It’s a favorite day when my longtime editor of 30-plus years Joe Puchek sends me Hollywood Hoosier homework.

Despite writing about local claims-to-fame for the past three decades, I’m still always learning new names and history to be recalled and preserved for next generations.

My Jan. 25 missive from editor Joe, referencing a brief post on social media from Turner Classic Movies, was short and sweet: “She seems to be from Whiting, Indiana. Irene Purcell. Never heard of her! Let me know and hope things are well!”

As was my good fortune, I happened to have purchased tickets to attend last weekend’s Whiting-Robertsdale Historical Society’s Annual Groundhog’s Day Dinner Gala held Saturday at the Whiting Knights of Columbus. I had plenty of time to work the room and gather my research. Like Joe, I too had not ever heard of this actor with local roots and a heyday during the early film industry of the 1930s.

According to local historian Frank Vargo, who wrote a profile on Purcell titled “Whiting’s First Broadway and Hollywood Star?” published at www.wrhistoricalsociety.com, there are contrasting records reflecting both her August birthdate and birth location being either in Whiting or Hammond. Of course, Robertsdale’s close classification to Whiting, despite a Hammond ZIP code, could be the root of some of the confusion. Vargo lists her parents as James J. Purcell of Ohio and wife Minnie Shields Purcell originally of Canada, with baby Irene’s baptism record date notarized Aug. 30, 1896 in East Chicago, Indiana.

Vargo offers in his research the possibility that maybe employment with the turn-of-the-century new Standard Oil Co. in Whiting might have lured Irene’s parents to Northwest Indiana. A fact that is known and verified is the family soon moved to Racine, Wisconsin, since the family’s data is recorded in that location for the 1910 Federal Census.

By 1926, Irene had moved to New York and found work on stage in short-run Broadway plays like “The Ladder” (1926), “Cross Roads,” (1929) and “The First Apple” (1933). Her first casting in a feature film was MGM’s 1931 “Just a Gigolo,” starring opposite William Haines in the light comedy romance. MGM found her blonde and pert persona likable with audiences, and she starred in 1931 in a second big-screen title “The Man in Possession” opposite Robert Montgomery and Reginald Owen, the latter who would go on to play Ebenezer Scrooge in the 1938 movie version of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol.” In 1932, she shared marquee billing with two of the comedy greats of the early film era, stone-faced Buster Keaton and Jimmy “the Schnozzle” Durante in “The Passionate Plumber.”

The end of the 1930s changed Irene’s personal life and professional career path forever.

She opted to tour with the all-female cast of Clare Boothe Luce’s play “The Women” for an extended international run starting in 1938 and into 1939 in Australia, when she met a man with similar Wisconsin roots and of considerable wealth.

Herbert Fisk Johnson Jr., a graduate of Cornell University, was heir to the S.C. Johnson and Sons Wax Co., and it was while traveling on holiday to Australia that he met Irene touring in the play. The couple shared an instant attraction and following a two-year engagement, Irene married the multi-millionaire in a small private ceremony in his Chicago apartment. It was the groom’s third marriage, and Irene became the stepmother of his three children from the earlier marriages.

Famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright, who designed the S.C. Johnson and Son Wax Co. headquarters in Racine, Wisconsin in 1936, also designed Wingspread, the Johnson family estate in the farmland acreage of Racine in 1939 for his new (and third) bride.

Irene spent the second half of her newfound life as a name fixture in the society columns of newspapers. It was rare for her to mention her Hollywood or Broadway career, nor do I find any references to her earlier Indiana roots, not even mentioned in her New York Times obituary, which has her preceding her husband in death when she passed at age 70 in July 1972 at the family’s home in Racine. Her husband would follow her six years later at age 79.

A newspaper society column published in the Feb. 4, 1953, Miami News does give a glimpse into Irene’s married years “rubbing elbows” with “the money circle.” At the time the column was published, Nassau, Bahamas was the newest and latest popular playground of the rich and famous as detailed in this passage:

“Mrs. H. F. Johnson (Johnson’s Wax) visited Hobby Horse Hall today with her niece traveling companion Mrs. J. B. Gittings of Racine, Wisconsin. Mrs. Johnson, a sometimes visitor to South Florida, picked a diminutive track horse managed by Alexis Nihon, and it galloped to victory. She is also the former actress Irene Purcell, but showed no surprise or delight to see Errol Flynn and Tyrone Power roaming around the same clubhouse, for these celebrities never miss a race day opportunity. But never once did the former actress Irene dare hope for such luck to run across Mrs. Charles M. Bardwell of Wilton, Connecticut also at the club. Here’s why — the two women are both former actresses, with Mrs. Bardell’s stage name having been Arden Young. Before wealthy married lives, Irene and Arden spent nearly two years together touring the country, and foreign countries too, in the play “The Women” and neither had seen the other since!”

Philip Potempa is a journalist, published author and the director of marketing at Theatre at the Center. He can be reached at pmpotempa@powershealth.org.