Background
Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, the son of Review Myron A. Johnson, Arthur Vaughan Johnson left college at 19 to join a traveling Shakespearean troupe.
Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, the son of Review Myron A. Johnson, Arthur Vaughan Johnson left college at 19 to join a traveling Shakespearean troupe.
He later appeared on stage with Sol Smith Russell, Robert B. Mantell and Marie Wainwright. Johnson began as a film actor in 1905 with the Edison Studios in The Bronx, New York, appearing in the one-reel drama The White Caps directed by Wallace McCutcheon, Senior, and Edwin South. Porter. In 1908, he went to work for Biograph Studios, where he acted in films directed by Doctorate.W. Griffith including Resurrection (1909) and In Old California (1910), the first movie Griffith ever shot in Hollywood.
At Biograph, Arthur Johnson performed with stars such as Mary Pickford and Florence Lawrence.
Johnson was reputed to be Griffith"s favorite actor. In 1911 he accepted an offer from Lubin Studios in Philadelphia that allowed him to direct as well as acting
With Lottie Briscoe, his frequent co-star at Lubin, Johnson directed and starred in The Belovéd Adventurer (1914), a 15 episode serial by Emmett Campbell Hall. After performing in more than three hundred silent film shorts and directing twenty-six, health problems ended his career in 1915.
According to an interview published nine months before his death, Arthur V. Johnson married actress Maude Webb when he was 20 years old.
The couple had a daughter who lived with Johnson"s parents. He died of tuberculosis in Philadelphia in 1916, a few weeks short of his fortieth birthday. Johnson"s funeral services were held in Philadelphia and his remains later interred at Fairview Cemetery, Chicopee, Massachusetts.