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(1924– ). American actor.
Today, because
popular opinions of Johnson are so thoroughly Gilliganized, we forget that he
had enjoyed an extensive career in film and television long before he emerged
as a sitcom star. The sort of man readily described as ruggedly handsome,
Johnson had mostly found employment in crime dramas and westerns, where he
typically worked in supporting roles on both sides of the law. However, he was
also a favorite of science fiction director Jack ARNOLD, who used him in three
of his films, and he appeared at least once in several of the series that
defined science fiction in the 1950s and early 1960s. There was, however, a distinct pattern in the science fiction parts
that he played. Somehow, unlike other actors, Johnson could not rise
above the second-tier status he had endured in other genres; somehow,
he could not inspire confidence on the screen. Though often cast as
an educated person, he was invariably asked to appear weak, incompetent,
and/or overwhelmed. In It Came from Outer Space, he portrayed
a man turned into a zombie by alien visitors, and in The Space Children,
he was a parent thwarted by alien-inspired children. In This Island
Earth, as a scientist who is insufficiently manly to win the love
of comely Faith DOMERGUE or to accomplish
anything against their Metalunan overseers, he desperately turns to
athletic newcomer Rex REASON for assistance, then foolishly sacrifices
his own life during a senseless escape attempt. For Roger CORMAN,
Johnson couldn't stand up to a Crab Monster; for Rod SERLING,
he was involved in two botched endeavors in time travel, first (in
"Execution") getting murdered by the Western criminal he inadvertently
transported into the present, then (in "Back There") visiting the
past and proving unable to save Abraham Lincoln from assassination;
and in the Outer Limits episode "Specimen: Unknown," Johnson
must quiver in fear facing the threat of Nasty Flowers from Outer
Space. Clearly, in the milieu of science fiction film, this actor
was not getting any respect.
How ironic it
was, then, that Johnson was then called upon to serve as the brilliant
Professor of Gilligan's Island, finally surrounded by characters so
impossibly inept that even Johnson at last could seem like the cool and capable
one, the person who was regularly called upon to deliver absurd explanations
and devise makeshift remedies for the series' science-fictional quandaries. In
the original theme song, he may have been only part of "the Rest," but he soon
earned his star billing as "the Professor" and unexpectedly often was the
center of attention.
Still,
achieving the status of the most intelligent character on Gilligan's Island
isn't exactly the sort of thing that impresses casting directors, and one has
to look very hard to find Johnson in any other environment after 1964, though
he is briefly observed in the Holy Land during The Greatest Story Ever Told
and made unheralded guest appearances on the series The Invaders, Wonder
Woman, and Beyond Westworld. When Johnson's telephone rang, though,
it was most often an invitation to yet again sleepwalk through the part of the
Professor—as a voice for two animated series for kids, in three increasingly
awful television movies, in Gilligan-related cameos for other series, in
personal appearances at conventions of Gilligan fans, and in nostalgic
documentaries respectfully analyzing the most atrocious series in television
history to be recognized as a classic. Of course, steady work of any sort can
be a blessing to a performer in his declining years, and Johnson appears
amicably reconciled to his fate as he greets visitors to his website, "The
Professor's Place." Still, there must be moments when Johnson wistfully wonders
what might have been if he had never embarked upon that Three Hour Cruise.
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