motion-picture producer, screenwriter, and director who has been classified as a perfect example of the Hollywood scriptwriter—one who works under contract and is able to write about virtually any subject. He was one of the industry's most prolific and respected writers. The Grapes of Wrath (1940) and The Woman in the Window (1944) are considered his best screenplays.

Johnson had a successful career as a journalist and short-story writer before he became a screenwriter, and a collection of his short stories, There Ought to Be a Law, was published in 1930. He also began working as an associate producer on films and from 1937 began to write and produce his own films, among them The Moon Is Down (1943), The Keys of the Kingdom (1944), and How to Marry a Millionaire (1953). During the 1950s he started to direct as well as to write and produced The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (1956), The Three Faces of Eve (1957), and The Angel Wore Red (1960). His last script was for The Dirty Dozen in 1967.