ICW Presents "L.A. Coroner" In Conversation with Anne Choi
Tue., May 20, 2025, 12–1 p.m.
Free with Registration
Livestream
ICW presents Anne Choi as she discusses her research on the life and work of Dr. Thomas Noguchi, who served as the Chief Medical Examiner–Coroner of Los Angeles County from 1967 to 1982. Her book, L.A. Coroner: Thomas Noguchi and Death in Hollywood, includes never-before-published details about Noguchi’s most controversial cases, set against the backdrop of the social and racial politics of the 1960s and 1970s, the postwar Japanese American experience, and Hollywood celebrity culture. Anne Choi will engage in conversation with ICW Co-Director Bill Deverell.
About the Book
L.A. Coroner is the first-ever biography of Dr. Thomas Noguchi, the Chief Medical Examiner–Coroner of Los Angeles County from 1967 to 1982. Throughout his illustrious career, Dr. Noguchi conducted the official autopsies of some of the most high-profile figures of his time.
His elaborate press conferences, which often generated more controversy than they did answers, catapulted him into the public eye. Noguchi was also the inspiration for the popular 1970s–80s television drama Quincy, M.E., starring Jack Klugman. Featuring never-before-published details about Noguchi’s most controversial cases, L.A. Coroner is a meticulously researched biography of a complex man, set against the backdrop of the social and racial politics of the 1960s and 1970s, postwar Japanese American experience, and Hollywood celebrity culture.
About the Author
Anne Soon Choi, Ph.D., author of L.A. Coroner: Thomas Noguchi and Death in Hollywood (Third State Books), is a historian and professor of Asian American Studies and university administrator at California State University, Northridge. Her essay “The Japanese American Citizens League, Los Angeles Politics, and the Thomas Noguchi Case,” on which this book is based, won the 2021 Francis Wheat Prize from the Historical Society of Southern California. Choi has previously served on the faculty of Swarthmore College and the University of Kansas and is an Andrew Mellon Fellow and an American Council of Learned Societies Digital Ethnic Studies Fellow. She lives and writes in Los Angeles, California. Follow her on Instagram at @LATrueCrime
About the Host
William Deverell is the Divisional Dean for the Social Sciences at USC Dornsife and Professor of History in the Van Hunnick Department of History. He also directs the USC Libraries Collections Convergence Initiative. He previously taught at the California Institute of Technology and the University of California, San Diego.
About the Organization
The Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West
ICW is a center for scholarly investigation of the history and culture of California and the American West. Through sponsorship of innovative scholarship, research, and programming, ICW draws on the resources of USC and the Huntington Library to build a unique collaboration among a research university, a research library, and the public