There was once heated debate over how to pronounce “Los Angeles.” The Spanish pronunciation of the name has long been “Loce AHN-heh-less.” Yet, non-Spanish speaking Angelenos seemed to prefer the harder-sounding anglicized version “Loss ANN-ja-less.” The anglicized version was adopted, in 1934, by the U.S. Board on Geographic Names.
During the 1920s and 1930s, the Los Angeles Times vigorously defended the Spanish pronunciation and printed directly below its editorial page masthead, “LOS ANGELES (Loce Ahng-hayl-ais).” When the U.S. Board on Geographic Names recognized the anglicized version, the Times was outraged, declaring that the pronunciation made the city “sound like some brand of fruit preserve.” The newspaper further suggested that Easterners plotted to deprive the West Coast of its softer-sounding Spanish names, proposing that California would next have to tolerate such place names as “Sandy Ego,” “San Joce,” and (for San Joaquin) “San Jokkin” (Los Angeles Times, March 25, 1934). In all fairness, however, the Times did not express the same distain for the prevalent pronunciation of San Pedro as “San PEE-dro,” rather than the Spanish “San PEY-dro.”
In 1952, Los Angeles Mayor Fletcher Bowron assembled a panel to come up with the city’s own official pronunciation of its name. The panel included language professors, radio announcers and journalists. They agreed to the anglicized version “Loss ANN-ju-less.” Even so, some early 1950s Los Angeles travel films still used alternative pronunciations, such as “Loss ANN-geh-less” (with a hard “G”).
Source: http://www.laalmanac.com/geography/ge13c.php
Thank you for this. This, and east coast radio production theory seem pretty definitive to me. In my experience listening to old radio shows, the modern pronunciation was quickly catching on by the early 1950s, and the old way soon all but disappeared.