[1] He left college at 19 to join a traveling Shakespearean troupe, later appearing on stage with Sol Smith Russell, Robert B. Mantell and Marie Wainwright.

[2] Johnson began as a film actor in 1905 with the Edison Studios in The Bronx, New York, appearing in the one-reel drama The White Caps directed by Wallace McCutcheon, Sr., and Edwin S. Porter.

With Lottie Briscoe, his frequent co-star at Lubin, Johnson directed and starred in The Belovéd Adventurer (1914), a 15 episode serial by Emmett Campbell Hall.

[3] After performing in more than three hundred silent film shorts and directing twenty-six, health problems ended his career in 1915.

His remains were later interred at Fairview Cemetery, Chicopee, Massachusetts, nearby Grace Episcopal Church, where his father once served as rector.