Gertrude Purcell

Gertrude M. Purcell (June 14, 1895 – May 1, 1963) was an American actress, playwright, composer, and screenwriter whose career spanned Broadway, and decades of Hollywood film work. Born in Manhattan to Cornelius and Frances Purcell, she attended Hunter College before taking extension courses at Columbia University.

At Columbia, Purcell met journalism student Leila Taylor, and the two collaborated on Voltaire, a three-act comedy. They brought the script to director Arthur Hopkins, who agreed to both direct and produce it on Broadway, making Purcell and Taylor the youngest playwrights to have a play produced on Broadway at that time. Voltaire became one of several stage credits Purcell accumulated between 1921 and 1926, a period during which she also performed as an actress. Her Broadway work included the musical Just Fancy, the musical The Madcap, the play Tangletoes, and the revue The Great Temptations, among other productions.

By the early 1930s, Purcell had transitioned to Hollywood, writing and adapting screenplays under contract at Paramount Pictures. She relocated to Los Angeles by 1931. Among her earliest screen credits was Honor Among Lovers, a Paramount production directed by Dorothy Arzner and starring Claudette Colbert and Fredric March. Working largely as a freelancer, Purcell wrote scripts for most of the major studios throughout her career. Her most prominent Hollywood credits include Destry Rides Again, The Invisible Woman, and The Lady and the Mob. She and screenwriter Edmund Hartman were assigned to write Babes on Broadway at MGM, but producer Arthur Freed removed both writers from the project and gave it to Freddy Finklehoffe. Purcell appears to have married writer-producer Islin Auster, a decade her junior, in a private ceremony in Tijuana in 1932, though by 1940 the two were no longer living together.

During the McCarthy era, Purcell testified before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, stating that she had been a member of the Communist Party from 1939 to 1942 before leaving the organization. She was identified as an important and cooperative witness in the proceedings. In the aftermath of her testimony, Purcell attempted suicide and was discovered by her landlord in her Hollywood apartment on North Grace Street and taken to the hospital. She did not work in Hollywood again following these events. Purcell died on May 1, 1963, in Los Angeles.