Dennis McDougal, "a prolific author, Hollywood muckraker and Peabody Award-winning documentarian," died March 22, the New York Times reported. He was 77.
McDougal was the author of more than a dozen books, including Angel of Darkness (1991), Fatal Subtraction: How Hollywood Really Does Business (with Pierce O'Donnell, 1992), Mother's Day (1998), The Last Mogul (1998), Blood Cold, McDougal and Mary Murphy (2002), Five Easy Decades: How Jack Nicholson Became the Biggest Movie Star in Modern Times (2008), Bob Dylan: The Biography (2014), Operation White Rabbit: LSD, the DEA and the Fate of the Acid King (2020), and Citizen Wynn: A Sin City Saga of Power, Lust, and Blind Ambition (2024).
He was also a consulting producer of Inventing L.A.: The Chandlers and Their Times (2009), a Peabody Award-winning PBS documentary based on his book, Privileged Son: Otis Chandler and the Rise and Fall of the L.A. Times Dynasty (2001). The book won the Fordham University Anne M. Sperber Award as the nation's best media biography in 2002. His book In the Best of Families (1994) was a Best Fact Crime nominee for the Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Awards.
"He was the consummate investigative reporter," Alice Martell, his literary agent, said. "He was relentless. He didn't leave any pebble or grain of sand unturned."
Early in his career, McDougal wrote for two small California newspapers--the Press-Enterprise, in Riverside (1973-1977) and the Press-Telegram in Long Beach (1977-1981)--before spending a decade as an investigative reporter at the Los Angeles Times. He also wrote about Hollywood for the New York Times, TV Guide, and other publications in the 2000s.
Steve Weinstein, a former reporter for the L.A. Times, said, "Dennis was not only a dogged and brilliant reporter, but he was also unceasingly generous with his time and expertise." When Weinstein was a young reporter working in the Calendar section of the newspaper, McDougal would read his copy and make suggestions "that drastically improved my work. He liked to pose as a grizzled curmudgeon, but he was one of the loveliest humans that I have ever met."