What ever happened to the Chandlers? L.A.'s most prominent family takes back seat, gets richer.

L.A.'S MOST PROMINENT FAMILY TAKES BACK SEAT, GETS RICHER

The announcement barely attracted any notice. On a day when federal regulators raised objections to the merger of Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin, and Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott first asked that President Clinton provide a full account of the unfolding Lewinsky scandal, the news only made two or three paragraphs on the financial news wires.

And yet in some ways, it was a very big deal. Otis Chandler, the legendary former publisher of the Los Angeles Times, the man who had transformed an also-ran daily into one of the nation's top newspapers, was stepping down from the board of the Times Mirror Co. Chandler was 70, the company's "traditional" retirement age, at the time of the announcement last March.

"The transition was orderly, but when (Otis) left, I think there was a sense of change," recalled Harry Chandler, Otis' 45-year-old son. "The chain of sons, with the publisher and board position being handed down from father to son, was ending."

Three members of the Chandler family - all cousins of Otis - still sit on the board. And as a group, the Chandlers still own the majority of the media empire's stock - 68.4 percent of the total voting interests of all outstanding shares, according to the company's proxy statement last March. In fact, their stake continues to grow as a result of a stock-repurchase program that will reduce the number of outstanding common shares.

Still, it's largely ownership in absentia.

The Chandlers, who for so many years shaped Los Angeles as the Hearsts shaped San Francisco and the Rockefellers shaped New York, have virtually disappeared. Many have left the city, and others are so distanced from Times Mirror that they might as well have - a phenomenon not unlike other multi-generation family businesses in which the ambitions that drove the founders just aren't in the hearts of the grandchildren.

What had been a gradual move away from family management peaked with the selection of Mark Willes, first as president and chief executive of Times Mirror, then as chairman and later as publisher of the Times.

"Willes essentially runs the paper with a free rein," said William Drewry, an analyst at Donaldson Lufkin & Jenrette. "There are not a lot of Chandlers in senior management anymore, and they're not actively managing the paper anymore. That's not necessarily a negative. The paper, and the Chandlers, have made a lot of money since Willes took charge."

To put it mildly. The company's stock has climbed during Willes' four-year tenure from $19 to over $55. Earnings have been up as well - from $206.4 million in 1996, Willes' first full year, to $1.4 billion in 1998 - although the numbers have been punctuated by several rounds of layoffs and other cost-cutting efforts that would have been unlikely during the Otis Chandler era.

To a few family members, the company's success of recent years must confirm what they had maintained for years: That Otis was out of step politically, and worse than that, costing the company big money.

And costing the family big dividend checks.

"We have inmates running the asylum," Corinne Chandler Werdel, one of Otis' cousins, said in a 1995 interview with Forbes magazine. "They are so far out in left field."

She and other disgruntled family members essentially blamed Otis and his liberal views for the company's shrinking revenues - choosing not to acknowledge that newspapers all over the United States were in a financial slump.

"There's a bedrock sadness in Otis that members of his family have bitterly criticized him in print and in public for things that he had nothing to do with. Namely, blaming the paper's poor financial performance on its liberal editorial slant," said author Lawrence Dietz, who has been working on a book about the Chandlers for more than a decade. "That made Otis profoundly weary and sad, to hear his family say that he was the reason why the paper was performing poorly, when for 30 years that same product had been pumping cash out to no complaints."

The irony is that as publisher from 1960 to 1980, Otis deliberately avoided passing on the mantle to any one of his five children. Instead, he selected a non-family member to be publisher - the first time that had happened since the late 1800s.

"The crucial point that informs everything about the Chandler family and the Times since the mid-'70s is that Otis made the conscious decision to not establish a divine right of succession," Dietz said. "He would not impose the fate on one of his children that had been handed to him. He wanted to see the Times become a world-class paper that was professionally managed, and consequently insulated from whatever intra-family difficulties existed."

Numerous efforts to reach Otis Chandler for comment were not successful.

To Harry Chandler, the company doesn't really feel like a family business.

"Other than walking down the halls, seeing my family history on the walls, this place feels like every other office I've worked in," he said. "It's been a public company and professionally managed for years."

For their part, the remaining Chandler directors - Bruce Chandler, Gwendolyn Garland Babcock, and Warren Brooks Williamson - are not widely known and have been described by a source close to the family as "less than noteworthy." (A fourth cousin, Brace Goodan, has been nominated to the board.) Also, a slew of Chandler family members hold thousands of shares individually, in addition to those held and managed by the family trust.

The end result can be a group so splintered as to be a paper tiger. "They have chosen to abdicate power to figures outside of the family," said newspaper analyst John Morton. "Bear in mind that the board, which includes Chandlers, deliberately decided to delegate what was once the family role to Willes."

Morton added that the family's very public infighting died down once both camps agreed to revamp the management structure.

The contentiousness between Otis and other family members may have ended at the bottom line, but it didn't start that way. The tale actually began when military man-cum-publisher Gen. Harrison Gray Otis came west and bought the floundering Times in 1881 from its two founders. Upon Otis' death in 1917, son-in-law and co-worker Harry Chandler picked up the publisher's torch. His son Norman became publisher upon Harry's death in 1944.

Trouble erupted in the late '50s, when Norman became seriously ill and the company had to name a successor. The heir apparent was his brother Philip, then general manager of the Times. But Norman's ambitious wife,. Dorothy "Buff' Buffum Chandler, began a campaign to have their son, Otis, named publisher.

Otis never had much choice about entering the family business. As an Olympic-level athlete who came within inches of breaking the world shot-put record in the early '50s and who placed third in a national U.S. weight-lifting competition, he had ambitions other than journalism. But upon being discharged from the Air Force in 1953, Otis' father Norman handed him a comprehensive memo outlining years' worth of apprenticeships throughout the paper.

Otis was named publisher in 1960. Philip left the Times soon afterward, and the hostility between branches of the family grew so heated that at one point separate family gatherings and Christmas parties were held. Philip barely spoke to his nephew up until his death in 1968.

The grudge didn't end at Philip's grave. Otis extended an olive branch by offering Philip's son, Bruce, a position on the Times Mirror board in 1975. But a lingering resentment manifested itself again only three years ago, when Philip's other children took center stage to complain that Otis and the Times' perceived liberalism had mined the family business.

The fighting eased around the time Willes took charge.

In Harry Chandler's view, the family is now relatively close-knit. The Chandlers recently had their first family-wide reunion in nine years, which drew a substantial turnout.

"The conflict a couple years ago really consisted only of a couple memos that were passed around," he said. "The conflict was overplayed in the press. It has died down over the last couple years."

Harry is the Chandler that has followed his father's legacy most closely. Director of new business development at the Times since 1994, he has been particularly active in cultivating the company's new-media endeavors as a board member of both the New Media Council and the Internet Local Advertising Council. Asked if he has any interest in becoming publisher, he declined to comment directly, but said he was "an ambitious guy, always interested in new opportunities."

For the most part, however, the Chandler children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren have been afforded the luxury of pursuing their own dreams - a benchmark of success for a family-owned business.

The younger generation of Chandlers has produced a teen-aged tennis prodigy: Corinne Werdel's daughter Marianne, who went on to a career in the women's pro tennis circuit. Corinne's brother, Jeffrey, worked in the radio industry and owned a couple of stations in the San Diego area until recently. Otis' daughter Cathleen is a physician's assistant, and daughter Carolyn works in public land use. His son, Michael, who at one time raced cars, moved to Bend, Ore. several years ago.

Harry pointed out, however, that other Chandlers are carrying on in the family business. "The next generation of very talented cousins is up and coming," he said. "There are three or four of them, working in various departments at the Times, that would like to remain anonymous."

It's not entirely surprising to see family members scatter and interests vary. But the Chandlers can't escape their heritage. Otis told Vanity Fair in 1996 that in order for the family trust created by Harry and Marian Chandler to sell its interest in Times Mirror, eight Chandlers from different branches of the family must agree. Given the breadth of views represented in the trust, which is estimated to include 100 people, that prospect is not likely. The trust itself will survive until the last of Harry's grandchildren serving as a trustee dies.

As for Otis, he and his second wife Bettina recently moved back to Southern California and are building a new residence in Ojai. The couple had relocated more or less full-time to Oregon several years ago so that Otis could realize his life-long dream of owning a ranch. Four months ago, they put the smaller of their two Oregon ranches, a $2.99 million, 144-acre affair, on the market and moved back to Ventura County.

"Otis was the last Chandler to really count," said Bryce Nelson, chairman of USC's journalism graduate program. "Since Otis retired, I wouldn't say anyone has emerged as a notable leader."