Voiceless Sinatra

December 13, 2008
Van Johnson, Film Actor, Is Dead at 92
By ALJEAN HARMETZ

Van Johnson, a film actor whose affable charm and boyish good looks helped turn him into a major Hollywood star during World War II, died Friday in Nyack, N.Y. He was 92. His death, at the Tappan Zee Manor assisted living facility, was announced by a spokesman, Daniel Demello, of Shirley Herz Associates in New York.

Mr. Johnson won praise in his first dramatic role, as the pilot whose story is told in ''Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo'' (1944). He drew good notices for his work in ''The Caine Mutiny,''Edward Dmytryk's 1954 adaptation of the Herman Wouk novel, in which he played the naval lieutenant who is compelled to relieve the erratic Captain Queeg (Humphrey Bogart) of command while at sea. And critics liked him as well the following year in Dmytryk's adaptation of Graham Greene's novel ''The End of the Affair,'' he which Mr. Johnson played an illicit lover opposite Sarah Miles.

But it was his wartime film career that catapulted Mr. Johnson to fame, and it gave him a boy-next-door image that he could never live down. He was the red-haired, freckle-faced soldier, sailor or B-25 bomber pilot who used to live down the street in a dozen MGM movies between 1942 and 1946. He attracted hordes of bobby-soxers during the war years. Indeed, the numbers of screaming teen-aged girls who swooned for Mr. Johnson were second only to those who threw themselves at Frank Sinatra.

Mr. Johnson got his big break in ''A Guy Named Joe'' (1943), playing a young fighter pilot who acquires an older pilot (Spencer Tracy) as his guardian angel after the older man is killed in a crash.

In real life, it was Mr. Johnson who was almost killed in an automobile accident that occurred midway through the movie's production. It was obvious by then that his charming, likable screen presence would make him a star. During the months Mr. Johnson was hospitalized, both Tracy and his co-star, Irene Dunne, refused to allow the studio to recast the part.

Mr. Johnson had supporting roles in movies like ''The War Against Mrs. Hadley'' (1942) and ''Madame Curie'' (1943), but ''A Guy Named Joe'' gave him two things: a lot of publicity and a steel plate in his head that kept him from being drafted at a time when major MGM stars like Robert Taylor, Jimmy Stewart and Clark Gable were joining the armed services. The film was a huge box-office success.

In 1944, a time when actors worked under contract in a studio caste system, Mr. Johnson was promoted from featured player to MGM's official star list. He was paired with Miss Williams in ''Thrill of a Romance'' (1945) and with Lana Turner in ''Weekend at the Waldorf'' (1945). At studio premieres and parties, he wore red socks with his tuxedo, a trademark.

By 1945, Mr. Johnson was second behind Bing Crosby on the list of the Top 10 box-office stars chosen yearly by the nation's theater owners. In 1946, he was third. Then Hollywood's bit male stars came back from the war, and he dropped off the list.

Like many MGM stars of that era, including June Allyson, with whom he starred in four films, Mr. Johnson did not find his contract burdensome. He was never known to have asked for a raise or turned down a part he was told to play.

In 1985, he said of his years at MGM: ''It was one big happy family and a little kingdom. Everything was provided for us, from singing lessons to barbells. All we had to do was inhale, exhale and be charming. I used to dread leaving the studio to go out into the real world, because to me the studio was the real world.''

Mr. Johnson said he wasn't even upset when the studio head L.B. Mayer learned that he was living with a young actress and insisted that he move out: ''That was the way of the studio.''

MGM dropped Mr. Johnson in 1954, after he appeared as the drunken novelist opposite Elizabeth Taylor in ''The Last Time I Saw Paris,'' based on F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story ''Babylon Revisited,'' and in the film version of the Broadway musical fantasy ''Brigadoon,'' as one of two American tourists (Gene Kelly played the other) visiting an enchanted Scottish village.

In his 12 years at the studio, Mr. Johnson had acted and mostly starred in nearly 50 movies. But as he once asked a reporter rhetorically: ''How long can you go on being the boy next door?''

He was born Charles Van Johnson on Aug. 25, 1916, in Newport, R.I. His mother, an alcoholic, deserted the family when he was a boy, and he was dutifully but coldly raised by the dour Swedish-American father, a plumber, for whom he was named. According to his stepson, Ned Wynn, when Mr. Johnson became a star, he invited his father to California and proudly took him to the famous Chasen's restaurant. Charles Johnson refused to eat anything but a tuna fish sandwich.

''Van was devastated,'' Mr. Wynn wrote in a memoir, ''We Have Always Lived in Beverly Hills.'' ''He had wanted to show his father that now, after years of a gray, loveless, miserly life, he was a star, he could afford steak. And the old bastard had beaten him down one more time.''

As soon as he graduated from high school in 1935, Mr. Johnson fled to New York. He sang, danced and played the violin, and after several months got a job touring New England as a substitute dancer. He first set foot on a Broadway stage in the successful revue ''New Faces'' in May 1936.

After ''New Faces'' closed, his career was a mosaic of chorus boy jobs, resort hotel gigs and finally, nightclub work in ''Eight Young Men of Manhattan'' at the Rainbow Room, an act built around Mary Martin.

He was an understudy to Desi Arnaz and Eddie Bracken in George Abbott's Broadway musical ''Too Many Girls,'' which earned him a small role in Abbott's ''Pal Joey,'' which earned him two trips to Hollywood. Columbia didn't like his screen test, but Warner Bros. offered him a contract at $300 a week, gave him the leading role of a cub reporter opposite Faye Emerson in ''Murder in the Big House (1942), and dropped him after six months.

He was on his way back to New York when Lucille Ball, whom he knew from his years of bouncing around the East Coast, took him to the MGM casting director Billy Grady. He made his debut as a young soldier in the Clark Gable-Lana Turner drama ''Somewhere I'll Find You'' (1942). He was the pilot who survived in ''Pilot No. 5'' (1943), the soldier who died in William Saroyan's ''Human Comedy'' (1943) and the sailor who had his choice of June Allyson or Gloria DeHaven in ''Two Girls and a Sailor.''

He also replaced Lew Ayres in the successful Dr. Kildare series, which was renamed the Dr. Gillespie series for the co-star, Lionel Barrymore, after Ayres announced he was a conscientious objector. Mr. Johnson shocked MGM and dismayed his fans in 1947 when he stole the wife of his best friend, the MGM character actor Keenan Wynn. But by the time he married Evie Wynn, he was too big a star for the studio to punish. They had a daughter, Schuyler, in 1948, separated in 1962 and were divorced in 1968. Mr. Johnson did not remarry.

The actor's screen image was all laughter and sunshine. ''Cheery Van,'' he later defined himself ironically. Actually, the deprivations of his childhood cast long shadows, and he was, by nature, moody and morose. ''His tolerance of unpleasantness was minuscule,'' his stepson wrote. ''If there was the slightest hint of trouble with one of the children, or with the house, the car, the servants, the delivery of the newspaper, the lack of ice in the silver ice bucket, the color of the candles on the dining room table, Van immediately left the couch, the dinner table, the pool, the tennis court, the party, the restaurant, the vacation, and strode off to his bedroom.''

Long after World War II was over, Mr. Johnson was still fighting it: in ''''Command Decision'' (1948) as a staff sergeant; as a happy-go-lucky private in William Wellman's excellent recreation of the Battle of the Bulge, ''Battleground'' (1949); and as a prejudiced army lieutenant in charge of a group of Japanese-American soldiers in ''Go For Broke'' (1951).

He also co-starred with Janet Leigh (''The Romance of Rosy Ridge'' 1947), with Judy Garland (''In the Good Old Summertime'' 1949), and most often with Esther Williams and June Allyson.

After floundering for more than a decade after he left MGM, Mr. Johnson made the mistake of turning down the Eliot Ness role in the television series ''The Untouchables'' -- Robert Stack got the role -- but he found frequent work on television all the same for decades, making guest appearances on a wide range of shows, from ''Batman'' in the '60s (he played The Minstrel) to ''Murder, She Wrote'' in the '80s. He also had a small part in Woody Allen's 1985 film ''The Purple Rose of Cairo.''

Mr. Johnson had lived at Tappan Zee Manor, an assisted living facility, for the last seven years. Before that he lived at 405 East 54th Street in Manhattan. He had been estranged from his daughter for many years, his spokesman, Mr. Demello, said, adding that he had no other information on survivors.

In the 1970s Mr. Johnson began a second career in summer stock and dinner theater. When he turned 60, he told a reporter that he had beaten cancer twice and was so booked up with summer theater jobs that he never got home to his Manhattan penthouse and his two cats.

At 69, he went back to New York and Broadway to replace Gene Barry as Georges in ''La Cage aux Folles,'' playing the role for a year. At 75, with his red hair turned white and his figure grown rotund, he toured as Captain Andy in ''Show Boat.''

''These are supposed to be my September years,'' Mr. Johnson told an interviewer. ''I'm supposed to be at home enjoying them, but I still love to tour.''

Spencer Tracy had given him two pieces of advice: to take up painting as a hobby and never to read reviews. He traveled everywhere with a paint box and with his embroidery, a hobby he chose for himself.

When Mr. Johnson was a few years shy of 80, he mused: ''Maybe Garbo and Crawford and Marlene had the right idea. Get out of the damned spotlight while you can still be remembered for your earlier glories, not as some old relic.''

But he never took his own advice.