‘Evie’ Wynn Johnson, 90; Wife of Keenan Wynn, Van Johnson

Eve “Evie” Wynn Johnson, 90, an actress and the former wife of actors Keenan Wynn and Van Johnson, died July 19 at Florida Medical Center in Lauderdale Lakes, Fla., of complications from a broken hip.

As Eve Abbott, the young actress toured with Katherine Cornell. But she gave up her own career in 1939 when she married Wynn. In the 1940s, the Wynns befriended popular bachelor leading man Van Johnson, and were involved along with him in an automobile accident as he was driving.

In 1947, Eve Wynn and Johnson traveled to El Paso, separately and under assumed names, and then went to Juarez, Mexico, where she divorced Wynn and married Johnson on Jan. 25, 1947. As Mrs. Johnson, she came into her own as the vivacious and well-dressed doyenne of lavish parties in the glamorous days of Hollywood. But that marriage also ended in divorce, in 1962.

Johnson, who had lived in Florida for the past several years, sold 15 of her storied dresses and other items at Boston’s Skinner Inc. auction house in 1999. Commenting that she was simply cleaning out her overcrowded closet, she parted with two gowns she had worn to Academy Award ceremonies she attended with Johnson.