Index: Los Angeles Times Articles by Bill Henry
Los Angeles Times Articles by Bill Henry : Bill Henry LA Times Article Index
In over fifty years of service, Bill Henry managed to write almost fifteen thousand articles for the LA Times, his work covering a broad spectrum of topics. His career started in sports reporting, which over time blossomed into the “Observations” column which he penned from 1924 to 1928. By the end of “Observations,” aviation had also become a common subject for Henry to cover. In fact, a mixture of sports, aviation, and general musings made up the base of Bill Henry’s next column, “Bill Henry Says,” which constituted the bulk of his work from 1932 to 1939. However, as war began to brew in Europe, Henry shifted towards wartime coverage, which marked the birth of Bill Henry as a political columnist. After returning in 1939 from writing “On The Western Front” and “London In Wartime,” Bill Henry began what would become his most recognizable column, “By The Way.” For the next thirty years, he would write about politics, sports, aviation, Los Angeles and anything else that came to mind, although politics would slowly grow to be Henry’s most covered subject.
How to Use the index
To assist with the research process, an index of over 10,000 of Henry’s articles in the Times has been made available here. This spreadsheet contains the title of each article, a short transcribed section of the opening text of the article, the publication date of the article, the pages the article was printed on, and a URL to the article in the Times Historical Archives.
Disclaimer: While the index is extensive, it only reflects what has been digitized and correctly described by the Times Historical Archives. Additionally, the index was created from a mixture of search results from ProQuest, which proved to be inconsistent in returning the same results. Lastly, much of the metadata appears to be automatically generated, and while several fields have been corrected, researchers should still practice caution!
When using the spreadsheet, it is recommended that you take advantage of your browser’s “find” function. This will allow you to search through transcribed titles and excerpted text to find a specific subject or topic. As the transcribed excerpts are brief, they aren’t comprehensive and aren’t fully indicative of the full breadth of Henry’s writings.The publication date is another great way to sort information, and can narrow searches for temporally relevant articles.
The resources below provide several different ways of accessing Henry’s articles both physically and digitally!
Accessing Digital Articles
For students, staff, and faculty with a valid Oxy account, access to the Proquest database for Los Angeles Times (1886-1984) can be found through the Library's online catalog or you can use this log-in portal to Proquest to enter your Oxy login information.
Once in the Proquest database, you can enter information found in the Index such as title or date to locate the articles of interest. Or, to retrieve a specific article, enter the “DocumentURL” string (column on the far right of the spreadsheet). The article texts are searchable so you can focus your search by entering subjects, names and or topics.
For users not affiliated with Occidental:
*The Proquest historical newspapers database may be accessible through your local public or academic library.
*The Times (1881-2020) is also available at latimes.newspapers.com. You can search online but for access to the content of articles, a subscription is required.
For both these databases, you can use the “DocumentUR” in the spreadsheet to retrieve a specific article. Note that you will need to remove the “?accountid=12935” from the link in order for it to work with your subscription.
For those interested in print copies, the Bill Henry collection includes binders of annotated clippings of Bill Henry’s articles ranging from August 1941 to June 1943. A full list of these clippings is available here.
Go back to the resources page for a bibliography of Bill Henry works