Van Johnson

At 92 years old, Van Johnson has this physical status:

Charles Van Dell Johnson (August 25, 1916 – December 12, 2008) was an American film, television theatre and radio actor, singer, and dancer.

He was a major star at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer during and after World War II. Johnson was the embodiment of the "boy-next-door wholesomeness" which made him a popular Hollywood star in the 1940s and 1950s, playing "the red-haired, freckle-faced soldier, sailor, or bomber pilot who used to live down the street" in MGM films during the war years, with such films as Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, A Guy Named Joe, and The Human Comedy.

He made occasional World War II films through the end of the 1960s, and he played a military officer in one of his final feature films in 1992.

At the time of his death in December 2008, he was one of the last surviving matinee idols of Hollywood's "golden age".

Early life

Johnson was born in Newport, Rhode Island, the only child of Loretta (née Snyder) and Charles E. Johnson, a plumber and later a real-estate salesman. His father was born in Sweden and came to the United States as a child, and his mother had Pennsylvania Dutch ancestry. His mother was allegedly an alcoholic who left the family when he was a child, and he was not close to his father.

Personal life

Johnson married former stage actress Eve Abbott (1914–2004) on January 25, 1947, the day after her divorce was finalized from actor Keenan Wynn. Their daughter Schuyler was born in 1948. By this marriage, Johnson gained stepsons Edmond Keenan (Ned) and screenwriter Tracy Keenan Wynn. In a statement by Eve, published after her death at age 90, she said MGM had engineered her marriage to Johnson to cover up his alleged homosexuality. "They needed their 'big star' to be married to quell rumors about his sexual preferences and unfortunately, I was 'It' – the only woman he would marry." Commenting on their complicated relationships, Keenan Wynn's father Ed Wynn said, "I can't keep them straight. Evie loved Keenan. Keenan loves Evie. Van loves Evie. Evie loves Van. Van loves Keenan. Keenan loves Van."

Johnson's biographer Ronald L. Davis writes that it "seems to have been well known in the film capital" that Johnson had homosexual tendencies, but this was never reported or hinted at by newspaper columnists or movie magazine writers. Studio executive Louis B. Mayer made strenuous efforts to quash any potential scandal regarding Johnson and any of his actor-friends whom Mayer suspected of being homosexual. Johnson's marriage to Eve finally ended when Johnson, starring at the time in a 1961 production of The Music Man, began an affair with a male dancer, according to her son Ned Wynn, who disclosed that Johnson left her "for a man – a boy, really. He's the lead boy dancer." The couple separated in that year and their divorce was finalized in 1968.

In contrast to his "cheery Van" screen image, Eve claimed that he was morose and moody because of his difficult early life. She reported that he had little tolerance for unpleasantness and would stride into his bedroom and seclude himself at the slightest hint of trouble. He had a difficult relationship with his father growing up, and he was estranged from his daughter at the time of his death.

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Career

While in high school, Johnson played at social clubs in Newport. After graduating in 1935, he moved to New York City and joined the Off-Broadway revue Entre Nous.

In 1936, Johnson appeared in New England as a replacement dancer, but his acting career began in earnest in the Broadway revue New Faces of 1936. After that, he returned to the chorus and worked in summer resorts near New York City. George Abbott, a director and playwright, starred him in Rodgers and Hart's Too Many Girls as a college boy and as understudy for all three male leads in 1939. He had an uncredited role in Too Many Girls, which costarred Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, then Abbott recruited him as a chorus boy and Gene Kelly's understudy in Pal Joey.

Lucille Ball took Johnson back to Chasen's Restaurant, where she introduced him to MGM casting director Billy Grady, who was dining at the next table. This resulted in screen tests by Hollywood studios. His experience at Columbia Pictures was ineffective, but Warner Brothers hired him on a $30,000 a week basis. In the 1942 film Murder in the Big House, he was cast as a cub reporter opposite Faye Emerson. For the job, his eyebrows and hair were dyed black. Johnson's all-American good looks and demeanor were unsuited to Warner's gritty films at the time, and the studio dropped him at the end of his six-month deal.

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer soon signed Johnson. He was given training in acting, pronunciation, and diction. In Anywhere I'll Find You (1942), he had an uncredited role as a soldier. He attracted interest in a small part of The War Against Mrs. Hadley (1942), and MGM was compelled to feature him in their long-running series Dr. Kildare. Dr. Kildare and Lionel Barrymore played Dr. Gillespie in these films; Ayres' career was jeopardized due to her conscient objectorship, so the series focused on Dr. Gillespie advising new doctors. Dr. Randall Adams played Dr. Randall Adams in Dr. Gillespie's New Assistant (1942).

In The Human Comedy (1943), MGM portrayed Johnson as Mickey Rooney's soldier brother, a huge success. Randall Adams appeared in Dr. Gillespie's Criminal Case (1943) and was back in uniform for Pilot No. No. 239. 5 (1943): In Madame Curie (1943), he appeared briefly as a reporter.

Spencer Tracy and Irene Dunne starred in A Guy Named Joe, in which he played a young pilot who hires a deceased pilot as his guardian angel. Johnson was involved in a big car accident that left him with a metal plate in his forehead and a number of scars on his face that no plastic surgery could fully explain or conceal; he used heavy makeup to mask them for years. MGM needed to replace him in A Guy Named Joe, but Tracy insisted that the movie be finished, despite his long absence. Johnson was cast as a hero in the film, grossing more than a million dollars, and the actor was announced as a celebrity.

Johnson was exempted from service in World War II due to his injuries after he was involved in the car crash. Since many others were in the armed forces, Johnson's career was greatly enhanced, as a result. "There were five of us," he later said. Jimmy Craig, Bob Young, Bobby Walker, Peter Lawford, and myself. All of us were tested for the same thing all the time." Johnson was often playing soldiers; he joked about this period, "I remember..." After finishing one Thursday morning with June Allyson and starting a new one with Esther Williams on Thursday afternoon. "I had no idea which branch of the service I was in!"

MGM boosted Johnson's fame as the all-American boy in war dramas and musicals. The musical Two Girls and a Sailor (1944), his first top-billed film in an "A" movie, was a big success; it was his first film with June Allyson. He appeared in The White Cliffs of Dover (1944), but in 3 Men in White (1944), he reprised his role as Dr. Adams.

In Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944), Johnson portrayed Ted Lawson, who told the tale of the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo in April 1942. In Between Two Women (1945), he appeared Dr. Adams for the final time. He appeared in Thrill of a Romance (1945), a ballet with Esther Williams, and Week-End at the Waldorf (1945), a musical revival of Grand Hotel with Lana Turner, Walter Pidgeon, and Ginger Rogers. In 1945, he ranked as one of the top box office celebrities, alongside Bing Crosby.

In an easy to Wed (1946), a musical interpretation of Libeled Lady, he was reunited with Williams. Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn were in State of Union (1948), and he encouraged Clark Gable and Pidgeon in the war drama Command Decision (1948).

Mother Is a Freshman (1948) with Loretta Young, the twentieth Century Fox borrowed Johnson to make the comedy Mother Is a Freshman (1948). He was hired in MGM's film noir Scene (1949). In 1949, he appeared in In the Good Old Summertime, which also marked Liza Minnelli's first film appearance as Garland's and Johnson's teenage daughter. He appeared in Battleground (1949), a MGM-sponsored film about the Battle of the Bulge that was made by MGM's current studio head Dore Schary.

Johnson made the comedy The Big Hangover (1950), then she and Williams were reunited in Duchess of Idaho (1951). He appeared in the romantic comedy Three Guys Named Mike (1951). In the Schary-produced film Go for Broke, he played an officer leading Japanese-American troops of the infamous 442nd Regimental Combat Team in Europe. (1951) A.K.A. He was very small in It's a Big Country (1951) and was reunited with Allyson for Too Young to Kiss (1951). In the role of Stephen Maryk, MGM loaned him to Columbia for The Caine Mutiny (1954) in Columbia. Since being made up as Maryk, he refused to allow concealment of his facial scars, claiming that they enhanced the character's authenticity. In the book, Herman Wouk describes Maryk as having "ugly but not unpleasant characteristics." "Humphrey Bogart and Jose Ferrer chomp up all the scenes in this maritime courtroom drama," one commentator said years later, but it's Johnson's character, the ambivalent, not-bright Lieutenant Steve Maryk, who ties the whole film together." Johnson, according to Time magazine, he was "better actor than Hollywood deserved to be."

Johnson became the sardonic second lead of Brigadoon (1954), after which he partnered with Gene Kelly. In The Last Time I Saw Paris (1954), MGM's last film, he was the lead actor. He had been in Columbia for five years and made one film per year.

Johnson did not resent the limitations of the studio system like some other actors of the time. He said that his MGM years were "one big happy family and a tiny kingdom" in 1985. "Everything was set up for us," the singers to barbells. All we had to do was inhale, exhale, and be charming. Because the studio was the real world, I used to dread leaving the studio to go out into the outside world.

During the 1950s, Johnson continued to appear in films and appeared often in television guest appearances. He appeared on What's My Line as the celebrity mystery guest. On November 22, 1953, his appearance was on television, but not by the panel because of advance notice of his presence. He appeared on the May 22, 1955 airing and was guessed by Fred Allen. He was in The End of the Affair (1955) at Columbia and then produced The Bottom of the Bottle (1956) at Fox. He received favourable critical feedback for the 1956 film Miracle in the Rain, co-starring Jane Wyman, who played a brave young soldier facing war and also in the mysterious 23 Paces to Baker Street, in which he starred a blind playwright residing in London. He returned to MGM for Slander (1956) and Action of the Tiger (1957).

Johnson appeared as the title character of Robert Browning's "spectacular" film The Pied Piper of Hamelin, a musical adaptation of Robert Browning's poem set to Edvard Grieg's music, matched. It aired on November 26, 1957, as part of NBC's week of Thanksgiving specials, starring Claude Rains in his first singing and dancing role. The program was so popular that it became a hit song and was repeated in 1958. It was syndicated to many local stations and was revived every year in the tradition of other holiday specials.

Johnson appeared in CBS's "Deadfall" episode on February 19, 1959, as Frank Gilette, a former outlaw wrongly charged with bank robbery. Hugh Perry, a corrupt prosecutor played by Harry Townes, and Deputy Stover, played by Bing Russell, are framed. Gilette is arrested by outlaws as he headed to prison, and Grant Withers' sheriff Roy Lamont, portrayed by Grant Withers, is killed.

Johnson turned down the opportunity to appear as Eliot Ness in The Untouchables in 1959, which went on to become a huge television show starring Robert Stack as Ness.

In the 1960 episode "The Women Who" of CBS anthology series "The DuPont Show," Joe Robertson, June Allyson, and Don Rickles guest starred. In 1961, Johnson went to England to appear in Harold Fielding's production of The Music Man at the Adelphi Theatre in London. The show had a fruitful run of almost a year, with Johnson playing the arduous leading role of Harold Hill to great acclaim.

In two episodes (39 and 40) in 1966, Johnson appeared on Batman as "The Minstrel." He appeared on Here's Lucy, Quincy, M.E., McMillan & Wife, and Love, American Style in the 1970s. He starred in the 1976 miniseries Rich Man, Poor Man, and was nominated for a prime time Emmy Award for his role. He appeared on an episode of Angela Lansbury's Murder in the 1980s, She Wrote alongside June Allyson. He appeared in a special two-part episode of The Love Boat, "Mom." The show Must Go On; The Exomist, Parts 1 and 2" that aired on February 27, 1982; Ann Miller, Ethel Merman, Della Reese, Carol Channing, and Cab Calloway appeared on August 27, 1982.

Johnson began in the 1970s, after two bouts of cancer, he then embarked on a second career in summer stock and dinner theater. He appeared in the starring role of La Cage aux Folles in 1985, returning to Broadway for the first time since Pal Joey. He appeared in Woody Allen's The Purple Rose of Cairo in the same year. He toured in Show Boat at the age of 75, now grey and rotund. He was captain Andy von affluent. In Three Days to a Kill (1992), his last film appearance was in Three Days to a Kill (1992). He appeared in three performances of A. R. Gurney's Love Letters in Wesley Hills, New York, in 2003.

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