His father served in the Union Army during the American Civil War, and was wounded at the Battle of Chancellorsville.

His mother largely disinherited him, leaving her $50,000 estate (which consisted primarily of a house in Washington, D.C.) to his sister, Abby.

Johnson sued in 1927 to receive one-third of the estate, but a court of equity denied his claim in 1930.

[1] He played in Vitagraph's 1911 version of Vanity Fair with John Bunny, Leo Delaney, Rose Tapley and Helen Gardner.

In 1912 he appeared in the film Henry VIII as Cardinal Thomas Wolsey with co-stars Clara Kimball Young, Julia Swayne Gordon, and Hal Reid.