Melvyn Douglas
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| Melvyn Douglas | ||||||||||||||
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| Birth name | Melvyn Edouard Hesselberg | |||||||||||||
| Born | April 5, 1901 Macon, Georgia | |||||||||||||
| Died | August 4 1981 (aged 80) New York City, New York | |||||||||||||
| Spouse(s) | Rosalind Hightower Helen Gahagan | |||||||||||||
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Melvyn Edouard Hesselberg (April 5, 1901 – August 4, 1981), better known as Melvyn Douglas, was an American actor who won all three of the entertainment industry's highest awards, two Oscars, one Tony and an Emmy.
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[edit] Biography
[edit] Early life
Douglas was born in Macon, Georgia to Edouard Gregory Hesselberg, a Jewish concert pianist and composer from Riga, Latvia, and Lena Priscilla Shackelford, a Tennessee-born American and Mayflower descendant.[1] Though his father taught music at a succession of colleges in the U.S. and Canada, Douglas never graduated from high school.
[edit] Career
Douglas developed his acting skills with stock companies in Sioux City, Iowa; Evansville, Indiana; Madison, Wisconsin, and Detroit, Michigan. He had a long theatre, film and television career as a lead player, stretching from his 1930 Broadway role opposite his future wife, Helen Gahagan, in Tonight or Never until just before his death. He was the hero in the 1932 horror film The Vampire Bat and the sophisticated leading man in 1935's She Married Her Boss. He played opposite Joan Crawford in several films, most notably: A Woman's Face (1941) and with Greta Garbo in three films: As You Desire Me (1932), Ninotchka (1939) and Garbo's final film Two-Faced Woman (1941).
During World War II, Douglas served first as a director of the Arts Council in the Office of Civilian Defense, and then in the United States Army. He returned to more mature roles as in The Sea of Grass and Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House. As Douglas grew older, he took on the older-man and father roles, in such movies as The Americanization of Emily, Hud, The Candidate and I Never Sang for My Father, for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor. In 1959 he made his musical debut playing Captain Boyle in the ill-fated Marc Blitzstein musical Juno, based on Sean O'Casey's Juno and the Paycock.
In addition to his Academy Awards (see below), Douglas won a Tony for his Broadway lead role in the 1960 The Best Man by Gore Vidal, and an Emmy for his 1967 role in Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night. Douglas' final screen appearance was in The Hot Touch (1982). Douglas has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one for movies at 6423 Hollywood Blvd. and one for television at 6601 Hollywood Blvd.
[edit] Private life
Douglas was married briefly to Rosalind Hightower and they had a son: Gregory Hesselberg (1920). In 1931 Douglas married actress-turned-politician Helen Gahagan. As a three-term Congresswoman, she was Richard Nixon's opponent for the United States Senate seat from California in 1950.
Nixon accused Gahagan of being a Communist because of her opposition to the House Un-American Activities Committee. Nixon went so far as to call her "pink right down to her underwear". It was Gahagan who gave Nixon his epithet "Tricky Dick." Douglas and Gahagan had two children: Peter Gahagan Douglas (1933) and Mary Helen Douglas (1938). During the 1940s/1950s, while still married to Douglas, Gahagan had a long-standing and semi-public affair with Lyndon Johnson (as documented by Robert Caro in his biography of Johnson)[citation needed], however the couple remained married for many years to come until Helen Gahagan Douglas' death in 1980 from cancer. Melvyn Douglas died a year later, in 1981, in New York City,
Film and television actress Illeana Douglas is Melvyn Douglas' granddaughter by his son, Gregory Hesselberg.
[edit] Academy Awards and Nominations
- 1980 - Won - Best Actor in a Supporting Role - Being There
- 1971 - Nominated - Best Actor in a Leading Role - I Never Sang for My Father
- 1964 - Won - Best Actor in a Supporting Role - Hud
| Awards | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Ed Begley for Sweet Bird of Youth | Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor 1963 for Hud | Succeeded by Peter Ustinov for Topkapi |
| Preceded by Christopher Walken for The Deer Hunter | Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor 1979 for Being There | Succeeded by Timothy Hutton for Ordinary People |
[edit] Partial filmography
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[edit] Further reading
- Douglas, Melvyn; Tom Arthur (1986). See You At The Movies : The Autobiography of Melvyn Douglas. Lanham, MD: University Press of America. ISBN 0819153907.
[edit] References
[edit] External links
- Melvyn Douglas at the Internet Movie Database
- Melvyn Douglas at the TCM Movie Database
- Melvyn Douglas at the Internet Broadway Databasede:Melvyn Douglas
es:Melvyn Douglas fr:Melvyn Douglas it:Melvyn Douglas no:Melvyn Douglas pt:Melvyn Douglas fi:Melvyn Douglas sv:Melvyn Douglas
Categories: All articles with unsourced statements | Articles with unsourced statements since July 2007 | 1901 births | 1981 deaths | American film actors | American military personnel of World War II | American stage actors | American television actors | Best Supporting Actor Academy Award winners | Georgia (U.S. state) actors | Hollywood Walk of Fame | Tony Award winners | Upper Canada College alumni
