Tor’s terrifying bulk and grim, bald visage made him a popular attraction in the wrestling circuit, which itself was rapidly becoming popular in America. By the time the Depression hit, he was in the United States, barnstorming across the country, winning match after match as the “Super Swedish Angel.” He was internationally recognized as one of the greatest wrestlers in the world, and his success should be no surprise, considering that the only living man who had the strength to pick up Tor Johnson and throw him was Tor Johnson. He shaved off his thick mane of Viking hair to became a professional wrestler and quickly worked his way up the ranks.
Lacking much in the way of education, he turned his great strength into his… uh… greatest strength. Growing up in Kalmar, a small industrial town on the Baltic Sea, his job prospects were mostly limited to “forklift driver” (or maybe just “forklift”). The genetics of a hundred Vikings swam down his line of ancestry and pooled into a pile of flesh big enough to exert its own gravitational pull. Standing 6'3" tall and topping out at over 400 pounds at his heaviest, he was an implacable mountain of manhood with the kind of casual, lumbering strength usually reserved for giants in fairy tales. Karl Oscar Tore Johansson was born in Kalmar, Sweden in 1903. Well, to put it more precisely, Tor Johnson had bulk. It’s an awe-inspiring, almost mystical trait that few humans possess, something that can’t be learned in any film school.
Marilyn Monroe, Clark Gable, John Wayne all of these greats had something about them that rendered the audience incapable of taking their eyes off of them, even when said actors were very clearly sleepwalking through their scenes to collect a paycheck. No, to make a splash in Hollywood, an actor needs something more, something almost indefinable, a kind of magnetism, a certain je ne se quois that sets him or her apart from the rest of the people standing around on the set while the Director of Photography yet again argues with the Director on the framing of yet another talky two-shot.Įvery successful actor in movie history had this. And, sometimes, not even that (yes, Shia Labeouf, I’m talking directly to you). A successful movie actor has to be more than merely a competent performer.
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