Agness Underwood

In 1981, and in failing health, Underwood moved from Los Angeles to Greeley, Colorado, to live near her son and grandchildren. On July 3, 1984, she suffered a fatal heart attack. Underwood's funeral was held at St. James Episcopal Church in downtown Los Angeles on July 7, 1984.

On April 22, 1981, Underwood's attorney, Caryl Warner, filed a $110 million defamation lawsuit against author Ovid Demaris and publisher Times Books over a passage in The Last Mafioso. The book related the life story of mobster Jimmy "The Weasel" Fratianno. The contested passage referred to an incident in the late 1940s involving gangster Mickey Cohen. According to Fratianno, Cohen had pocketed $1 million from contributors to the Israeli cause by planting a false story in the Herald-Express stating that the ship carrying the money had gone down at sea. Fratianno was quoted as saying:

Wielding a sawed-off baseball bat and a starter pistol, Underwood ran a staff of hard-nosed reporters and photographers who called her "Aggie" (the nickname she had acquired while working at the Record) until her retirement in 1968.

According to Underwood, she did not know Cohen until the early 1950s, a few years after the alleged incident. Underwood never denied being friends with Cohen, and she admitted that he was often a news source; in fact, Cohen had obtained the Lana Turner-Johnny Stompanato letters for Underwood after Turner's daughter, Cheryl, had been indicted for the stabbing death of Stompanato on April 4, 1958.

On November 11, 1956, Underwood was the subject of an episode of the television program This Is Your Life. She was also the subject of a 2017 film documentary entitled Agness Underwood: First Lady of the Newsroom.

In her autobiography, Newspaperwoman (Harper Brothers, 1949), Underwood said that she did not want to work outside the home, and that she had no idea where to look for a job. As it turned out, a job found her. The day following the stockings argument Underwood's friend, Evelyn Connors, called and asked her if she would be interested in a temporary job on the switchboard at the Record. Underwood seized the opportunity, and thus began her career in the newspaper business.

On January 15, 1947, the bisected body of a young woman was found in Leimert Park near Thirty-Ninth and Norton. According to Underwood, she was the first reporter to arrive at the body dump site. The dead woman was soon identified as Elizabeth Short from Medford, Massachusetts. Underwood stated in her autobiography, Newspaperwoman, that the popularization of Short's "Black Dahlia" nickname was the result of information she had received from a Los Angeles Police Department homicide detective.

Early in January 1935 the Herald-Express again offered Underwood a job. She had decided to decline the offer when a couple of days later she learned that the Record had been sold to the Illustrated Daily News. Despite assurances that her position would be safe, Underwood decided to accept the offer to work for the Herald-Express.

Among the stories Underwood covered over the next twelve years were the untimely deaths of Hollywood stars Thelma Todd (whose autopsy she attended) and Jean Harlow. She wrote a series of articles on the lives of the women incarcerated in the California women's prison at Tehachapi, and she would report on nearly every major murder case in the city, culminating with the infamous murder of twenty-two-year-old Elizabeth Short in January 1947. she also reported on the case of Nellie May Madison who was convicted of shooting and killing her husband on March 24, 1935. At first Underwood assumed Madison was guilty because she was married five times and produced no children from the marriage. She eventually became an advocate for Madison and garnered outcry of letters which had Madison's conviction from death to life in prison.

Underwood's first major crime reporting began on May 20, 1931, when Los Angeles was shaken by the murders of Charles H. Crawford and Herbert F. Spencer. Crawford was a former saloon keeper and was a power behind the scenes in the city's government. Spencer was a former police reporter who had become associated with the Critic of Critics, a political crusading weekly. The day following the murders thirty-three-year-old David H. Clark, a former deputy district attorney and candidate for municipal judge, surrendered himself to the district attorney and admitted to the murders.

By 1926, Underwood and her husband had become parents to a daughter and son. Underwood's husband and sister worked outside the home, but the family still struggled to make ends meet. One of the small economies that Underwood practiced was to wear her sister's hand-me-down silk stockings. One day Underwood asked her husband for the money to buy a new pair of stockings, but he demurred. An argument ensued and Underwood told her husband that if he would not give her money for stockings, she would get a job and earn them herself.

In October 1926, Underwood began her job as the switchboard operator at the Los Angeles Record. It was at the Record that Underwood learned the newspaper business from the ground up. She was a quick study and worked hard at any task to which she was assigned. She assisted Gertrude Price, who wrote a woman's column under the pseudonym of Cynthia Grey, in the Christmas basket program for the poor. Price recognized Underwood's innate talent and became Underwood's mentor. In December 1927 William Edward Hickman kidnapped, murdered, and then butchered twelve-year-old Marion Parker. Hickman was on the run when Underwood saw the United Press flash that he had been captured in Oregon. Underwood telephoned her husband with the news. Price overheard the call and reprimanded Underwood for talking about a story outside of the newsroom before it was in print. Underwood never made that mistake again.

Agnes May Wilson was born in San Francisco, California, to Clifford Wilson, a journeyman glass-blower, and Mamie Sullivan Wilson, a housewife. Underwood would adopt the distinctive double "s" at the end of her first name in 1920. Underwood was the elder of two daughters. The Wilson family's frequent moves were determined by where Clifford could find work. In November 1907, Mamie died in childbirth. Clifford's work required him to travel, which made it impossible for him to care for the girls on his own. Underwood and her younger sister were handed over to relatives in Terre Haute, Indiana, to be raised. Underwood recalled that she and her sister did not stay in Terre Haute and that they moved frequently, often winding up in the hands of public charity.

Following a brief move to Salt Lake City, Utah, Underwood returned to Los Angeles, where she found work as a waitress at the Pig 'n Whistle restaurant in downtown Los Angeles. One day in April 1920, she was lamenting to Harry Underwood, a co-worker, that her Hollywood relative had resurfaced and demanded that Underwood live with her again and relinquish her paychecks to her, or she would turn the underage girl over to the authorities. Harry told her that the relative could not do that if he and Underwood were married. The couple married three weeks later on April 28, 1920.

Underwood arrived in San Francisco in November 1918, and moved in with her relative who lived in an apartment on Geary Street. Underwood knew she would be expected to contribute to household expenses and set out to find a job. After a few frustrating days of unsuccessful job hunting, she arrived at the apartment only to discover that her relative had moved out leaving Underwood broke, alone, and homeless.

Underwood did well in school and skipped three grades; however, by the time she entered high school in 1916 her enthusiasm for her studies had waned and she dropped out in the tenth grade. Underwood took as job as a clerk in the basement of Cartwright's department store in Portland, Indiana. She became increasingly unhappy living with the Ewrys, particularly following Ralph's deployment overseas as a soldier during World War I. Ralph sensed Underwood's discontent in her letters to him and, believing that she might be better off with a blood relative, managed to locate one of her distant relatives in San Francisco.

Agness May Underwood (December 17, 1902 – July 3, 1984) was an American journalist and newspaper editor, and one of the first women in the United States to hold a city editorship on a major metropolitan daily. She was preceded by Laura Vitray who became city editor of the New York Evening Graphic in 1930, and by Mary Holland Kinkaid who was city editor at the old Herald, likely in the early 1900s. She worked as a reporter for the Los Angeles Record from 1928 to 1935, the Herald-Express from 1935 to 1962, and the Herald-Examiner from 1962 to 1968.