Van Johnson

Charles Van Dell Johnson (; August 25, 1916 – December 12, 2008) was an American film and television actor and dancer who was a major star at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer during and after World War II. Johnson was the embodiment of the "boy-next-door wholesomeness (that) made him a popular Hollywood star in the '40s and '50s," playing "the red-haired, freckle-faced soldier, sailor or bomber pilot who used to live down the street" in MGM movies during the war years with such films as Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, A Guy Named Joe, and The Human Comedy. Johnson made occasional World War II movies 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". 2Early life Charles Van Dell Johnson was born in Newport, Rhode Island, the only child of Loretta (née Snyder), a housewife, and Charles E. Johnson, a plumber and later real-estate salesman. His father was born in Sweden and came to the United States as a young child, and his mother had Pennsylvania Dutch ancestry. His mother, an alcoholic, left the family when her son was a child; Johnson's relationship with his father was chilly. 2Career Johnson performed at social clubs in Newport while in high school. He moved to New York City after graduating from high school in 1935 and joined an off-Broadway revue, Entre Nous (1935). 3Broadway After touring New England in a theatre troupe as a substitute dancer, his acting career began in earnest in the Broadway revue New Faces of 1936. Johnson returned to the chorus after that and worked in summer resorts near New York Cit