Tribute to Van Johnson

In the next few days you'll be reading a lot of tributes to Van Johnson, who died December 12, at the age of 92. He was one of the best actors who arrived in the generation that followed Spencer Tracy and John Barrymore at MGM.

In my mind I see him at his best in three films in which he is cast against type: his type being the gosh-darn boy next door with the freckles and strawberry blonde hair.

I can watch him again and again as the soldier Holly in BATTLEGROUND (1949), the William Wellman directed movie about the Battle of the Bulge in which he jitterbugs one night with a French girl in the doomed village of Bastogne, saves the lives of the men in his unit on another, and spends the entire battle trying to cook eggs in his helmet liner and never quite succeeds. Holly. He stands for all the average men we loved who fought against terrible odds in the last freezing battle on the German front in WW II.

Then, I see him as the perpetually troubled Lt. Maryk, the conscience of the throughtful movie THE CAINE MUTINY (1954), in which we learn a little something about leadership. It is true the great scene stealer Humprey Bogart, rolling those ball bearings around and around in his hand as he twists his lip telling the tale of how he's been betrayed over those strawberries, is tough competition. But the movie belongs to Van Johnson and his conscience, listening to all sides, pondering what is right to do when his ship is in danger in a typhoon. The scar Johnson got on his face in that terrible accident during the filming of A GUY NAMED JOE adds character to a face that might have otherwise been just too pretty for a part such as this one.

And then I see him as the tortured writer in the LAST TIME I SAW PARIS (1954), in which he can't quite seem to get his life together with the gorgeous and equally troubled Elizabeth Taylor. This role is probably one that might have been cast for Montgomery Clift or James Dean or Marlon Brando, but truth be told Johnson was their equal and then some. When he sits in the Paris bar looking back at his wasted life in France there is much on his face that makes us believe it had happened just as he recalled.

There has always been much talk about his beginnings as a chorus boy. If you look carefully in the party scene in MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS you can see him twirling about in all his chorus boy glory. Stories also circulate about his interest in the boys who plied his old profession. Well there you are. It was Hollywood, not the Church of the Nazarene.

But go back and look at some of his best films and see if you can resist his smile. I never could, and who would want to?