Bill Deverell admits he has been “obsessed” with the event for more than a decade and finally, his book about the little girl who fell to her death in a San Marino well is scheduled to be released in about a month.
“Kathy Fiscus: A Tragedy that Transfixed the Nation” will be published March 9, and in which Deverell tells the story of the first live, breaking-news television spectacle in American history.
Deverell says he admits that a part of his fascination lies in the fact he is a father.
“The event happened not far from my house, and I have been over to the site dozens of times, often with one or both of my children,” said Deverell, a USC professor of history, and director of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West at USC (ICW). “I view the event as a watershed moment in American journalism and media history, and I am also interested in the ways in which this event reverberated — and still reverberates — through American culture.”
Bill Deverell’s book about the tragic death of San Marino’s Kathy Fiscus is set to be published in March.
It’s an all-too-familiar memory to some in San Marino who remember where they were during the landmark event. On April 8, 1949, a 3-year-old girl named Kathy Fiscus fell down an abandoned well located on the current site of San Marino High School’s Titan Stadium. Despite efforts, Kathy could not be saved. The rescue attempt received nationwide attention as KTLA and a team that included reporter Stan Chambers carried it live on radio and television. The event was covered for a 27½-hour period. It is considered a watershed event in TV history, as it is recognized as the first live coverage of a breaking news story.
Thousands of concerned Southern Californians rushed to the scene. Jockeys hurried over from the nearby racetracks, offering to be sent down the well after Kathy. The movie studio, then known as 20th Century-Fox, sent over its Klieg lights to illuminate the scene. Rescue workers — ditch diggers, miners, cesspool laborers, World War II veterans — dug and bored holes deep into the aquifer below, hoping to tunnel across to the old well shaft that the little girl had somehow tumbled down.
The region, the nation, and the world watched, read, and listened to every moment of the 48-hour rescue attempt by way of radio, newsreel footage, and wire service reporting. For more than half that time, the event was broadcast live by two television stations — KTTV and KTLA — thanks to the ingenious efforts of pioneering media producers and reporters. Because of the well’s proximity to the transmission towers on nearby Mount Wilson, the rescue attempt became the first breaking-news event to be broadcast live on television.
“The Kathy Fiscus event single-handedly proved the utility of live television news, proving that real-time television news broadcasting could work and could transfix the public,” Deverell said. “Media across the globe has never been the same.”
With the 70th anniversary of the event just a few months away, Deverell was the featured speaker at meetings of the San Marino City Club, Rotary Club of San Marino and San Marino Historical Society in early 2019, each attracting large audiences that included many who were living in the area at the time of the event.
“As you know, this has been a passion of mine, regardless of its sad, tragic outcome,” Deverell told The Tribune then.
The event also affected society in curious ways. It changed the naming patterns for American girls, as tens of thousands of families in the early years of the baby boom named their girls “Kathy.” Communities around the world also instituted “Kathy Fiscus Laws” to make certain that old wells were safely capped off or made off-limits to children.
“As a historian, my job is to try to assemble the fragile, fragmentary puzzle pieces of the past,” Deverell said. “Establish chronology, narrate change, assess cause and effect: bring the past into conversation with the present. I have never worked on a project that has occupied my thoughts or my dreams in any way close to the way this story has.”
For more information about Deverell’s work and ICW, visit dornsife.usc.edu/icw.
