Geoff Miller | L.A. magazine founder, 74

Geoff Miller, 74, a founder of Los Angeles magazine, known for its Hollywood star-studded covers and as a guide to the good life in the city, died Saturday of a degenerative nerve disease at his home in Beverly Hills.

Los Angeles magazine, one of the nation's first city magazines, was started in 1960. It has outlasted more than half a dozen magazines based in Los Angeles, including New West, started in 1976 by Clay Felker.

"Los Angeles was to be a magazine celebrating the unruly young city in all its contrary glory," Mr. Miller wrote in a 30th anniversary issue in 1990.

Mr. Miller was a student at the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1959, designing a prototype urban magazine for his master's in journalism, when he met David Brown, an advertising executive who shared his vision. On a start-up budget of $50,000, the two hand-cut and pasted the first issue in the summer of 1960 after cobbling together freelance articles.

Eventually, writers including Ray Bradbury, Joseph Wambaugh, and Budd Schulberg became contributors. Celebrities posed for the monthly covers, often in spoofs: Alfred Hitchcock carving a Thanksgiving turkey for the November 1974 issue, for example.

Mr. Miller was editor in chief of Los Angeles from 1974, when Brown left the magazine, until 1990, when he became publisher. Under his leadership, the magazine expanded service journalism, on topics including where to dine and shop. There was an annual "52 Great Weekends" issue. But it also continued covering more serious issues: critiques of civic institutions, the need for historic preservation, white flight, and the embattled school district in the 1960s.

Los Angeles magazine had a circulation of about 17,000 when Mr. Miller became its top editor. By the time he retired in 1994, circulation had surpassed 160,000. It is now about 140,000. - N.Y. Times News Service