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Every big newspaper used to have a bar nearby where reporters stayed too late, editors brought new hires to get acquainted over drinks, and Pulitzers were celebrated. For the L.A. Times that was the Redwood, now on 2nd Street, formerly in a house on 1st almost across from City Hall. It attracted generations of pols as well as journalists, and from 1952 to 2003 Alice Broude served them all and remembered many of their names. Make that our names. The longtime resident of Echo Park died at Kaiser in Hollywood after suffering a stroke. From the Times obit:
Mobsters and movie stars were fodder for her stories -- she said gangster Mickey Cohen was a great tipper and joked that she hadn't washed her hand since customer and actor Burt Reynolds had kissed it....Born in Coon Rapids, Iowa, Broude was the 17th of 20 children of a mother who lived to be 109.
Broude knew so many Times veterans so well that she attended lunches of the Old Farts Society, the newsroom retirees group.