Persons Appearing: Van Johnson, Film(s) Discussed: Battleground, The Caine Mutiny, A Guy Named Joe, The Last Time I Saw Paris, An ebullient Johnson is in town touring in the play, "Send Me No Flowers" at the Midnight Sun Dinner Theatre in Atlanta. He discusses dinner theatre, touring theatre audiences, his early personal life and decision to go into show business, his film and television career, working at MGM under the studio system, signing his contract, Spencer Tracy as his mentor, favorite directors (Richard Brooks, Mervyn LeRoy, Frank Capra, William Wellman, Clarence Brown), and favorite performances of his (THE LAST TIME I SAW PARIS, THE END OF THE AFFAIR, BATTLEGROUND, THE CAINE MUTINY, 23 PACES TO BAKER STREET)
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 described as the embodiment of the "boy-next-door wholesomeness" which made him a popular Hollywood star in the 1940s and 1950s,[2] 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 2008, he was one of the last surviving matinee idols of Hollywood's "golden age".[3]