Actor Van Johnson, 92, a WWII-era heartthrob

Van Johnson, a disarming and popular Hollywood star of 1940s musicals and comedies who later proved effective as a G.I. grunt in "Battleground" and a conflicted Naval officer in "The Caine Mutiny," has died. He was 92.

Mr. Johnson died Friday at a senior-citizens home in Nyack, N.Y.

Starting in the late 1940s, Mr. Johnson took many viewers and reviewers by surprise with his dramatic performances.

He was especially good as a presidential candidate's wily campaign manager in Frank Capra's "State of the Union" with Spencer Tracy as his client. Mr. Johnson also portrayed a sneaky aide to a general in "Command Decision"; and a cynical rifleman in William Wellman's "Battleground," a film praised for its harrowing depiction of combat during the Battle of the Bulge.

Mr. Johnson was singled out by critics as the executive officer who sells out the paranoid Capt. Queeg (played by Humphrey Bogart) in "The Caine Mutiny," based on a best-selling novel by Herman Wouk. New York Times movie reviewer Bosley Crowther praised Mr. Johnson for conveying the "distress and resolution" required of the part.

All of those films almost totally reversed the screen persona MGM studio chief Louis B. Mayer first established for Mr. Johnson, a one-time Broadway chorus boy elevated to immediate stardom during World War II.

During his early months in Hollywood, Mr. Johnson began sporting what became his off-screen trademark: red socks.

Injuries from a car crash left him with a severely scarred forehead and a metal plate on the left side of his head, preventing him from being drafted during the war. In the absence of many male rivals, he was heavily promoted and became extremely popular.

Tall and freckled, with strawberry-blond hair, he was dubbed "The Voiceless Sinatra" because of his appeal among bobby-soxers.

He was an easygoing fit for musicals with Judy Garland ("In the Good Old Summertime"), Esther Williams ("Easy to Wed," "Thrill of a Romance," "Duchess of Idaho") and June Allyson and Gloria DeHaven ("Two Girls and a Sailor").

He also played romantically inclined wartime pilots in "A Guy Named Joe" and "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo," dramas in which he showed he could hold his own against co-star Spencer Tracy.

By the end of 1945, Mr. Johnson had joined the ranks of the top-10 box-office stars, second behind Bing Crosby.

Charles Van Johnson, whose father was a plumbing contractor, was born Aug. 25, 1916, in Newport, R.I.

His parents divorced, and he was raised by a strict father who discouraged his early interest in acting. His mother, an alcoholic, disappeared from his life until 1946, when he got her a studio job. She later sued him to increase her financial support, and they settled out of court.

Mr. Johnson reportedly turned down the role of Elliott Ness in the television crime series "The Untouchables" in 1959. His film work soon dwindled, but he returned for a small role in Woody Allen's "The Purple Rose of Cairo" as a patrician 1930s film character who has trouble improvising when one of the cast members jumps off-screen into reality.

Mr. Johnson began to call himself the King of Dinner Theater, as he spent decades as a fixture on the regional stage. He also became a mainstay of guest spots on television dramas, notably "Murder, She Wrote," which starred his old MGM colleague Angela Lansbury.

Mr. Johnson had a famously difficult private life. He married Evie Abbott Wynn in Juarez, Mexico, in 1947, four hours after her divorce became final from actor Keenan Wynn, who had been Johnson's best friend.

The Johnsons, who became known for hosting sumptuous Hollywood parties, were divorced in 1962 in a bitter proceeding. Their daughter, Schuyler, became estranged from her father and wrote a scathing first-person account of him in 2005 that appeared in a London newspaper.

Mr. Johnson seemed satisfied with his life. In a 1997, he said, "I'm the luckiest guy in the world. All my dreams came true. I was in a wonderful business, and I met great people all over the world."

Information from the Los Angeles Times is included in this report.