American actor Van Johnson was BOTD in 1916. Born Charles Van Dell Johnson in Newport, Rhode Island, his mother was an alcoholic who left the family when he was a child. After completing high school, he moved to New York City in 1935, joining the off-Broadway revue Entre Nous as a dancer. He made his Broadway debut in the musicals New Faces of 1936 and the Lucille Ball vehicle Too Many Girls, and was cast as Gene Kelly’s understudy in the original Broadway production of Pal Joey. Fellow redhead Ball introduced him to a Hollywood casting agent, and he was eventually signed with Warner Brothers. His 1942 film debut, in crime drama Murder in the Big House, failed to impress the studio, and he was let go after six months. He had better success at MGM, who utilised his clean-cut good looks and boy-next-door wholesomeness in The Human Comedy with Mickey Rooney and A Guy Named Joe with Spencer Tracy and Irene Dunne. Both films were huge box office successes, making him a star. Exempted from military service in World War Two due to injuries sustained in a car accident, he nonetheless played soldiers in Two Girls and a Sailor, Thirty Seconds over Tokyo, Command Decision and Battleground. By 1945, he was tied with Bing Crosby on the list of Top 10 Box Office Stars, nicknamed “the Silent Sinatra” for his winning appeal as a romantic lead. He appeared again with Tracy and Katharine Hepburn in State of the Union, and starred with Judy Garland in In the Good Old Summertime. Though rarely cast in dramatic roles, he won praise for his performance in The Caine Mutiny, and had a major success with the film of Lerner & Loewe‘s musical Brigadoon, both released in 1954. As his film career waned, he continued to act in theatre, scoring a success in the 1961 London production of musical The Music Man. His remaining career was spent mainly in television, playing The Minstrel in two episodes of camp TV series Batman, and descending into guest appearances in The Love Boat and Murder, She Wrote. In 1985, aged 69, he made an impressive comeback, appearing in the Broadway production of La Cage aux Folles and Woody Allen’s film The Purple Rose of Cairo. Gay and closeted for most of his career, Johnson married actress Eve Abbott in 1947, a union engineered by MGM to silence rumours about Johnson’s homosexuality. Somehow, they managed to produce a daughter, remaining together until 1961, when Johnson began an affair with a young male dancer from The Music Man. Retiring from acting in 1990, he spent his final years in New York City, estranged from his adult daughter. He died in 2008, aged 92.