Celebrity

Henry Simpson Johnston came to Perry, in 1895. He wasn't born in Oklahoma, but then most white men in Indian Territory--Oklahoma didn't become a state until 1907--weren't natives. But then, in Oklahoma even the Natives weren't Native. Johnston came west looking for America's last frontier. 

"I had it in my heart to be a pioneer, and this looked to me to be the pioneer spot of the world," he wrote later. He says he "put in a week wandering around looking in saloons and tents," and decided Perry, a brand new burg after the land rush, was the place to start.

Perry is rightly proud of Henry Simpson Johnston. Stop in the new Land Rush Museum, just off the interstate, and you'll see him and read his story in a three-ring binder of famous locals. The story that put him in that binder is that Henry Simpson Johnston, a lawyer by trade, served Perry as a delegate to the state's Constitutional Convention, and, most importantly, became governor.

Not for long. He got himself impeached and was back home in two years. It wasn't just  another story of just another woman for Johnston, it was fear mostly that got him run out of the capitol, fear in the hearts of pious people who thought him too fond of weird spiritualists, like those strange foreigners who practiced yoga. Yes, yoga. He had friends, you know, who practiced yoga--and who knew where that might lead? 

It's a sorry end to what might have been a sweet story, but credit Perry with lifting up its famous residents, one of which is Henry Simpson Johnston. 

Everybody does it--or should. Hospers, Iowa, could claim Charles B. Hoeven, who rose close to President Pro Temp of the Iowa Senate and went on to 22 years in the House in Washington. So could Alton, where Hoeven practiced law. Neither do. Sioux City at least put his name to a major thoroughfare.

Hawarden keeps up the Ruth Suckow house where the once-famous novelist was a little girl a century ago. Hawarden has a old town area where they could very well feature Hope Emerson, if they wanted too. Ms. Emerson starred in vaudeville before film and television. She had an imposing face and weighed in at 200 pounds, give or take ten or twenty either side. At 6'2", she was a strong woman. In Adam's Rib she once dead-lifted Spencer Tracy right off his feet.

Can't help loving Pawnee City, NE, population 898 in 2010. They're hoping for a bump in next year's census, but if you circle the town square, you might come to believe hope is about all they have. But they have their heroes, and those heroes' names inscribed on a historical marker a block off the square. Stop by and read them for yourself. 

One of them Elizabeth "Irish" McCalla, daughter of the butcher, who was drop-dead gorgeous. She must have hauled in droves of high school boys from miles around, flies to honey. But she didn't stick around, left for Hollywood right away and worked in an aircraft factory until talent scouts fixated on her beauty and bountiful proportions. Overnight, she became a pin-up and a Vargas girl, got herself a part in River Goddess, a movie that did little more than feature four beautiful young women dressed in as little as was possible in 1952.

Irish McCalla spent a TV season as Sheena of the Jungle, too; and if all of that isn't enough, should you be in Hollywood yourself someday soon, look for her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Clothed or not, why shouldn't Pawnee City be proud?

And then there this one: Daniel Lawrence Whitney, Pawnee City, Nebraska, son of preacher/hog farmer. He's up there too, right beside Irish McCalla on the historical marker, the town's pride and joy. Whitney went to a Christian school in Florida and a Baptist college before getting into the University of Nebraska, where he met a couple of Southerners who lent him their accents, the accents he uses on stage, that is.

Soon enough he'll be here, Orpheum Theater, Sioux City, Iowa. Now Irish is long gone, even though she still pulled on leopard-skin leotards and signed autographs when she was 70. But Daniel Lawrence is much among us. He goes by Larry these days, when he leaves crowds in stitches. He has a wild TV career in comedy, and those who love him know him as "the cable guy"--Larry the cable guy. 

You got to hand it to Pawnee City. Right up there in bold gold, it says Irish McCalla and Larry the Cable Guy. Pawnee City's pride and joy. What's there left to say?