David Fantle & Tom Johnson

Author / Historian

David Fantle has interviewed more than 250 show business personalities over the past 40 years, including such legendary names as Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, James Cagney, Lucille Ball, Bob Hope, George Burns, Milton Berle, Charlton Heston, Rod Steiger and Gregory Peck. In 2004, a compilation of his interviews were published in the book, Reel to Real: 25 years of Celebrity Profiles from Vaudeville to Movies to TV. The book was recognized by Turner Classic Movies as its May 2004 “Book of the Month.”

His latest book, written with his longtime collaborator Tom Johnson, titled C'mon, Get Happy: The Making of Summer Stock will be published in October 2023 by the University Press of Mississippi. Their second book of celebrity interviews, Hollywood Heyday: 75 Interviews with Golden Age Legends was published by McFarland and Company in 2018.

Fantle is an adjunct professor at Marquette University in Milwaukee where he teaches courses in film, television and popular culture. He is also the former Deputy Secretary of Tourism for Wisconsin and a popular speaker on the cruise ship circuit.

Tom Johnson began his collaboration with David Fantle in 1978 as a student journalist at the University of Minnesota by co-writing an award-winning arts and entertainment column for the Minnesota Daily called “Entertainment Ltd.” Johnson was a senior editor at Netflix and has written movie reviews and features for E! Online, Moviefone and People magazine, among other publications. Johnson’s entertainment writing has been recognized with a Minnesota Newspaper Association achievement award and a National Hearst Foundation award for news writing.