#JACK SMITH ABC NEWS PLUS#

Later in his career, Smith wrote that he always believed himself to be the first person to get the name 'Black Dahlia' into print, though he admitted he didn't come up with the nickname. On the Daily News, at least, all young women whose nude bodies were found in two pieces on vacant lots were beautiful. Our city editor, of course, no more knew what the unfortunate young woman had looked like than I did. I can't remember it word for word, but my lead went pretty much like this: 'The nude body of a young woman, neatly cut in two at the waist, was found early today on a vacant lot near Crenshaw and Exposition Boulevards.'' His editor added one adjective, making Short 'a beautiful young woman. The police beat reporter phoned in the bulletin to Smith, who recounted the moment this way in his book Jack Smith's L.A.: 'Within the minute I had written what may have been the first sentence ever written on the Black Dahlia case. It was as a rewrite man for the Daily News in 1947 that Smith had what he later called 'perhaps my finest hour as a newspaperman': his stories on the infamous Elizabeth Short murder case. A sign that life would go on.' The photographer snapped several photos, one of which was distributed by the Associated Press and appeared in newspapers a few days later. What was going on here? He was sick of death, shock and horror and was looking for something upbeat. 'While we were engaged in this incongruous diversion,' Smith wrote in his Februcolumn, 'a photographer happened by and was curious. As Smith flipped through the pages, a crowd of Marines formed around him, each of them urging him to look up their own names, and the names of their fathers, mothers, siblings, and girlfriends. The package contained a book titled Naming Your Baby along with a letter encouraging him to help decide on a name while there was still time.

#JACK SMITH ABC NEWS PLUS#

On D-Day plus 5, he had received a care package from his wife, who was pregnant with their first child. I did not feel cheated because I had not seen the first one.' Дuring his service on Iwo Jima, Smith was the subject of an Associated Press photograph that appeared on the front page of hundreds of newspapers across the United States. Suribachi from the beach that day and saw rippling in the breeze. He recalled that he 'happened to look up at Mt. On the subject of the iconic Iwo Jima flag raising, Smith addressed a sometimes discussed controversy of a second, larger American flag being raised to replace the initially planted one (as the first one was too small to be seen by the soldiers fighting on the island).

Smith's Los Angeles Times column would occasionally recount his experiences during the battle. In the amphibious landing on February 19, 1945, Smith went ashore in the third wave of soldiers with his rifle but without his typewriter, which had been lost at sea. Smith enlisted in the United States Marine Corps as a combat correspondent and would take part in the Battle of Iwo Jima in 1945. Smith and his friend stood watching in the road beside the car, something he would later describe in a column as 'watching the war start.'

Shortly after, they noticed black puffs exploding below the planes in the distance. On the morning of the attack, he and his wife had just left an all-night party with some friends when they noticed airplanes streaking over the shoreline. Smith was working for The Honolulu Advertiser during the Attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. On the beach in Iwo Jima, Smith (bottom right) reads a book titled Naming Your Baby. He remained with the Times until his death in 1996. He went into journalism, first for the Bakersfield Californian, then for the Honolulu Advertiser, United Press, the Sacramento Union, the San Diego Daily Journal, the Daily News, and the Los Angeles Herald-Express, before joining the Los Angeles Times in June 1953. Following high school, Smith spent some time in the Civilian Conservation Corps before joining the United States Merchant Marine at age 21. Smith would occasionally joke that it was the highest position he ever reached in his career. He attended Belmont High School in Los Angeles and served as editor of the student newspaper, the Belmont Sentinel. Smith was born in Long Beach on Augand grew up in both Bakersfield and Los Angeles.

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