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 was born in Newport, Rhode Island, the only child of Loretta (née Snyder) and Charles E. Johnson, a plumber and later a real-estate salesman. His father was born in Sweden and came to the United States as a child, and his mother had Pennsylvania Dutch ancestry. His mother was allegedly an alcoholic who left the family when he was a child, and he was not close to his father.
Johnson performed at social clubs in Newport while in high school. He moved to New York City after graduation in 1935 and joined the off-Broadway revue Entre Nous.

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