Town Criers of Larchmont : HEARTS OF THE CITY / Where dilemmas are aired and unsung heroes and resiliency are celebrated : Jane Gilman and Dawne P. Goodwin cover the posh community in their influential newspaper and gossip column. But the 'Chronicle girls' are more than just observers.

By STEPHANIE SIMON

Nov. 8, 1995 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

They’ve received dozens of awards, citations and trophies, but Jane Gilman and Dawne P. Goodwin take more pride in the subtle honors that tumble their way--such as the approving nod of a boutique owner who credits them with building community spirit, or the friendly praise of a neighborhood stalwart who declares, “The Chronicle girls have been wonderful to us.”

The Chronicle girls. It’s an odd description for two elegant women nearing retirement age.

But it suits them perfectly.

Gilman and Goodwin are, after all, best known as publishers of the Larchmont Chronicle, a monthly newspaper that has circulated to residents of Hancock Park, Windsor Square, Fremont Place and Park La Brea for 32 years.

Despite their stately looks and matronly hairdos, they write a bubbly column that reads like a girlish gossip session. So sure, call them the Chronicle girls.

For more than three decades, Gilman and Goodwin have anchored the quietly posh residential streets around the one-block commercial strip of Larchmont Boulevard.

“Anything good that’s gone on in the community, they’ve been there, one or another of them,” said Los Angeles City Councilman John Ferraro, who lives in the area.

They print every scrap of local news in the Chronicle, write editorials urging folks to get involved and perpetuate a small-town feel that thrives even as impersonal urban chains such as Starbucks and Payless land on the boulevard.

“You don’t come to Larchmont Boulevard in curlers,” Gilman said, “because you’re going to see people you know. Walking down the street is a social affair. . . . It’s a small town in a big city.”

Praising Larchmont as a rare combination of folksy and sophisticated, longtime resident Suzanne Rheinstein credits the Chronicle for keeping the town so special. “Dawne and Jane, as we call them,” make the old-timers and the newcomers feel equally connected to the area, Rheinstein said.

Though they may shun traditional journalistic objectivity by advocating pet projects such as the YMCA or helping with Ferraro’s election campaign, the Chronicle publishers fill an important niche, serving as old-fashioned town criers.

“When my husband finally got his picture in the paper last year, he was going around saying, ‘I’ve really made it. I’m in the Chronicle,’ ” said Rheinstein, who owns an interior decorating store called Hollyhock. Many of the Chronicle’s 71,000 subscribers recognize the publishers’ faces from their monthly “On the Boulevard” column, which reports engagements, births and exotic vacations under the cheery byline, “by Dawne and Jane.”

Many know Gilman and Goodwin as pesky community activists--always coming after them to beg for donations to the YMCA fund-raising campaign, the Larchmont blood drive, the Hope Net charity organization or some other worthy cause. Goodwin estimates she has raised millions of dollars for various groups. “She’s ruthless,” Ferraro said.

“When I die,” Goodwin joked, “they’re going to put a tin cup on my tombstone.”

In the three decades since they founded the newspaper in Goodwin’s living room, the duo has seen Los Angeles transformed. They have tried to shape the Larchmont area by prodding residents to band together in crime watch groups, disaster response teams, historical preservation boards and charitable organizations.

“People have learned they can influence what happens here,” Goodwin said. “We really have made a community out of this area.”

Their neighborhood causes might seem superficial, compared with the gaping needs elsewhere. When the pockmarked streets of central Los Angeles desperately need help, why should Hancock Park residents demand ornamental street lamps on their broad, quiet sidewalks? When homeless shelters overflow, why should Larchmont Boulevard merchants fuss about the colors in a new wood sign?

Goodwin has a simple answer: Because they care. “If everyone stuck their nose in their own business and fixed up their own area, the whole city would be great,” Goodwin said. “You have to take pride in your community, whether you live in Hancock Park or Watts or Southeast Los Angeles.”

There is a lot for residents around Larchmont Boulevard to take pride in. Gracious estates with rose-crowned lawns line the curving streets. The roll of past and present residents shouts power and money--magnates of the Ralphs and Vons supermarket chains, billionaire Howard Hughes, actress Katharine Hepburn, foreign diplomats, bankers and many more.

“Too many people in this city don’t want to get involved, but that’s not true in this neighborhood,” Gilman said proudly. For example, community groups successfully lobbied for a storefront police station on Larchmont Boulevard last year. The Chronicle helped lead the drive for what Gilman calls--in tabloid headline shorthand--”the cop shop.”

Gilman and Goodwin haul themselves to various community events--many of which they’ve had a hand in organizing--to judge pet shows, costume parades, oratory contests. “We’ve ridden on everything from stagecoaches to elephants,” Goodwin says with a sigh.

Aware that every bright idea brings hours upon hours of work, Goodwin has placed a sign on her desk reminding her to KYMSD--shorthand for “Keep Your Mouth Shut, Dawne.”

She rarely pays it heed.