Joseph McMillan Johnson (September 15, 1912 – April 17, 1990) was a leading Hollywood art director born in Los Angeles.
He worked as a sketch artist for designs on Gone with the Wind in 1939, and was heavily involved with the creation of the special effects for The Wizard of Oz that same year.
He worked on most of Selznick's major productions including Duel in the Sun (1946), The Paradine Case (1947) and Portrait of Jennie (1948), for which he won an Oscar for the visual effects.
[1] A frequent collaborator with Alfred Hitchcock, (Rear Window in 1954 was followed by To Catch a Thief in 1955 which earned him another Academy Award nomination), Johnson was forced to take a break from Hollywood during the McCarthy witch hunts.
When the McCarthy hysteria of Communism settled down, Johnson returned to Hollywood, earning Oscar nominations for his art direction on The Facts of Life in 1960 and the expensive remake of Mutiny on the Bounty in 1962, and for visual effects on George Stevens's religious epic The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965) and the John Sturges thriller Ice Station Zebra in 1968.