Hello everybody. Joe Morella and Frank Segers, your classic movie guys, here again with more dirt on Van Johnson.
By 1945, Johnson was voted by movie theater owners as the No. 2 biggest box office star, second only to Bing Crosby. But questions still were asked about his sexual preferences.
As author Scott Eyman recounts in his biography of the MGM mogul, Louis B. Mayer, “homosexuality was not necessarily an insurmountable obstacle.” Surely with the “right” woman,” Johnson could be cured of his “malady”, figured Mayer.
As a result, every gorgeous babe on the MGM lot was urged to pursue Johnson. Surely he could be married off to any one of the beautiful, young women both stars and starlets.
By this time Johnson had become a genuine star in the MGM galaxy. The press of those years certainly could be controlled – especially by the renowned studio fixer team of Eddie Mannix and Howard Strickling.
Unwanted information rarely if ever saw the light of print. Farsighted MGM managers took considerable pains to head off potentially negative reports or rumors about their charge.
There are many versions of how Van Johnson married Evie Wynn.
One is that in March of 1943, Van Johnson, a new but promising talent at MGM, was driving to a studio screening with friends – said to be fellow actor Keenan Wynn and his wife, Evie.
At a Culver City intersection a car came barreling through a red light and slammed into the side of Johnson’s convertible. The force of the impact rolled the vehicle on its side, seriously injuring Van..
Another version is that Johnson was alone on his motorcycle when the accident occurred. But this was not the image MGM wanted for their bright new star.
In any event, the fact was that Johnson sustained a fractured skull, multiple facial cuts, a severed artery in his neck and bone fragments piercing his brain. There is no good time for a near-fatal accident but at this early point in Johnson’s career, the timing was atrocious.
He had just experienced his first big movie break, being cast in a juicy role in director Victor Fleming’s A Guy Named Joe costarring Spencer Tracy and Irene Dunne – established stars with real empathy for the struggling, young actor and the horrible predicament he faced.
During Johnson’s subsequent, three-month hospital stay, Tracy and Dunne fought off repeated studio attempts to recast Van’s part in the picture. “Joe,” finally completed with Johnson aboard as a young fighter pilot, turned into a box office hit when it came out. Van’s stellar career was off and running.
The accident left Johnson with a scarred forehead and a metal plate on the left side of his head.
The good news – if you can call it that – was that the accident also generated huge amounts of sympathetic publicity in movie fan magazines of the time. And because of that metal plate, Johnson was declared exempt from wartime military service, giving his career additional tail wind because so many Hollywood stars were otherwise preoccupied in uniform.
The accident also set in motion a series of events that very much related to Johnson’s personal life, and address the question posed by the heading of this blog.
After being released from the hospital, Johnson moved in with the Wynns, and their young two sons. It proved to be quite a ménage-a-cinq, with Van with Evie Wynn discovering that they got along very well.
One version of the story is that Johnson just couldn’t get over how kind she was to him while he was recovering. He was so moved that he often mused out loud at how lucky his close pal Keenan Wynn had been to snare such a lovely and ingratiating woman.
That’s not to say that Evie was fooling around behind Keenan’s back. She had harbored something of a crush on Johnson but Keenan, perhaps aware of Johnson’s sexuality, deemed him “safe.”
By the time this unusual domestic arrangement was in full flower, MGM boss Mayer was already concerned (some say convinced) that Johnson was indeed gay, and that this perception was leaking out to fans and general moviegoers.
One version of the story is that the studio boss got wind of Johnson’s admiration of Evie Wynn. What exactly did happen has been dissected by Hollywood historians ever since.
Mayer, of course, was motivated by protecting an increasingly valuable piece of studio talent. In fact, Johnson was already considered worthy of the status of a top-billed star — for the first time in Richard Thorpe’s Two Girls and a Sailor in 1944.
What to do? Force an arranged marriage for Johnson?
The harshest interpretation of ensuing events is that Mayer coerced Evie Wynn, who was also Keenan’s manager, to divorce her husband and marry Johnson. The not-so-hidden threat was that unless Evie agreed, Keenan’s MGM contract would not be renewed, and she would never be allowed to represent anyone at the studio again.
Another version of the story is that Evie “traded up”. She knew Keenan Wynn whould always be a character actor and that Van was a star. She seduced him and enlisted Mayer’s aid in her plot.
Whatever the preliminaries, on Jan. 25, 1947, the Wynns were driven to Juarez, where a Mexican divorce was pre-arranged. The couple then drove back across the border to El Paso where Johnson and the former Evie Wynn were married four hours later.
For the remaining seven years Johnson worked at MGM, the gay rumors were effectively neutralized. The very much-married Van Johnson starred in such macho titles as director Sam Wood’s Command Decision and William Wellman’s Battleground as well as lighter fare including as Robert Z. Leonard’s Too Young To Kiss.
As for Johnson’s marriage to Evie, it ended badly. The couple had a daughter, Schuyler, in 1948, and managed to make a go of it until the early 1960’s, Then Van left her, supposedly for an affair with a chorus boy Johnson had met in a stage production of The Music Man. The divorce decree followed six years later.
Unshackled from MGM, Van did in our opinion his best work – particularly his strong performance as the earnestly upright U.S. Navy Lt. Steve Maryk in director Edward Dmytryk’s The Caine Mutiny, produced by Stanley Kramer for Columbia Pictures.
Johnson appeared as a Navy enlisted man, warrant officer Darrel Harrison, in Melville Shavelson’s Yours, Mine and Ours (1968).
Stars of the family comedy were Henry Fonda and Lucille Ball, Van’s close friend who perhaps more than anyone else in Hollywood was responsible for setting Johnson’s movie career in motion some 25 years before.
Yours, Mine and Ours was made for United Artists release by Desilu, the immensely successful movie and tv production company formed by Ball and husband Desi Arnaz. We suspect Van was cast by Lucy and Desi as a professional token of their longstanding friendship.
In any case, Johnson continued to work sporadically in films. In 1985, Johnson was cast in a small role in Woody Allen’s 1985 fantasy-comedy The Purple Rose of Cairo.
By the time he died at 92 in a Nyack, New York nursing home in 2008, Johnson had compiled an extraordinarily busy show business resume including years of doing television (Murder She Wrote in the 1980’s), performing in regional, dinner and Broadway theater (he appeared on Broadway in La Cage aux Folles at the age of 69, and touring as Captain Andy in Showboat at 75).
Getting back to our headline question – was Johnson gay? Undoubtedly bisexual. But who really cares today, in a time when Hollywood movie and tv personalities seemingly can’t wait to tell us about all aspects of their lives, including the sexual?
Johnson was a creature of his secretive times. We salute the body of work compiled over nearly half a century by “Cheery Van,” as he called himself. In yesterday’s blog photo, we showed you Van with costar Lana Turner.
She found him wanting…but only off screen.
And who is that in the background of Van above? Looks like Fay Bainter, doesn’t it?
[…] YP (yesterday’s pic) […]
Either way you gotta love the guy’s shoes
Very interesting and very cool; I really enjoyed this. Well written and done with style.
Am watching The End of the Affair on TCM, one of my favorite Van Johnson films, and straining my eyes to see what color his socks were (yes, I know that the movie is in black and white). Were the red socks stories true? If you find my question in any way offensive, please do not respond to it, and I apologize.
Why should we find your question offensive? We think it cute. And yes, the red socks stories are true.
I and my mother love Van Johnson.I miss him a lot and I feel pity that he is dead and some people are still talking about if he was or not,let him have some peace now,who cares about it? The real fans of Van don’t care a thing! It’s all bull…!
I so agree I love Van Johnson let it be he was a great actor
In one account I read, Louis B. Mayer sent his go-to girl, Lana Turner, on a date with Van with orders to bed him in order to prove or disprove the rampant gay rumors. The next day Mayer said, “Well?” and Lana replied, “He did it, but he didn’t like it.”
I’m writting again. I don’t care what any one says of him.
I fell in love with him since I was 13 and I am in my senior
years, I will always have a place in my heart for him, I only
regret that comming to the United States (I am from another
country) I didn’t do my best to try to meet him, I will surely
have fainted in front of him, that’s the impact that would
have made in me since he was the love of my life (platonic)
of course.
An older gay friend of mine told me that it was common knowledge in the gay community at the time that Van and Keenan were involved, and that these rumors were becoming more an more widespread, so to squelch the gossip, the story was invented that Van was always around Keenan because he was in love with Evie. MGM felt Johnson needed to get married and obviously, marrying Evie would explain everything and put all rumors to rest.
James, that is entirely untrue; Van and Keenan NEVER had relations, that is pure fabrication. Please consider your sources and verify before you spread false rumors.
PS – Rosemarie, I did meet van Johnson once, after a summer theatre play in Maine. Back in the 70’s. I was a kid, I was with my parents. He was a very nice guy and very charming. He was great in the play and it was a pleasure meeting him.
To me it is not important whether he was gay or not. I grew watching his 40s movies and I am still a real fan.
I MET VAN IN HIS LATER YEARS. INTORDUCED TO HIM BY A DELIGHTFUL LADY LIVING IN NEW YORK. VAN KNEW THIS LADY AND HER MOTHER. — AFTER OUR INTRODUCTION HE AND I HAD A NICE TALK AND HE HAD A SPARKLING PERSONALITY AND A GOOD LOOKING FACE. THIS WAS WHEN HE WAS IN HIS LATE 60S–I WILL ALWAYS REMEMBER HOW NICE HE WAS TO ME. I WAS A BIG FAN ALL HIS MOVIE LIFE AND WAS THRILLED TO MEET HIM.—-ACTUALLY IT MY SECOND MEETING WITH VAN AND THE FIRST MEETING WAS AS DELIGHTFUL. HE WAS WORKING FOR JOHN KENLEY AT THE TIME WITH GLORIA DeHAVEN–THEY SEEMED TO BE GREAT FRIENDS AND LIKED EACH OTHER SO WELL.
I have always been a big fan of the “stars” of the late 40’s,50’s 60’s and etc. In the 1970’s I was happy to fly back from London with Jimmy Stewart who was seated ahead of me in first class. What a gent!He came out of WW11 an (earned) Brig. General. Clark Gable was a rear gunner in the Air Force. Van Johnson was unable to serve due to injuries….So many good actors and good movies in the 60’s,70’s 80’s etc great t.v shows. Sure miss the “good old days” of really good actors and great movies and t.v shows. I did not hear about thier sexual situations until recent years…who cares?
Yes! There is no reason to bring this personal thing out into the open, when we were youngsters we never even though about it, never had any side of objection, just accepted them all as good actors. It seems to me, that some bright spark gets it into his head, that it should be public news. I wish they would keep it to themselves, and do is all a favour and shut up. How would they like it if someone told the public something they wanted to keep quiet, that would be different.
Who really cares, the guy was a decent actor, enjoyed his movies, he can used his penis as he felt like, it was his to play with.
What ever his sexuality was he was
a wonderful entertainer, I enjoyed all
his films especially the musicals. and
that’s all that counts……????