On Thursday evening, February 21, at 7 p.m., Harry Chandler will talk and present slides and film clips on the surfing history of the Chandler family, and from his book, Dreamers in Dream City. The Chandler family and its surfing is legendary; it is said that Otis Chandler, publisher of the Los Angeles Times, would often suspend meetings at the newspaper when the surf was up.
The Chandler family also had a beach house in Dana Point and frequently surfed there. Harry will show rare footage of his parents, Otis and Marilyn, surfing Killer Dana and Dana Strands. Otis Chandler (1927-2006) was the publisher of the Los Angeles Times between 1960 and 1980. He developed the Los Angeles Times into one of the nation’s leading dailies and was considered one of the most powerful men in the country.
In The New York Times obituary on Otis, Jonathan Kandell noted that: “His critics [the Eastern news media establishment] could not understand his enthusiasm for surfing, big-game hunting, motorcycles and sports cars-obsessions that several times nearly cost him his life.”
Harry Brant Chandler is a fifth-generation Southern Californian who has had a successful career as a movie executive and Internet executive, and is now an artist. His publication, Dreamers in Dream City, (Angel City Press, 2009), presents his stylized portraits and biographies of sixty of Southern California’s most inspirational individuals.
The photographs were the basis of exhibitions at the California Museum in Sacramento and the Autry National Center in Los Angeles.
Admission is $10 and the program starts at 7 p.m. at Surfing Heritage Foundation, 110 Calle Iglesia, San Clemente, CA 92672.
