Дороти Чандлер: Культурный лидер Лос-Анджелеса

American cultural leader

Dorothy Buffum Chandler (May 19, 1901 – July 6, 1997; born Dorothy Mae Buffum) was a Los Angeles cultural leader. She is perhaps best known for her efforts on behalf of the performing arts.

Born Dorothy Mae Buffum (nicknamed "Buff" or "Buffie") in 1901 in La Fayette, Illinois, she moved to Long Beach, California, in 1904 with her family. Her father, Charles Abel Buffum (later mayor 1921–1924), and her uncle, Edwin, opened the first of what would become the 16 store chain of Buffums department stores. It was during her years at Long Beach High School that two characteristics that would help determine the kind of woman Dorothy Buffum Chandler would become were first evidenced: She liked competition, especially against members of the opposite sex, and she had a recurring feeling, a “sense,” really, of time slipping away while things that needed doing went undone. She was a good sprinter in high school, and looked on male students not so much as potential escorts but as objects of competition. “I didn’t take to boys much except to run against them and beat them,” she once said. She attended Stanford University, where at a school dance she met Norman Chandler, eldest son of the family that had published the Los Angeles Times since 1883 and was a significant social and political force in the area. She was a member of Pi Beta Phi sorority. The two married in 1922, and had two children, Camilla and Otis, both born in 1927. At the time of her death in 1997, she had eight grandchildren and 14 great grandchildren. Los Tiempos (the Times) was Norman and Buff's grand house on Lorraine Blvd. in Windsor Square, Los Angeles, where she lived until her death in 1997.

Chandler worked at the Times or its parent, the Times Mirror Company, from 1948 to 1976. She was a director of Times Mirror from 1955 until 1973, when she was named director emeritus. She initiated the Times Woman of the Year award, which was given to 243 women from 1950 through 1976. Mrs. Chandler sought funds from both the long established "old money" families of Pasadena, but also to "new money" sources on the city's Westside and Hollywood, many of whom were Jewish. "Before the Music Center," said the late attorney Paul Ziffren, "Jews were not a part of the social life of this community." Mrs. Chandler, he said, "was primarily responsible for opening up this community in terms of Jews and Gentiles." The complex was completed in 1967, consisting of three venues: the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, named in honor of Chandler, the Mark Taper Forum and the Ahmanson Theatre. The Chandler Pavilion served as the home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic from 1964 until 2003, when the Music Center opened its fourth hall, the Walt Disney Concert Hall. Writing in The Powers That Be, David Halberstam said Mrs. Chandler was a "woman before her time. A feminist in pioneer country. Always, above all else, a presence." Former Mayor Tom Bradley declared her "a giant in the cultural life of Los Angeles. We shall always remember her whenever we see the Music Center, knowing that without her vision and energetic leadership, it would not have been built in our lifetime." On September 17, 2005, the Walt Disney Concert Hall held a Dorothy Chandler memorial concert.

Chandler served as a regent and chairwoman of the Building Committee of the University of California from 1954 to 1968, during its period of most rapid growth, when the system grew from five to nine campuses. She also served as a trustee of Occidental College from 1952 to 1967.