When the Siren read that Van Johnson, freckle-faced star of so many pleasant but lesser MGM movies, died this week aged 92, she thought of her friend Beth, who was a neighbor of Johnson's on the East Side of Manhattan in the early 1990s. Beth is a woman after the Siren's own heart, the sort of person who can recognize a star of the old days even as he passes 70. And recognize him Beth always did, reporting each time she saw Johnson and, just before she moved, the time that he stopped to coo over her adored baby daughter.
But is there any such thing as an actor touted as "the boy next door," who actually has an existence that MGM could have filmed in one of its backlot houses? Johnson's own private life was troubled and his one child, a daughter named Schuyler Van Johnson, grew up estranged from him. Still, of the crop of actors who populated musicals and light entertainments of the 1940s, Johnson stands out for having worked to become something more than catnip for the bobby-soxers, and for doing his best acting after age stole the adjective "boyish" from him for good.
The Siren went back to her David Shipman and was astonished to discover that Johnson was third in box-office popularity in 1946, and in the top ten even in Britain. In a poll of theater owners he was ranked ahead of Bette Davis, Cary Grant and Humphrey Bogart, among others. But vehicles like that year's Easy to Wed and No Leave No Love (Shipman quotes C.A. Lejeune's priceless review: "No comment") can't support an actor forever, and just two years later Johnson's similar films weren't doing well. He began to doubt his own abilities, and Shipman also says Katharine Hepburn may have helped Johnson out during State of the Union. What did she do or say, one wonders? Because his best film roles were ahead of him, although from now on the good parts were, more often than not, supporting.
The Siren remembers Johnson fondly as a bright spot in the rather stagey Command Decision, as Clark Gable's wisecracking orderly; trying to eat the eggs he scrounged in Battleground; tormented by his conscience even as he brings down Bogart in The Caine Mutiny. And the Siren's favorite Van Johnson role will remain his nicely acerbic turn in Brigadoon, delivering such lines as, "If they want to disregard two hundred years of human bing-bang, that's their privilege" and, even better, when asked if there are women such as witches in his country: "Oh, we have 'em. We pronounce it differently." Once Johnson was able to show some shadows, and not just sunshine, he became somebody you could truly enjoy. And, if the Siren dares say so, somebody you would be far more interested in, should he ever show up next door.
But is there any such thing as an actor touted as "the boy next door," who actually has an existence that MGM could have filmed in one of its backlot houses? Johnson's own private life was troubled and his one child, a daughter named Schuyler Van Johnson, grew up estranged from him. Still, of the crop of actors who populated musicals and light entertainments of the 1940s, Johnson stands out for having worked to become something more than catnip for the bobby-soxers, and for doing his best acting after age stole the adjective "boyish" from him for good.
The Siren went back to her David Shipman and was astonished to discover that Johnson was third in box-office popularity in 1946, and in the top ten even in Britain. In a poll of theater owners he was ranked ahead of Bette Davis, Cary Grant and Humphrey Bogart, among others. But vehicles like that year's Easy to Wed and No Leave No Love (Shipman quotes C.A. Lejeune's priceless review: "No comment") can't support an actor forever, and just two years later Johnson's similar films weren't doing well. He began to doubt his own abilities, and Shipman also says Katharine Hepburn may have helped Johnson out during State of the Union. What did she do or say, one wonders? Because his best film roles were ahead of him, although from now on the good parts were, more often than not, supporting.
The Siren remembers Johnson fondly as a bright spot in the rather stagey Command Decision, as Clark Gable's wisecracking orderly; trying to eat the eggs he scrounged in Battleground; tormented by his conscience even as he brings down Bogart in The Caine Mutiny. And the Siren's favorite Van Johnson role will remain his nicely acerbic turn in Brigadoon, delivering such lines as, "If they want to disregard two hundred years of human bing-bang, that's their privilege" and, even better, when asked if there are women such as witches in his country: "Oh, we have 'em. We pronounce it differently." Once Johnson was able to show some shadows, and not just sunshine, he became somebody you could truly enjoy. And, if the Siren dares say so, somebody you would be far more interested in, should he ever show up next door.
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