– Lew Irwin Reports – KABC-TV Channel 7 – August 1959 – Gordon Skene Sound Collection –
News for a typical August day in 1959. For Los Angeles it meant scandals, trials, execution dates and the dog in Divorce Court. Only in L.A., and with few exceptions, what the average family was watching around dinner time.
Hosted by Lew Irwin, himself a notable around the Southern California scene both on radio and TV (alert ears will recognize his was the voice of KRLA’s Credibility Gap in the late 1960s).
The news covers the Caryl Chessman trial (Chessman finally getting his date with the Green Room in October, tentatively) – the murder trial of one Carole Tregoff and Raymond Finch and the steamy discoveries laid out in the court of Public Opinion. And the dog who was a prominent figure in a divorce custody battle – the dog, Cricket getting visitation rights awarded to the estranged husband.
But the real news for this broadcast consisted of the first of what was to become a multi-part series on the controversial Rehab Synanon in Santa Monica and its founder Chuck Dederich. Synanon had been labeled a cult and was therefore off-limits to addicts returning from incarceration and the questionable techniques Dederich and his followers employed on Addicts, hoping to become clean and sober and staying that way. The irony was the success rate Synanon was accomplishing where the customary channels wasn’t.
But many felt Synanon was too young to have judgements leveled on its validity – despite the fact that state Mental Hospitals had zero success.
Fascinating interviews – Dederich is outspoken and The Circle technique of breaking down addiction is held up to particular suspicion – still; cult or not, Synanon was doing what it set out to do.
That’s a bit of what was going on, this August evening in 1959 from Lew Irwin Reports for KABC-TV Channel 7. And only L.A. natives will know what APCD meant.
Hint: smog.
