A Guy Named Van Johnson and His Guardian Angels By Jessica Pickens
From actors to athletes, an injury can end or postpone career. On a March night in 1943, a wreck not only could have halted a promising new film career, but actor Van Johnson was nearly killed. Johnson came to Hollywood from Broadway in 1940. For the next four years, he had brief or secondary roles in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer films, such as playing a reporter who interviews Marie Curie in MADAME CURIE (’43). The same year, he received his first credited film role in THE WAR AGAINST MRS. HADLEY (’43), which Johnson later credited as the beginning and “then things began to roll.”
In 1944, Johnson was cast in a leading role in the World War II drama, A GUY NAMED JOE (’44). Cast alongside Hollywood veterans Irene Dunne and Spencer Tracy, Johnson plays a young Army Air Corps pilot who is guided by his guardian angel, played by Tracy. The title of the film references the universal nickname United States servicemen were called abroad. “Anybody who’s a right chap is a guy named Joe,” a child says in the film while watching pilots land.
Maj. Pete Sandidge (Tracy) is a good but daring pilot, who narrowly escapes both danger and formal reprimands for his reckless actions. His girlfriend Dorinda Durston (Dunne) is also a pilot who ferries aircraft. Dorinda worries that Pete will be killed during a mission, and while bombing a Nazi aircraft carrier, Pete is killed. Finding himself in heaven, Pete is tasked with being a guardian angel flight instructor to Ted Randall (Johnson) during flight school and in combat. However, this becomes complicated when Ted and Dorinda meet and start a romance. Johnson’s character of Ted doesn’t appear until 45 minutes into the two-hour film, but this was his first leading role.
Johnson was announced for the role in February 1943. Robert Young was originally slated to play Ted, but MGM officials felt that Johnson would attract the teen audience. Nervous during his screen test with a major star like Irene Dunne, Dunne gave Johnson a pep talk and also pretended to be nervous to put Johnson at ease, as recounted in Van Johnson: MGM’s Golden Boy by Ronald L. Davis.
Spencer Tracy also helped the young actors on set. Actor Barry Nelson, who co-stars in A GUY NAMED JOE, said, “He liked young actors and he tried to help them … he was certainly a role model,” according to Spencer Tracy: A Biography by James Curtis. But on March 30, 1943, an event happened that almost caused Johnson to be replaced in the film and almost killed him.
Johnson was in his DeSoto convertible driving to a screening of the film KEEPER OF THE FLAME (’43). The passengers were his friend and actor Keenan Wynn, Wynn’s wife Evie and two servicemen friends. Another vehicle ran the red light at Venice Boulevard and Clarington Street, hitting Johnson’s DeSoto, turning the car on its side. Johnson hit his head on the windshield and then was thrown from the car into a gutter, where he hit his head again. He later said his face was wet with blood. Evie sustained a back injury and the other passengers were shaken but okay. Johnson’s condition was much more grave; a bystander even thought he was dead.
Johnson had a skull fracture, facial injuries, glass cuts on his face and neck, and the back of his head was peeled off, with his brain pierced by skull fragments. A doctor later told him he was almost decapitated, but Johnson was never unconscious. While waiting 45 minutes for an ambulance, Davis states that Johnson lost three quarts of blood.
A GUY NAMED JOE director Victor Fleming, Tracy and Dunne visited Johnson at Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital. The Chicago Daily News reported that Tracy volunteered to donate blood for Johnson, and Dunne again gave him a pep talk: “You are going to get well and you are going to finish that picture. It’s a great role and you’re not going to lose it.”
Doctors and MGM leaders weren’t so sure. Doctors initially said Johnson would never work again in movies, and he would be lucky if he lived. MGM was planning to replace Johnson in A GUY NAMED JOE with John Hodiak or Peter Lawford. But similar to his role in A GUY NAMED JOE, Tracy looked after Johnson and went to bat for him. Tracy went to MGM studio head Louis B. Mayer and said he and Dunne would walk off the set if Mayer didn’t shut down production of the film until Johnson recovered, according to the book, Irene Dunne: First Lady of Hollywood by Wes Gehring.
Due to the support from his co-stars, Johnson was kept in the film. His treatment and recovery included several surgeries, including a five-inch long metal plate on the left side of his head and a muscle graft from his right arm to help rebuild his forehead. After three months, Johnson returned to filming A GUY NAMED JOE in June 1943. He was still weak and had headaches each day, but he was thankful to be working and alive. “Things like that you never forget. I’m a man with a debt to pay,” Johnson said.
Not only did the film role bring stardom, but so did the publicity of the accident. By the time the film was released, the wreck was heavily covered and film fans rallied behind Johnson’s recovery. Johnson’s scars are visible in A GUY NAMED JOE, and you can spot a long scar on his forehead in later film roles. The injuries from his wreck and the metal plate kept Johnson from serving in World War II, but he frequently performed in military roles, and within a year was a top box office draw. Doctors said Johnson would be lucky if he performed again. Performing until 1992, luck seems to have been on Van Johnson’s side.