Modern Screen (Dec 1949 - Nov 1950)

Van Johnson shoots Evie on the flagstone terrace of their homo in Santa Monica. One of Hollywood's "showplace:," it's almost too big for their comfort. Like all proud papas, Van is an avid cameraman, has a three year record of his children. Bound volumes of all his own movie roles are on the shelves. Van and Evie are both interested in decorating. She converted this toy coal-burning stove, complete v/ith pots and pans, into a lamp — it really works! van around the house continued austere and forbidding, but the people inside destroy that impression. The master of the house, for instance, likes to wash his argyle socks in the imported black marble sink in the bathroom. No one else can touch his argyles ; the colors might run. For him they stand still as he puts the socks on stretchers and hangs them along the wall. The bathroom, with its imported marble and indirect lighting, and the silver-leaf dressing room next to it are fancy enough for a C. B. DeMille epic. In fact, as soon as you enter the house, you feel like looking for an usher. The large entrance hall leads to a cocoa-and-white reception room where built-in white couches stand on either side of the fireplace. Oil paintings (one of them is a street scene by Van), soft fur rugs and green plants in wall boxes complete the decor. "There's too much space, and not enough room," says Evie. "Exactly," says Van. What they mean is, they'd like more room for the children and less for the furniture. Both Evie and Van have wonderful ideas about decorating, but so many pieces are built in (the couches, the record player, the bookshelves) they don't get much chance to express themselves. Evie finds an outlet in lamps. She can buy almost anything and make it into a lamp. There's a brass toy stove with tiny kitchen utensils on it that she transformed, and an old coffee mill that won't ever see a coffee grain again. Upstairs, in her bedroom, there are blackamoor lamps on bedside ladder tables. The bed, itself, is extra-size with an upholstered headboard. Here, as in almost all the rooms, the walls become windows above a height of eight feet, and great eucalyptus trees look in. Upstairs, too, is the boys' wing, and the den. You reach them by way of a thickly-carpeted staircase. The den is at one end of a room twenty by forty feet in size. In one corner of the room there's a small piano, crowded bookshelves and ten-foo. long couches, as well as a leather game table and chairs. At the den end, there are more bookshelves, a large, triangular desk, and Van's home-movie equipment. Leather bound volumes of his movies are stacked on the shelves. (He's just finished The Big Hangover, and the Duchess of Idaho). Evie calls that collection, "the blood, sweat and tears section." They also have a collection of movie prints, and a cameraman — namely, Van. You can find him almost any free day — when he isn't playing tennis with Evie, or swimming, or off skiing at Aspen with the Gary Coopers — sitting on the floor surrounded by miles of black celluloid. "Got some wonderful stuff," Van says. "A movie of Liz Taylor on vacation — that's a pip. Movie of Lana Turner's daughter's birthday party. And a complete record of our kids for the last three years." (That's how long Evie and Van have been married.) Van doesn't like other people to take pictures of his children. It's not professional jealousy; he just doesn't want them posing when they feel like playing. "It's all right if the kids like to pose," he says. "But ours aren't hams at heart." The boys, Neddy and Tracy (Evie's children by her marriage to Keenan Wynn) like to stand around and watch Van. It doesn't matter what he's doing — painting in oils, splicing a film, reading a book — they'll be there at his elbow. Or else they'll be off spoiling their kid (Continued on page 77) 52