Henry for Hedda

This week Los Angeles Timesman William Mellors Henry, a journalistic institution in Southern California, took over a thrice-weekly Sunkist Orange program as substitute for gaudy, gossipy Hedda Hopper, now on vacation. Sobersided, hearth-loving Substitute Henry did not babble of cinema doings as had Miss Hopper. He prepared his newfangled columnar script by chatting long-distance with heterogeneous folk all over the world, setting down their impressions on matters frivolous and cosmic.

Among those grilled to make Henry copy: a friend in Lisbon, Ambassador Grew in Japan, a Mrs. Murphy stymied in Agua Caliente, Mexico, because she could not show she was a U.S. citizen. For a single broadcast Bill Henry's telephone bill runs to about $100. Although he has no plans for continuing the program when Hedda Hopper returns next month, radioracles are betting he will have a sponsor before he finishes his stint. Luck is Bill Henry's long suit.

Compact, greying, pitcher-eared, with jowls that would do justice to a mastiff, Bill Henry is no stranger to radio. Five times a week he does a West Coast commentary, is sometimes heard on such CBS news roundup shows as The World Today. He claims he was the first radio front-line correspondent of World War II. He came by the distinction rather fortuitously. When he went to Europe in 1939, it was to advise the Finns how to get set for the 1940 Olympics. As technical director of the Los Angeles Games of 1932, the Berlin Games of 1936, he had built up such a reputation as an Olympic expert the Finns were anxious to have him look over their preparations. When war interfered, he signed up with CBS, spent the war's dog days with the R.A.F.

He headed back to Los Angeles late in 1939, not because he was bored with the war, but because the Times had another assignment for him--writing the paper's famed free-style "reporter's column."

Because of his interest in aviation, Bill Henry today does not have to work unless he feels like it. Twenty-one years ago he helped young Donald Douglas launch Douglas Aircraft, pulled out of the deal five years later with what he describes as "a damned good piece of change." He made another important piece of change in Western Air Express, which he helped to organize a few years later. Nowadays Bill Henry lives in a big, nondescript house in downtown Los Angeles, enjoys winning the family tennis championship at the country club with his wife, the former top-flight tennist, Corinne Stanton, and daughter Patsy (one of three), 1935 National Girls' Tennis Champion.

In his column By the Way, Bill Henry is not scintillating. But in Los Angeles everybody likes Bill and looks kindly on his stolid prose.

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