Van Johnson was a prolific film actor of the 1940s and 1950s whose boyish good looks earned him the sobriquet “the non-singing Sinatra”.

Thanks to his film roles in 1940s war dramas, such as A Guy Named Joe and 30 Seconds Over Tokyo, he emerged as a teen idol. Having a tall, athletic physique he was a suitable heart-throb opposite leading ladies such as Esther Williams, June Allyson, Elizabeth Taylor and Lana Turner.

That, and his youthful charm, made him ideal as the “all-American boy” that MGM studios wanted to project during wartime. He appeared in 19 films between 1940 and 1945 and built up a loyal following of fans particularly among teenage girls and mothers with sons fighting in the war.

He produced his most acclaimed work in the 1950s and emerged as a character actor of note in films such as The Caine Mutiny (1954) alongside Humphrey Bogart. In a long career he proved himself to be a versatile actor equally at home playing romantic leads, gritty character parts, comic roles or cameos.

Charles Johnson was born in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1916 to an Swedish immigrant father and a half-German, half-Dutch mother. The young Johnson was brought up by his father after his mother, an alcoholic, left the family home. He moved to New York in 1934 to act and started as a dancer in a touring theatre troupe. By 1936 he got his first part on Broadway in New Faces of 1936. His appearance in another Broadway show, Rodgers and Hart’s Too Many Girls (1939), led to him being signed for Warner Brothers for $300 a week. He made one film with the studio, Murder in the Big House (1940).

His friend Lucille Ball introduced him to the MGM casting director Bill Grady, and he was cast in Somewhere I’ll Find You (1942) with Clark Gable and Lana Turner. He appeared in Pilot No. 5 and The Human Comedy in 1943, and in Two Girls and a Sailor with June Allyson the following year.

His career was interrupted by a car crash in which his DeSoto convertible was hit head on by another vehicle. Johnson had to have a metal plate inserted into his forehead, and the scar seemed to add credibility to his wartime roles. Production of A Guy Named Joe, also starring Spencer Tracy, was delayed while he recovered from the accident. The film, in which Johnson plays a pilot who comes face to face with his guardian angel, was a hit. MGM cashed in on it, and Johnson appeared in a stream of films over the next two years, including The White Cliffs of Dover (1944), Three Men in White (1944), Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944), Between Two Women (1945), Thrill of a Romance (1945) and Week-End at the Waldorf (1945).

By the age of 30 Johnson was one of MGM’s most bankable talents, but the studio was concerned that he was not romantically linked in real life. He did marry Eve Wynn in 1947, but Wynn, who divorced him in 1968, claimed that she was pressurised into the marriage by the film studio because it wanted to quash rumours about his sexual preferences.

In 1948 he teamed up with Tracy again for Frank Capra’s The State of the Union, in which he plays the campaign manager of a presidential candidate, played by Tracy, whom he persuades to reunite with his wife, played by Katharine Hepburn.

Johnson later left MGM for Columbia, for which he starred in the Oscar-nominated The Caine Mutiny (1954) with Bogart. In the film, based on the 1951 Pulitzer prize-winning novel, Johnson played Lieutenant Steve Maryk who leads a mutiny on board a navy destroyer commanded by Bogart and then faces a court martial.

Other films around this time included The Last Time I Saw Paris (1954), in which he plays a writer in love with an American girl played by Elizabeth Taylor. He enjoyed more success in the same year in the film version of the musical Brigadoon, alongside Gene Kelly. The following year he appeared with Deborah Kerr in a movie adaptation of Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair, a romantic tale set in wartime London with Kerr in 1955. Johnson continued to be acclaimed for his film work, including Wives and Lovers (1963), in which he plays a struggling writer who is supported financially by his long-suffering wife played by Janet Leigh. By then, however, Johnson’s reputation as one of Hollywood’s most bankable stars was declining.

He turned to TV, and he was perhaps best known for playing the Pied Piper of Hamelin in a film made for NBC in 1957. It was originally broadcast as a 90-minute Thanksgiving Day special and syndicated to TV stations all over the US. Other TV appearances included Batman in 1966 in which he played the Minstrel, Love Boat, Fantasy Island, Quincy M.E, McMilland & Wife and Rich Man, Poor Man.

He enjoyed something of a renaissance in 1985 when he had a role in Woody Allen’s The Purple Rose of Cairo and starred in a Broadway musical La Cage aux folles. His last film was Clowning Around (1992).

A shy man, he agonised about appearing at premieres or swanky Hollywood parties, and he wore red socks as a conversation starter.

Johnson’s former wife, Eve, predeceased him in 2004, and he is survived by their daughter.

Van Johnson, actor, was born on August 25, 1916. He died on December 12, 2008, aged 92