Word: van
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Warning from the East. Moscow's Pravda sounded a warning: "Strange reports are coming from Belgium. . . . Patriots consider that Belgium will be finally freed when she is rid of her fifth column . . . inspired by General van Overstraeten [Chief Aide-de-Camp, close friend and adviser of King Leopold] ... an active agent of Nazi Germany. . . . The fact that he is at liberty while patriots are being disarmed is ... remarkable...
...picture is perhaps farthest from conviction in its rather overwritten love scenes, though these are played with unusual heart and simplicity by Van Johnson (as Lieut. Ted Lawson) and a talented, sensitive newcomer, Celia Thaxter (as Mrs. Lawson). It is best in its flying scenes-above all in an ambitious sequence which purports to take a low-flying bomber all the way from the deck of the Hornet to the roofs of Tokyo...
...offer a beautiful testimonial to their nation, and testify, as well, to the magnificent possibilities of using non-actors far more generally in films. The acting of the professionals (including Spencer Tracy as Colonel Doolittle) is also sincere and creditable. It is most pleasing, perhaps, in the case of Van Johnson, whose handling of his largest and most serious role to date is wholly admirable...
...hope it lasts." When 28-year-old Van Johnson steps out to fetch his milk off the doorstep these morings, he runs the chance of finding, as well, some disarming child in bobby socks who has traveled all the way from Idaho or Missouri or Maine just for the meeting. When he goes to take part in radio shows, he is well-hedged by policemen; they are necessary because young people mob him for any souvenir they can lay hands on. Johson's mail, at present, tallies some 8,000 letters a week-the highest mail count...
From Newport to Hollywood. Van Dell Johnson, of Swedish extraction, was brought up in Newport, R.I. At 19 he abandoned a boyish ambition to be a trapeze artist in favor of a theatrical career in New York. The career, such as it was, lasted six years. It wound up in Hollywood, under contract to Warners at $300 a week, with little work and less attention. Johnson was about to leave town when Lucille Ball gave him a fight-talk and an introduction to Metro...