NEW YORK (AP) – Van Johnson, whose boy-next-door wholesomeness made him a popular Hollywood star in the ’40s and ’50s with such films as “30 Seconds over Tokyo,” “A Guy Named Joe” and “The Caine Mutiny,” died Friday of natural causes. He was 92.

Johnson died at Tappan Zee Manor, an assisted living center in Nyack, N.Y., said Wendy Bleisweiss, a close friend.

With his tall, athletic build, handsome, freckled face and sunny personality, the red-haired Johnson starred opposite Esther Williams, June Allyson, Elizabeth Taylor and others during his two decades under contract to MGM.

He proved to be a versatile actor, equally at home with comedies (“The Bride Goes Wild,” “Too Young to Kiss”), war movies (“Go for Broke,” “Command Decision”), musicals (“Thrill of a Romance,” “Brigadoon”) and dramas (“State of the Union,” “Madame Curie”).

More recently, he had a small role in 1985 as a movie actor in Woody Allen’s “The Purple Rose of Cairo.”

A heartthrob with bobbysoxers – he was called “the non-singing Sinatra” – Johnson married only once. In 1947 at the height of his career, he eloped to Juarez, Mexico, to marry Eve Wynn, who had divorced Johnson’s good friend Keenan Wynn four hours before.

The marriage produced a daughter, Schuyler, and ended bitterly 13 years later. “She wiped me out in the ugliest divorce in Hollywood history,” Johnson told reporters.

Johnson’s big break, with Irene Dunne and Spencer Tracy in the wartime fantasy “A Guy Named Joe,” was almost undone by tragedy.

On April 1, 1943, his DeSoto convertible was struck head-on by another car. “They tell me I was almost decapitated, but I never lost consciousness,” he remembered. “I spent four months in the hospital after they sewed the top of my head back on. I still have a disc of bone in my forehead five inches long.”

He was born Charles Van Dell Johnson on Aug. 25, 1916, in Newport, R.I., where his father was a real estate salesman. From his earliest years he was fascinated by the touring companies that played in Newport theaters, and after high school he announced his intention to try his luck in New York. He arrived in 1934 with $5 and his belongings packed in a straw suitcase.

Johnson’s tour of casting offices landed him nothing but chorus jobs. He went to Hollywood for a bit in the movie of “Too Many Girls,” then was signed to a Warner Bros. contract.

“First the zenith, then the nadir,” Johnson recalled. “Warner Bros. dropped me after “Murder in the Big House.”‘

The discouraged young actor was about to return to New York when Ball, whom he knew on “Too Many Girls,” invited him to dinner at Chasen’s restaurant.

“Lucille tried to cheer me up, but I just couldn’t seem to laugh,” he said in a 1963 interview. “Suddenly she said to me, “There’s Billy Grady over there; he’s MGM’s casting director. I’m going to introduce you, and at least you’re going to act like you’re the star I think you will be.”‘