Researching Van Johnson

Johnson was described as the embodiment of the "boy-next-door wholesomeness" which made him a popular Hollywood star in the 1940s and 1950s, playing "the red-haired, freckle-faced soldier, sailor, or bomber pilot who used to live down the street" in MGM films during the war years, with such films as Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, A Guy Named Joe, and The Human Comedy. He made occasional World War II films through the end of the 1960s, and he played a military officer in one of his final feature films in 1992. At the time of his death in 2008, he was one of the last surviving matinee idols of Hollywood's "golden age".

Johnson competed in the United States Auto Club National Championship from 1956 to 1959, making six starts. He also failed to qualify or crashed in practice in eleven more race attempts, including the Indianapolis 500 in 1958 and 1959. He captured his first and only race win in his sixth race start in June 1959 at the famed Langhorne Speedway.

A month later in his next race, Johnson was killed in a third-lap crash in a Non-Championship race at Williams Grove Speedway where his car was either rammed from the side by that of Joe Barzda or the wheels of their cars became entangled. Barzda's car had suffered a reported stuck throttle when entering the third turn and, after making contact, flipped over just as Johnson's. While Barzda escaped with minor injuries, Johnson died of a skull fracture and other injuries or a broken neck.

Johnson's Vargo Special was the same racer in which Dick Linder had perished a few months earlier and in which Hugh Randall would be killed three years later.

At the time of his death Johnson was reported to be a resident of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and a former resident of Anaheim, California, Bally, Pennsylvania, where he had moved about three years before his death, and Norristown, Pennsylvania.