Van johnson was gay
On screen he was pretty, with red hair and freckles, usually playing the part of the lad next door, or the soldier who lived down the street. During the 1940s he was a Hollywood heart throb besieged by legions of screaming bobby-soxers. Off screen, he always wore his registered name red socks.
On screen he personified the wholesome, cheerful boy next door, always smiling and eager. Off screen he was a gay man living a lie perpetrated by MGM, who insisted he get married in request to quell rumors of his sexual orientation.
Van Johnson(1916-2008) was the last of the big screen stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood when he died at age 92. He could dance and sing and enjoyed a solid career as a movie star, earning praise for his roles in both musicals and dramas. Photo at top of post is with co-star Esther Williams.
His marriage and eventual divorce, however, garnered as much press as his career as a Hollywood star. MGM studio boss Louis B. Mayerbribed Evie Wynn into marrying Johnson in 1947. Johnson had been caught engaging in gay sex acts in public urinals, so MGM needed to preserve its investment by having Johnson marry. Keenan Wynn was Van Johnson’s finest friend, and when
Unpacking Van Johnson
Almost everything about the real Van Johnson (Charles Van Dell Johnson, 1911-2008) is more interesting than his show career.
I’ve long wanted to give Van Johnson a nod here because he was a native Rhode Islander — and there are so rare of us! Never a superlative actor, he was always supremely likeable in pictures, but it’s that home state accent that especially grabs me. His Little Rhody origins, and the fact that he played John Alden in the soporific pseudo-classic Plymouth Adventure (1952) got me curious as to whether I was related to him, perhaps with some Colonial ancestors in ordinary. But no, he was the son of a Swedish immigrant father and a Pennsylvania Dutch mother. And all you hold to do is watch at any picture of him to go “Of course!” The matinee idol sandy hair, the sound physique, the sun-spawned explosion of freckles, the good-natured grin. Did he ever play a Swede, I wonder? How curious, if he didn’t.
Johnson’s journey into motion pictures occurred on a path which many women took, but few men. After creature in shows at social clubs as a teenager, he broke into business business as a chor
Actor Van Johnson, who died in 2007, was one of Hollywood's optimal films idols. In the 1940s, the charming screen icon was box office gold, and remained a popular presence on TV in shows like Murder, She Wrote (which starred his good friend Angela Lansbury).
However, Johnson's stardom was nearly curtailed due to a serious car accident. It happend when he and close friends performer Keenan Wynne and his wife Evie (Abbott) were en route to a movie screening.
Johnson suffered a fractured skull, had bone fragments that pierced his brain, and was left with a scar on his forehead and a long metal plate on the left side of his head.
While his scar was strategically hidden in his movies by the make-up department, it is visibble in the 1954 court-martial drama The Caine Mutiny.
Other Hidden Aspects of His Life
Beyond the cautious camoflauge of his physical scars, Van Johnson, who was gay, and the Hollywood publicity machine worked overtime to conceal his true sexuality.
For example, a portion of the New York Times obituary of the actor read as follows:
“Mr. Johnson shocked MGM and dismayed his fans in 1947 when he stole the wife of h
Partner Allen Foshko
Queer Places:
405 E 54th St, Modern York, NY 10022
Charles Van Dell Johnson (August 25, 1916 – December 12, 2008) was an American film and television star and dancer. He was a major star at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer during and after World War II. Van Johnson's long time companion and partner was Allen Foshko (October 20, 1934 - April 1, 2007), who was also his business manager.
Johnson was the embodiment of the "boy-next-door wholesomeness (that) made him a popular Hollywood actor in the '40s and '50s,"[3] 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. Johnson made occasional Society War II films through the end of the 1960s, and played a military officer in one of his final film 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".[4]
Johnson married former stage actress Eve Abbott (May 6, 1914 – October 10, 2004) on January 25, 1947, the evening after
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