I read today that actor Van Johnson died last week. He’s not on the tip of many tastemaker tongues these days but back in the middle of the 20th Century he was hot stuff. I know this because my father told me it was true.
My dad was a modest movie buff, a fan of ‘40s stuff like A Guy Named Joe, Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo and State Of The Union with my man Spencer Tracy. I suspect that my movie obsession comes from my father and, by extension, from actors like Van Johnson. Of the movies I’ve mentioned, he was in every one.
Van wasn’t just a “serious” actor, he also did musicals like Brigadoon and Damn Yankees and even The Music Man on stage in London. I read once that one of his first screen roles was in Too Many Girls in the esteemed role of Chorus Boy #41. I didn’t know much about this aspect of Mr. Johnson when I met him briefly in the ‘80s. He was not at the peak of his career at this point but he done a cameo in Woody Allen’s Purple Rose Of Cairo in ’85. At that time I worked for a video company that released the film on cassette— VHS and Beta!
So, when I heard that he was to be the guest of honour at a gala held annually in the Canadian video industry, I was kind of curious. The promoter of this annual affair had an admirable knack for getting a major Hollywood name of the heritage variety to appear at these events year after year. I don’t remember what year this was, exactly, but I’m sure it was late ‘80s because my father was seriously ill. Candidly, this made the flesh and blood appearance of one of his favourites all the more poignant for me.
The affair was an awards dinner held in a hotel ballroom. Everyone dressed in stuff they usually only wore to funerals. We assembled at tables of 10 before a long dais reserved for video industry elite; by this I mean Canadian video industry elite and by that I mean the folks who spent the most money advertising in the magazine published by the event’s host. At the centre of this long dais was a podium; your importance in the industry was inversely proportional to the distance of your chair from the central podium. Van Johnson sat in the first seat to the podium’s right.
This particular year, in order to make presenters and winners seem more august, the event designer had decided to push the section of the dais that held the podium forward by about 4 feet, giving it the appearance of the prow of a ship. Unfortunately, said designer had not seen to the addition of an offsetting 5 feet of flooring behind the podium to compensate for where the prow section was not. As much as the prow protruded aforeship, it was absent in the aft.
We learned this rather early when a local actor known for playing a cheerful bald shopkeeper in lottery commercials strode robustly toward the podium, waving like a vaudevillian. Just short of the lectern, he dropped like an anchor. Not even his buoy-like head was left bobbing. Fortunately the man was not hurt but those happy-go-lucky lottery spots were never the same to me. I kept imagining the poor bugger on the verge of a trap door.
However, the hapless micro-celebrity had done us all a service, alerting us to the dais’ design flaw. Because we were mid-occasion, of course, the show did indeed go on. They did not stop to fix the absence of back end on the prow of the dais. But that absence did not escape the attention of an observant few. One of those was Van Johnson.
Now, anyone who has watched the Oscars knows that these events, even modest Canadian knockoffs of these events, are likely to be long. Longer than the dais. Longer still than the line at the bar. It was a cash bar, of course, but not, it must be said, for Mr. Johnson. It may have been my own evolving state of mind but it seemed to me that, as the wine flowed, our guest of honour grew less and less circumspect and, it must be said, more and more theatrical. He started the night in A Guy Named Joe and progressed slowly but noticeably towards Brigadoon.
Of course, this may have been only my perception as unaccustomed as I was, and am, to film royalty. But this is where I enter the story. In the latter hours of the long fermented evening, a film my company represented won an award. It was my moment to walk the dais. Although the left end of it was closer, I chose to approach the podium from the right side of the long dais in order to walk by Mr. Van Johnson. Such was my admiration and the desire to have a better story for my next visit to my father.
I was not disappointed. Just as I approached the left shoulder of the great man, he turned to face me and, looking directly at me, said something that has guided my steps every day since. Looking to his left and gesturing dramatically to his right, Van Johnson locked eyes with me and bellowed, “Don’t fall into the fucking pit, son!”
When I told this tale to my father, he shook with laughter. Van Johnson, however inadvertently, had once again brought light into the life of a fan. My father died shortly thereafter. I think of him a lot. I think less often of his favourite, Van Johnson. But tonight I’m thinking about them both. And I’m grateful for the moments Van Johnson brought to my father, and by extension, to me.
David Partridge