Charles M. Denton, 78; Newspaper Columnist, Author and Publicist
Charles M. Denton, 78, a veteran San Francisco Examiner columnist, author and publicist, died Sunday in Tiburon, Calif., after a heart attack.
Born in Glendale, Denton served in the Navy during World War II, graduated from USC and began his career in Los Angeles.
From 1949 until he moved to San Francisco in 1963, he worked as a reporter and columnist successively for United Press, International News Service, the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner and briefly for the Los Angeles Times. He served as president of the Greater Los Angeles Press Club from 1955 to 1957.
In 1963, Denton was hired by the then-Hearst-owned San Francisco Examiner to compete with the San Francisco Chronicle’s popular columnist, the late Herb Caen. As a displaced Southern Californian, Denton attracted readers for five years with his humorous accounts of discovering the City by the Bay.
In 1968, he left news journalism for corporate publicity, heading communications for the Leslie Salt Co. and Crown Zellerbach before becoming a vice president of the public relations firm Hill and Knowlton.
Denton was coauthor of the book “A Matter of Life” and wrote television scripts and plays as well as numerous articles for such magazines as Sports Illustrated, TV Guide and Cosmopolitan.
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