(the young Van Johnson)
watching a play. We ended up sitting beside one another. He looked as of old in the ’50s onscreen, still intact. “Hey, I played you in my high school production of Brigadoon in 1967.”
“Well, stranger things have happened,” he said.
But later I realized that I hadn’t in actuality. His was a genial comic part that I had coveted which got played by an old friend, long since gone.
I was only in the chorus–and became Jock MacVay–working up a comic bit at a final rehearsal for the line “Jock MacVay, they used him as a serving tray”, suggesting to two other boys that they hoist me up horizontally between them to be carried across the stage. The teacher, our director, the great Barry Anderson, came in just then and excitedly exclaimed “Keep it, keep it, we’ll use it!”
I liked Van Johnson in a number of movies I saw him in anyway including Brigadoon and The Caine Mutiny. I guess I was destined to resurrect him and chat with him this morning in a post-brekkie lie-down. Odd how our minds create the impossible, long-ball connections and strange meetings linking past to present consciousness.