Paul Johnson, a striking blonde young man from New Jersey, was discovered by theatrical producer Lester Persky at the discotheque Ondine in mid-1965. Persky brought Johnson to the attention of Andy Warhol, who immediately moved him into The Factory, his work-living space, and made him a part of his family of superstars, factotums, and hangers-on.
Warhol described Johnson as "unbelievably good-looking - like a comic-strip drawing of Mr. America, clean-cut, handsome, very symmetrical. He seemed to be exactly six feet tall and weigh some nicer round number." He was crowned "Paul America" likely due to his having lived at the America Hotel on West 46th Street.
Johnson lived at The Factory from 1965 to 1968, where Warhol only talked to him through intermediaries, believing Johnson to be a "fool." According to Warhol superstar Ondine, "Paul America was everybody's lover....He was the personification of total sexual satisfaction. Without a brain in his head. Just beautifully vapid. He was a wonderful creature. Anybody who wanted anything from Paul could get it. He was there to satisfy. And he did."
Johnson was cast in the starring role of Warhol's 1965 film "My Hustler," his most famous role. A heavy user of LSD, Johnson claimed he didn't even remember the shoot, and was barely conscious that he was in a movie. The anti-romantic film, which consists of two 33-minute long takes, is considered a landmark of gay cinema and ranks as the most financially successful of Warhol's early narrative films.
Johnson appeared in two unreleased Warhol sequels, ("My Hustler: In Apartment" and "My Hustler: Ingrid"),as well as Dan Williams' silent film "Harold Stevenson." He and Edie Sedgwick, another Factory regular, became lovers, united in their common lust for drugs, and lived together for a brief time at New York's Chelsea Hotel.
However, while they were together, Johnson kept Sedgwick from being exploited. Their relationship was an on-again/off-again affair, as Johnson continually left New York for the country (his brother owned a farm in Indiana). Eventually, friction over control issues forced them apart.
Years later, Johnson appeared with Sedgwick in the long-gestated film "Ciao Manhattan," his second and last film role. In the movie, he played a drug dealer ingeniously named "Paul America." In a scene in which he chauffeured a character to the Pan Am building, Johnson drove off the set and vanished. The filmmakers finally found him in a Michigan jail as he had been busted driving back to his brother's farm in Indiana. The filmmakers had to finish filming his scenes in jail.
Johnson eventually became a violent sociopath, and was banished from the Warhol fold for good. He and a cohort robbed art curator Henry Geldzahler's apartment, and stole Warhol alumnus Billy Name's collection of Warhol paintings in 1977. Geldzahler reported that by the early 1980s, Johnson "was a wasted creature after they [Warhol's crowd] had finished with him. They finally washed their hands of him and let him float away. He's a poor burned-out thing living in a commune in Indiana and trying to pull himself together."
Johnson was killed by a car in Ormond Beach, Florida in 1982.
