hospital to cover the latest gangland shooting, Cohen asked him, "How much money you got on you?"

Sherman thumbed through his wallet. "$7.00."

"Will you loan it to me?"

Gene handed over the money, which was returned later as a cellophane-wrapped box of chocolates for Sherman’s sister-in-law.

Mickey Cohen was convicted twice of tax evasion in 1950 and 1961; he served a total 11 years behind bars, including at Alcatraz. He died in his sleep from stomach cancer in 1976.

In 1943, Sherman covered the sensational statutory rape trial of movie star Errol Flynn. Jerry Giesler, a high-profile courtroom lawyer and Hollywood’s favorite defense attorney, deliberately selected a nearly all-women jury. The case centered around two minors, Betty Hansen and Peggy Satterlee, who accused Flynn of raping each of them in two different locations (at a party and on Flynn's yacht 'Sirocco' during a trip to Catalina Island 22 miles off the Southern California coastline). Giesler, known as "The Magnificent Mouthpiece," played up the confusion of their testimonies; Flynn was acquitted by the nine-women, three-men jury.

A year later in March, Sherman covered the controversial paternity suit against limelight actor Charlie Chaplin. Again, Jerry Giesler took the defense. Joan Berry, an ingénue protégé of the internationally famous actor, accused Chaplin of fathering her 14-month-old baby Carol Ann Berry. The trial captured worldwide headlines and captivated readers with daily installments of the Charlie Chaplin "sex serial," one of the many alluring trials firing up the scandal-loving Forties and Fifties. Sherman led off his report on the tumultuous you-are-there verdict this way:

Straight from a movie script came the final scene in The Trial. Melodramatic and jammed with suspense, it was a vivid tableau of wild emotion. No courtroom epic, hatched in the warm typewriter of a hack scenarist, possibly could have outdone the real-life Charlie Chaplin denouement—complete with spontaneous cheering above the frenetic rapping of the bailiff’s gavel.

Utter confusion followed the reading of the "not guilty" verdict. Spectators pushed and jostled their way through the gates of the railing and swarmed around the glassy-eyed Chaplin as a horde of photographers clambered over the furniture clicking shutters with abandon.

The courtroom became a cauldron of humanity—jury, spectators, prosecution, defense, court attachés and newsmen melting into a bubbling,

boiling stew of confusion.

The proceedings ended with a mistrial when negative blood tests, in a courtroom maneuver, were ruled inadmissible as evidence.

Sherman also covered the nationally reported "Black Dahlia" case of the unsolved, January 14, 1947, murder of Elizabeth Short, a beautiful, 22-year-old, aspiring Hollywood actress. Later the same year, he covered the sensational Santa Ana, California, murder trial of 17-year-old Beulah Louise Overell and 20-year-old accomplice Bud Gollum, both accused of killing and dynamiting Overell's wealthy Flintridge parents. Courtroom testimony was broadcast live by the Mutual Broadcast System to a vast, cross-country audience. Sherman followed the trial day-by-day for four and a half months. On the day the verdict was expected, Sherman stationed a copy boy around the clock inside a courthouse telephone booth. When the couple was acquitted in the longest American murder trial to date, Sherman ran to the "Times" phone booth and scooped the other papers.

Less than a year after the Club re-organization, 800 guests attended Opening Night at the Case Hotel on June 13, 1947. On the first anniversary of the Greater Los Angeles Press Club, June 14, 1948, more than 1,050 people packed the Ambassador’s Coconut Grove to see and hear campaigning President Harry Truman cut a giant birthday cake for the occasion. This was the first time a Los Angeles audience saw a U.S. President telecast live. Comedian Red Skelton reported that Congress was "playing bingo with billions," Kathryn Grayson sang the national anthem, and Dinah Shore sang "You Made Me Love You." Seated at the President’s table with Genevieve and Gene Sherman were Bess and President Truman, their daughter Margaret Truman, 6th Army Commander General Mark W. Clark, 12th Air Force Commander Major General Glenn O. Barcus, Rear-Admiral 11th Naval District Commandant B.H. Bieri, Los Angeles Times President and Publisher Norman Chandler, National Press Club President Joseph W. Short, Los Angeles Mayor Fletcher Bowron and California Lt. Gov. Goodwin J. Knight.

"The 64-year-old leader drummed his fingers nervously on the mahogany arm on his chair as he talked," Sherman wrote. "He gazed reflectively out a large window across a fishpond outside and into the China skies. He smiled only when he greeted and left his guest."

Chiang told Sherman he fully understood that the people of the United States had two questions in mind—whether his troops would fight and win and whether his government had the support of the people. He knew that the United States—or a segment of the United States— felt allegiance to his cause because he was the best that Americans had against Communism in the Far East. Chiang Kai-shek must win American support; there was nothing else.

American-educated Mme. Chiang added: "We do not want your manpower. We do not want anyone to fight our battles for us. But we have here the means to defeat Communism in China. Why shouldn’t it be used?"

Over the ensuing years, the hope that U.S. support of the Chinese Republic would lead to the return of Chiang Kai-shek to the China Mainland never gained sufficient American backing to prevent the unrelenting growth of the Chinese Communists. Despite periodic revivals of plans to return to the Mainland, Chiang Kai-shek maintained his Presidency of the Chinese Republic on Taiwan until his death in 1975.

Sherman covered many events that took him to Europe, South America, the Middle East, Africa, Scandinavia, Asia, the Arctic Circle, the South Pacific, the Caribbean. These assignments included front-page stories ranging in complexity from a two-part series on Castro's Cuba to the Beatles of London, the rubber plantations in South America, a 19-part series on China, the elaborate state funeral of British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill, the peacetime tactical submarine war games in the mid-Pacific, the crises in the Congo Republic.

In the early 1950s he was awarded four commendations for "Best News Writing" and "Best Feature Writing" from the journalism fraternity Theta Sigma Phi.

Sherman's coverage of Cuban refugees in Miami led to a beat on plans leading to the Bay of Pigs invasion on April 17, 1961. A year before, U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower had initiated a plan to overthrow the Cuban government. The plan was held in abeyance during the 1960 Presidential election. After being elected, President John F. Kennedy proceeded with the plan; it turned into a series of disastrous miscalculations and a humiliating national failure.

In September 1962 Sherman covered the story of James Meredith when armed U.S. Marshals were sent to protect him as he tried to enroll in the segregated University of Mississippi at Oxford. Sherman also uncovered the smuggling of Haitians into the Bahamas and wrote eyewitness reports of the three voting rights marches in 1965 from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.

Using background events and information gleaned from these assignments, he wrote numerous op-ed page commentaries for the Los Angeles Times over the 1950s and 60s.

In his popular Cityside column, Sherman lobbied for a Los Angeles theme song in the vein of New York, New York and Gary, Indiana. In 1959, he enlisted Academy Award-winning songwriters Jay Livingston and Ray Evans (Mona Lisa, Buttons and Bows, Que Sera, Sera) to write Angeltown. By August, the pop music magazine Billboard ran the notice: "They Said It Couldn’t Be Done Dept.: Los Angeles will now have its own anthem." Single recordings were produced by the Horace Heidt Orchestra with singer Bob Grabeau and the Bob Thompson Orchestra and chorus.

In his August 21, 1959, Cityside column, Sherman toasted the "Angeltown" success during a rousing community inaugural at a Los Angeles Press Club dinner. During the same evening, conductor Johnny Boudreau led the North American Male Chorus version of Angeltown as part of half-time entertainment at the Los Angeles Rams and Washington Redskins football game in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. The following evening, the Lawrence Welk Television Show hosted the Lennon Sisters singing an up-tempo version.

The sheet music cover touted Angeltown as a "Descriptive rouser about Los Angeles. Official song of the city."

In addition to writing for the news magazine Fortnight for five years, Sherman’s articles appeared in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Pathfinder, This Month, Saturday Review, Readers Digest, Coronet and other publications. For 13 years, he wrote The Looking Glass weekly column for the Los Angeles archdiocesan newspaper The Tidings. The National Catholic Press in 1959 judged him "Best Columnist" for his home-life vignettes, and he was elected president of the Catholic Press Council.

Under the pen-name Dick Kidson, Sherman wrote an "editorial advertisement" column in the Los Angeles Times from 1961-1967 for the upscale Farmers Market complex, a large marketplace of specialty shops in Los Angeles that since 1934 had developed into a chic sightseer destination.

In 1959, the hard-working, fast-living Sherman also hosted his own nightly 60-minute Channel 9 KHJ-TV Los Angeles interview program. From 1962-64 he wrote and broadcast a daily 15-minute current affairs commentary program on KABC Radio in Southern California. In London, England, during 1965-67, he delivered political background broadcasts for the BBC External Service.

The Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, considered the "Grand Prize" of the Pulitzers, is the most prestigious of the 21 categories of the Pulitzers and the only one accompanied by a Gold Medal. The Pulitzer Citation that Sherman won for the Los Angeles Times reads:[2]

For its thorough, sustained and well-conceived attack on narcotics traffic and the enterprising reporting of Gene Sherman, which led to the opening of negotiations between the United States and Mexico to halt the flow of illegal drugs into southern California and other border states.