Ben Johnson Biography

One of Hollywood’s grand character actors, Ben Johnson came from an era when some of the folks playing cowboys onscreen actually were cowboys. From an Oklahoma family whose ethnic background was typically mixed — Cherokee and Irish, at last count — Johnson had already won dozens of rodeos by the time he was a teenager. His work in Hollywood began in the early ’40s as a horse wrangler and stunt double, leading to a 1947 assignment with director John Ford. At all times preferring the real goods to so-called Hollywood talent, Ford began giving Johnson roles in classic Westerns such as She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, Wagonmaster, and Rio Grande. Originally released in 1950, Rio Grande is one of the Ford films from this period that has been treated to a deluxe soundtrack reissue from the Varese Sarabande imprint, allowing Johnson another method of wrangling the listeners’ living space besides television, video, or DVD. The latter format is ideally suited for extending the focus of original soundtrack recordings nonetheless, adding examples of Johnson’s unique speaking style to the lineup of Hank Williams songs on The Last Picture Show, for example. Johnson won an Academy Award for best supporting actor for his role in that 1971 film.