William Johnson; Teacher, Writer on Mexico, Old West

William Weber Johnson, a teacher, journalist and historian who specialized in writing about Mexico, the rugged Old West and the characters who prowled those colorful lands, has died.

Johnson, a former Time-Life reporter, was 82 when he died in a San Diego hospital. His wife, Elizabeth, told the Associated Press he had died Monday of complications of emphysema.

Johnson was the author of 11 books, among them a 1960 biography he called “Kelly Blue.” It was about the little-known Harold Osman Kelly, a primitive artist who earned his way in the American West as a mule skinner, teamster, ranch hand and farmer sketching the people and things around him in the early days of the century.

Johnson’s wife said his interest in Mexico began when he was a student at DePauw University in Indiana. He had saved money to travel during the summer after his junior year, but it wasn’t enough to get him to faraway foreign lands.

“He needed to go someplace, so he went to Mexico,” she said. “He became interested in their very recent (1910-1920) revolution, and did all the reading and tried to get to the bottom of it for himself.”

He wrote “Historic Mexico,” a 1968 book that was widely praised for its colorful yet accurate portrayal of the Mexican Revolution.

He also wrote “Mexico,” a volume of the Life World Library that was translated into 14 languages and sold millions of copies.

Johnson was considered one of the few authorities on “B. Traven,” the mysterious author of “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre,” whose true identity has never been established.

Johnson started his career as a reporter at a small Illinois newspaper, then went to work for the Associated Press in its Detroit and Chicago bureaus until going to work for Time-Life.

He was sent to London as a war correspondent and traveled with British troops in the Allied invasion of France.

Johnson became Time-Life’s Mexico bureau chief in 1946 and moved the following year to Argentina, where his reporting on dictator Juan Peron and his wife, Evita, resulted in Time magazine being banned in that country, Elizabeth Johnson said.

He resigned in 1961 to teach at UCLA and later served as Journalism Department chairman before retiring in 1971.

He continued writing after his retirement from UCLA, turning out numerous magazine articles, including cover stories for Smithsonian magazine.