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Leon Richard Johnson
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Sound recorder.
Born at Ada, Minnesota on 3 June 1943, son of Neil and Naomi Johnson, he grew up on the family grain farm near Borup, Minnesota, spending several winters at Santa Barbara, California. He attended Concordia College at Moorhead, Minnesota but did not complete a degree at that time. In the mid-1960s, he moved to Colorado where he worked on construction in the summers and maintained ski trails in the winters. In 1966, he enlisted in the US Army Reserves and served at bases in Texas and Lousiana before being discharged honorably in the 1970s. He returned to Concordia and received a Fine Arts degree in 1972.
He met his first wife Joanne Jackson at a ski resort and they were married in 1967. They lived at Minneapolis, Minnesota where he worked in advertising. A visit to Churchill in the early 1970s exposed him to Inuit art and he eventually moved to Winnipeg where he and his wife became active in the arts community and they had a daughter. They were founding members of the WInnipeg Film Group and he was its first Coordinator. They were involved in early projects of the newly established National Film Board office at Winnipeg.
Through the late 1970s and early 1980s, he was a board member of the Manitoba Puppet Theatre and made several films, including Christmas in Brandon, PARK, Okee Doke, and Good Afternoon, Royal Tower. In this period, he began to focus on work as a production sound recorder and mixer. He travelled the world with film projects and was the first person to record digital sound for a major film production, the IMAX film Heartland (1987). His recording credits ultimately exceeded 150 films and television series, including Tommy Douglas: Keeper of the Flame (1986), The Arrow (1997), Mark Twain’s America (1998), Capote (2005), The Lookout (2007), Less than Kind (2008), the Daughters of the Country series, Curse of Chucky (2013), A Dog’s Purpose (2017), and Night Hunter (2018). He received two Gemini awards for his work on Heads (1994) and The Arrow (1997).
While working in film, he met his second wife, costume designer Charlotte Penner (1952-2019) and they had a son. The couple lobbied actively for unionization in Manitoba's film industry.
He died at Winnipeg on 10 March 2023. Shortly before he died, Cinematheque premiered The Yardmen, a short film about railway workers in Winnipeg's CPR Yards that he had directed and filmed in the late 1970s. It was edited and completed by filmmaker Kevin Nikkel in 2022.
Obituary [Charlotte Penner], Winnipeg Free Press, 4 January 2020.
Obituary, Winnipeg Free Press, 9 March 2024.
“Remembering Leon Johnson,” Winnipeg Film Group, 16 March 2023.
We thank Davis Johnson for providing additional information used here.
This page was prepared by Gordon Goldsborough.
Page revised: 27 March 2024
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