During WWI, Van Johnson became a Hollywood star playing a freckle-faced soldiers, sailors, or bomber pilots who were the boy-next-door".
While making “A Guy Named Joe” (1943) Johnson was in serious car accident. His injuries required a metal plate inserted in his forehead and plastic surgery to try and hide the scars.
At the height of his career, Johnson was the second highest-paid actor (behind Bing Crosby) and MGM’s most valuable asset. He received 50,000 fan letters a month. But 1947, MGM Studio head Louie B Mayer became concerned about rumors that Johnson was a homosexual.
When asked about his love life or why he wasn’t married, Johnson joked that he was married to MGM
But Playwright Arthur Laurents wrote years in his own autobiography that Johnson been caught “performing” in public restrooms.
Mayer insisted that Johnson get married. The problem was that the only woman he would consider was Eve Abbott, who was already married to his best friend Keenan Wynn. Mayer blackmailed Abbott, threatening Keenan Wynn’s contract would not be renewed unless she divorced him and married Johnson.
So on January 25, 1947, Wynn & Abbott drove to Mexico and got a quickie divorce, then drove to Hollywood where Abbott and Johnson were married. Believe it or not, Keenan Wynn stayed friends with both of them.
(This is based on an interview with Abbott shortly before her death in 2004.)
Keenan’s father actor Ed Wynn once described the situation:
"I can't keep them straight. Evie loved Keenan. Keenan loves Evie. Van loves Evie. Evie loves Van. Van loves Keenan. Keenan loves Van."
By the 1960s, Johnson transition to mostly making guest appearances on Tv shows (including 2 episodes of Batman in 1966, playing the villain the Minstrel).
Johnson also pursued the theater, appearing in a number of stage musical, including “The Music Man” in London in 1961. This led to Johnson’s divorce to Abbott.
According to Abbott, in 1961, she discovered her husband was having an affair with the lead dancer in the London production of “The Music Man”.
Abbott son Ned Wynn wrote that his mother told him that Johnson had left her "for a man - a boy, really. He's the lead boy dancer."
The marriage was over but they didn’t finalize their divorce until 1968. Johnson himself said it was acrimonious, “the ugliest divorce in Hollywood history".
Johnson continued to perform in regional theater and occasional on television. He died of natural causes in 2008. (No word on what happened to that dancer from The Music Man.)
