A red-haired, freckled-faced, boy-next-door actor, Van Johnson became a big star at MGM in the 1940s and 50s when he came to Hollywood from the Broadway chorus. A star-struck only child, Johnson was performing at local social clubs while in high school and got a job in an off-Broadway revue, "Entre Nous" (1935) while still a teenager. He appeared in several other shows ("Eight Men of Manhattan", "New Faces of 1936") before he was hired by legendary director-playwright George Abbott as a chorus member and understudy to the three male leads in Rodgers and Hart's "Too Many Girls" (1939). The