Biography

A prize belt buckle that he won for calf roping was stolen from his car when he visited Houston in 1976; on a repeat visit a decade later, he was an on-air guest on radio station KIKK when a caller returned the buckle to him.

Had initially turned down the role of Sam the Lion in La dernière séance (1971) when it was first offered to him by Peter Bogdanovich because he thought the script was "dirty", and he did not approve of swearing and nudity in motion pictures. Bogdanovich appealed to John Ford, who got Johnson to change his mind as a favor to him. With the permission of Bogdanovich, Johnson rewrote his role with the offensive words removed. Johnson went on to win a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for playing the role.

Johnson and his father, Ben Johnson, Sr., were champion steer ropers. The senior Johnson was also a cattleman and rancher who was inducted into the Hall of Great Westerners of the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in 1961. The younger Johnson was inducted into the Hall of Great Western Performers of the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in 1982.

Died of a heart attack while visiting his mother in the retirement community where, not only she, but he himself lived.

Johnson got his first big break as a member of John Ford's stock company in the late 1940s. However, during the making of Rio Grande (1949), Johnson and Ford had a brief verbal argument. All seemed well afterward, and nothing further was said of it, so Ben assumed it was completely blown over. However, Ford didn't use Johnson again in another picture for 14 years, when Ben played a small role in Les Cheyennes (1964). Johnson's lifelong friend Harry Carey Jr. said he believed the reason was that when Ford was casting Le soleil brille pour tout le monde (1953), Johnson's agent heard that Ford wanted him for the role, called Ford--without Johnson's knowledge--and demanded a hefty salary. Outraged at having been squeezed like that, Ford held it against Johnson, and used that and the argument they had during "Rio Grande" as an excuse not to use him again. They did manage to maintain a friendly relationship nonetheless.

Everybody in town's a better actor than I am, but none of them can play Ben Johnson.

You know, I'd say that aside from Mr. Ford's [John Ford] help in my career, I'd lay any success I've had to not expecting too much. I never expected to become a star and was always content to stay two or three rungs down the ladder and last awhile. When I do get a little ahead, I see what I can do to help others.

[on leaving Oklahoma for Hollywood, where he became a horse wrangler for Howard Hawks on Le banni (1943)] I'd been making a dollar a day as a cowboy, and my first check in Hollywood was for $300. After that, you couldn't have driven me back to Oklahoma with a club.

[speaking about how his life was affected by winning the Oscar for La dernière séance (1971)] After I won that old Oscar, everybody thought I knew something. I didn't know any more than I did before I won it, but they thought I did.

When I left Oklahoma, I wasn't even sure which direction Hollywood was, but I could ride a horse pretty good. I had no formal education to speak of. I was a cowboy from the time I hit the ground. I knew if a cow weighed 1,000 pounds and bought $10 a hundred, I knew how much that was. But I was fortunate because people accepted my character. I ran my life a certain way. I didn't hobnob with the elites because I didn't do drugs and I didn't drink a lot of whiskey . . . oh, I might take a drink now and then, but you know what I mean.