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Honest Mayor. He became mayor almost by accident. A native son, he had started out in the world as a reporter on the San Francisco Sun after graduating from the old Los Angeles High School (now being torn down to make way for Hollywood Freeway) and spending two years at the University of California at Berkeley. He achieved his biggest youthful ambition in 1917; after years of studying law in his spare time, he was admitted to the California bar.
He joined the Army in 1917, served through World War I in a San Francisco Army office. In 1922 he got a job as a state deputy corporation commissioner; it seemed that he might jog on through life as an inconspicuous public servant. But California's Governor Friend Richardson, impressed by his thoroughness, appointed him to the Superior Court bench. In twelve years as a judge his homely virtues and his obvious distress at civic corruption attracted the interest of Los Angeles reformers.
On Jan. 14, 1938, a tough, red-faced private detective named Harry Raymond indirectly did Bowron a good turn. Raymond, who had been loudly threatening to "blow the lid" off the city, walked out to his car, got in, stepped on the starter and detonated a bomb which someone had unkindly hidden under the hood. Bomb, car, detective and all went up in a fearful explosion. Raymond was not killed—although surgeons had to dig 122 separate slugs out of his torso.
Enemies. A police captain named Earle Kynette and another officer were sent to San Quentin for the crime, and the administration of Mayor Frank Shaw was doomed. Bowron was pressed into service as a reform candidate; he was elected on his 16th wedding anniversary in 1938,
Cautiously, but conscientiously, he set out to clean up a Los Angeles that had 300 gambling houses, 1,800 bookies, 23,000 slot machines and 600 brothels. He waited for seven months before he took steps to remodel the police department, but when he did, he kicked out 23 high-ranking officers. He appointed a college graduate as police chief, and a Rhodes scholar as fire chief.
He banished slot machines and pinball games—though most of them reap peared outside the city limits. He abolished other municipal evils—the sale of civil-service promotions and the use of the city zoning ordinance to squeeze bribes from commercial enterprises.
None of this was accomplished without Bowron's tramping on sensitive toes; he made scores of enemies. He was accused of being arbitrary, tactless and indecisive, and was variously described as 'Chubby Cheeks," "Fumbling Fletch," and "Bottleneck Bowron." He was even attacked by Cafeteria Owner Clifford Clinton, a vociferous reformer and the man who spent $72,000 to put Bowron into office. "Drab . . . colorless ... far from inspiring . . ." cried Clinton. "We were misled . . ." Clinton ran against him;—and lost.
To the majority of the citizens Bowron seemed to be just the fellow for City Hall —a man who would keep the city clean, cry out at its enemies, real and imaginary, and stay up nights worrying while it went about its noisy and exuberant business.