He was Hollywood’s fresh faced hero, but Van Johnson caused more than certain pigtailed viewers’ hearts to flutter. The characters he played could also be very dangerous to the opposite sex,
Even the man-breaking Elizabeth Taylor suffered, cinematically, under his boyish spell.
Sparingly adapted from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Babylon Revisited, 1954’s The Last Time I Saw Paris found Johnson’s Charles Wills initially dating Donna Reed’s elegant yet doting Marion. But with one look at Taylor’s spoiled Helen, Marion’s younger sister, Johnson/Charles is smitten and Marion is quickly a mere footnote in his life. The tempestuous relationship between Charles and Helen soon produces a child…and mountains of heartache.
That destructive energy reaches its zenith, one rainy night, when the combative, overly emotional Helen is caught in a downpour after a battle with her disapproving spouse. Her deathbed gasps change Charles’ life forever.
Johnson lost another celluloid paramour due to excessively stormy weather in the three hankie Miracle in the Rain, released two years after Paris.
Here it is Jane Wyman’s shy, inexperienced Ruth who falls under the spell of G.I. Arthur, whom Johnson plays with a worldly sense of charm.
Wyman’s character here is the exact opposite of Taylor’s, but Arthur proves to be quite the lady killer with her, as well, if only by accident.
After a tender courtship, Ruth is misinformed that Arthur has died overseas. Distraught and depressed, she exposes herself to the elements. Thus, pneumonia ridden and nearly delirious, she perishes in his arms as he reaches her just in time for her final collapse.
The moral of these stories?!? Avoid those charmers, ladies and gents!
Johnson’s Horror Express:
As with many Golden Age greats before him, Johnson appeared in a couple Euro Horror efforts in the latter days of his career: 1982’s The Scorpion with Two Tails and 1989’s beast in the wild entry, Killer Crocodile.
Big Gay Horror Fan 