He was a friend of my mother's, in the years at the end of and right after WWII, when many of these Hollywood folks were still coming apart at the seams after the war. A lot of them were in the military, and they needed help just like a lot of the others. She was a WAC psychiatric social worker stationed at a hospital in California (DeWitt). Billy Rose and Stan Freburg were there and she also counted them as friends, at the time, but years passed and she never kept in touch.

Van Johnson was part of that larger-than-life studio system, and I saw all of his comedies and musicals. And who could forget The Caine Mutiny? He may not have been classically great, but he was very good in his time.

SRS