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Melvyn Douglas 1901 - 1981

Melvyn Edouard Douglas of New York, New York County, NY was born on April 5, 1901 in Macon, Bibb County, Georgia United States, and died at age 80 years old on August 4, 1981 in New York, NY.

Melvyn Edouard Douglas
Melvyn Douglas
Name
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New York, New York County, NY 10024
Last residence
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April 5, 1901
Macon, Bibb County, Georgia, United States
Birth
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August 4, 1981
New York, New York, United States
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Melvyn Douglas Melvyn Douglas (1901 - 1981)
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Melvyn Edouard Douglas' History: 1901 - 1981

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  • Introduction

    A gentleman. An actor. A patriot.
  • 04/5
    1901

    Birthday

    April 5, 1901
    Birthdate
    Macon, Bibb County, Georgia United States
    Birthplace
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  • Ethnicity & Family History

    Half Jewish and half gentile, 100% gentleman. A joy to meet.

  • Nationality & Locations

    His father, Edouard Gregory Hesselberg, a noted concert pianist and composer, was a Latvian Jewish emigrant, from Riga. His mother, Lena Priscilla (Shackelford), from Clark Furnace, Tennessee, was from a family with deep roots in the United States, and the daughter of Col. George Taliaferro Shackelford. Melvyn's father supported his family by teaching music at university-based conservatories. Melvyn dropped out of high school to pursue his dream of becoming an actor.

  • Early Life & Education

    High School Drop-out to become an actor.

  • Military Service

    Melvyn Douglas (1901-1981) | New Georgia Encyclopedia Aug 3, 2007 - Melvyn Douglas was an Oscar, Emmy, and Tony award–winning actor, ... in 1943 was assigned to serve in India, where he entertained troops.

  • Professional Career

    Melvyn Douglas Biography Born April 5, 1901 in Macon, Georgia, USA Died August 4, 1981 in New York City, New York, USA (pneumonia and cardiac complications) Birth Name Melvyn Edouard Hesselberg Height 6' 1½" (1.87 m) Mini Bio (1) Two-time Oscar-winner Melvyn Douglas was one of America's finest actors. In addition to his two Oscars, he also won a Tony Award and an Emmy. Douglas would enjoy cinema immortality if for no other reason than his being the man who made Greta Garbo laugh in Ernst Lubitsch's classic comedy Ninotchka (1939), but he was much, much more. Melvyn Douglas was born Melvyn Edouard Hesselberg on April 5, 1901, in Macon, Georgia. His father, Edouard Gregory Hesselberg, a noted concert pianist and composer, was a Latvian Jewish emigrant, from Riga. His mother, Lena Priscilla (Shackelford), from Clark Furnace, Tennessee, was from a family with deep roots in the United States, and the daughter of Col. George Taliaferro Shackelford. Melvyn's father supported his family by teaching music at university-based conservatories. Melvyn dropped out of high school to pursue his dream of becoming an actor. He made his Broadway debut in the drama "A Free Soul " at the Playhouse Theatre on January 12, 1928, playing the role of a raffish gangster (a part that would later make Clark Gable's career when the play was adapted to the screen as A Free Soul (1931) ). "A Free Soul" was a modest success, running for 100 performances. His next three plays were flops: "Back Here" and "Now-a-Days" each lasted one week, while "Recapture" lasted all of three before closing. He was much luckier with his next play, "Tonight or Never," which opened on November 18, 1930, at legendary producer David Belasco's theater. Not only did the play run for 232 performances, but Douglas met the woman who would be his wife of nearly 50 years: his co-star, Helen Gahagan. They were married in 1931. Spouse (2) Helen Gahagan (5 April 1931 - 28 June 1980) ( her death) ( 2 children) Rosalind Hightower (30 September 1925 - 29 August 1927) ( divorced) ( 1 child) Trade Mark (1) He often played smooth characters with a strong sense of humor Trivia (16) In 1967, he became the fifth performer to win the triple crown of acting. Oscar: Best Supporting Actor, Hud (1963) & Best Supporting Actor, Being There (1979), Tony: Best Actor-Play, The Best Man (1960), and Emmy: Best Actor-Drama, CBS Playhouse: Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night (1967) . He is the grandfather of Illeana Douglas. He had two children with second wife, Helen Gahagan: a son named Peter (b. 1933) and daughter Mary Helen (b. 1938). He had one son with his first wife, Rosalind, named Melvyn Gregory Hesselberg (b. January 28, 1926). He won Broadway's 1960 Tony Award as Best Actor (Dramatic) for "The Best Man.". According to the March 31, 1941, issue of Time magazine, Douglas and Edward G. Robinson, who were both Democratic activists, bid $3,200 for the fedora hat that 'Franklin Delano Roosevelt' had worn during his three successful campaigns for the presidency. They acquired the hat at a special Hollywood auction to benefit the Motion Picture Relief Fund. Douglas was active in liberal and progressive political causes in the 1930s and 1940s, which led to charges being leveled against him of being a Communist and/or a "fellow traveler" by far-right-wing Republicans during the McCarthy "Red Scare" era of the 1950s. Douglas' wife, Helen Gahagan Douglas, would later be elected to the US House of Representatives as a Democrat from California, but was defeated in her 1950 bid for the U.S. Senate by Republican Congressman Richard Nixon, who derisively called her "The Pink Lady" for what he termed her "leftist" leanings. President John F. Kennedy would appoint her Treasurer of the United States in 1961. When Ronald Reagan was elected US President in 1980, Douglas said that his former friend (who changed from a liberal Democrat to an extremely conservative Republican) had begun to believe the speeches he delivered for General Electric Co. when he was the host of General Electric Theater (1953),an anthology series sponsored by the company for which Reagan, in addition to acting, also did the commercials. His biography is in: "The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives". Volume One, 1981-1985, pages 240-242. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1998. He had two grandsons from son Gregory, named Stefan and Erik. He had six grandchildren when he died. He was the brother of George Douglas. He is one of nine actors to have won the Triple Crown of Acting (an Oscar, Emmy and Tony); the others in chronological order are Thomas Mitchell, Paul Scofield, Jack Albertson, Jason Robards, Jeremy Irons, Al Pacino, Geoffrey Rush and Christopher Plummer. Son of Lena Priscilla (Shackelford) and Edouard Gregory Hesselberg. His father, a Jewish emigrant from Riga, Latvia, was a prominent concert pianist and composer, who taught at the Toronto Conservatory of Music and encouraged his son to be a musician. Melvyn's mother, born in Tennessee, was the daughter of a Union Army Officer, and was descended from Mayflower passengers. She wanted him to take up law. He played a Presidential candidate in Gore Vidal's play, and, years later, Vidal (who was not normally very complimentary about actors) remarked that he would have made a fine President in real life. He did not attend The 52nd Annual Academy Awards (1980) ceremony, where he won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Being There (1979), because he could not bear competing against eight year-old Justin Henry. The renowned British broadcaster and intellectual Melvyn Bragg was named after Douglas by his mother. Douglas was sworn in as chief of the Arts Council, Office of Civilian Defense, by Miss Eileen Lusby, of the Emergency Management Personnel, in Washington, D.C., on 7 February 1942. (Associated Press, "Movie Actor Douglas in O.C.D.,", The San Bernardino Daily Sun, San Bernardino, California, Sunday 8 February 1942, Volume 48, page 17.). On August 5, 2019, he was honored with a day of his film work during the Turner Classic Movies Summer Under the Stars. Personal Quotes (6) The Hollywood roles I did were boring; I was soon fed up with them. It's true they gave me a worldwide reputation I could trade on, but they also typed me as a one-dimensional, non-serious actor. [on Being There (1979)] So much of what I had been thinking about in the recent past led me straight to that make-believe movie death scene. When it was completed, the sound stage full of people, perhaps forty or more, burst into emotional applause. I was startled. Hal [director Hal Ashby] told me later that I had made a little clicking sound in my throat, a "death rattle", which everyone "knew", whether they had heard such a sound or not. Was I playing my own death, the death that is in me, in spite of myself? Could be. [on his Jewish background] I did not learn about the non-Christian part of my heritage until my early teens. This had its own very special effect. Your word is your bond. [on his aunts] I admired them unstintingly and modeled myself on them to some extent, I think - and they in turn came to treat me like a son. Don't make excuses and don't talk about it. Do it.

  • Personal Life & Family

    I met him at the Equity Actors' Strike.
  • 08/4
    1981

    Death

    August 4, 1981
    Death date
    Unknown
    Cause of death
    New York, New York United States
    Death location
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  • Obituary

    The movies came a-calling in 1932 and Douglas had the unique pleasure of assaying completely different characters in widely divergent films. He first appeared opposite his future Ninotchka (1939) co-star Greta Garbo in the screen adaptation of Luigi Pirandello's As You Desire Me (1932), proving himself a sophisticated leading man as, aside from his first-rate performance, he was able to shine in the light thrown off by Garbo, the cinema's greatest star. In typical Hollywood fashion, however, this terrific performance in a top-rank film from a major studio was balanced by his appearance in a low-budget horror film for the independent Mayfair studio, The Vampire Bat (1933). However, the leading man won out, and that's how he first came to fame in the 1930s in such films as She Married Her Boss (1935) and Garbo's final film, Two-Faced Woman (1941). Douglas had shown he could play both straight drama and light comedy. Douglas was a great liberal and was a pillar of the anti-Nazi Popular Front in the Hollywood of the 1930s. A big supporter of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, he and his wife Helen were invited to spend a night at the White House in November 1939. Douglas' leftism would come back to haunt him after the death of FDR. Well-connected with the Roosevelt White House, Douglas served as a director of the Arts Council in the Office of Civilian Defense before joining the Army during World War II. He was very active in politics and was one of the leading lights of the anti-Communist left in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Helen Gahagan Douglas, who also was politically active, was elected to Congress from the 14th District in Los Angeles in 1944, the first of three terms. Returning to films after the war, Douglas' screen persona evolved and he took on more mature roles, in such films as The Sea of Grass (1947) (Elia Kazan's directorial debut) and Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948). His political past caught up with him, however, in the late 1940s, and he - along with fellow liberals Edward G. Robinson and Henry Fonda (a registered Republican!) - were "gray-listed" (not explicitly blacklisted, they just weren't offered any work). Then there was the theater. Douglas made many appearances on Broadway in the 1940s and 1950s, including in a notable 1959 flop, making his musical debut playing Captain Boyle in Marc Blitzstein's "Juno." The musical, based on Sean O'Casey's play "Juno and the Paycock", closed in less than three weeks. Douglas was much luckier in his next trip to the post: he won a Tony for his Broadway lead role in the 1960 play "The Best Man" by Gore Vidal. Douglas' evolution into a premier character actor was completed by the early 1960s. His years of movie exile seemed to deepen him, making him richer, and he returned to the big screen a more authoritative actor. For his second role after coming off of the graylist, he won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar as Paul Newman's father in Hud (1963). Other films in which he shined were Paddy Chayefsky's The Americanization of Emily (1964), CBS Playhouse (1967) (a 1967 episode directed by George Schaefer called "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night", for which he won a Best Actor Emmy) and The Candidate (1972), in which he played Robert Redford's father. It was for his performance playing Gene Hackman's father that Douglas got his sole Best Actor Academy Award nod, in I Never Sang for My Father (1970). He had a career renaissance in the late 1970s, appearing in The Seduction of Joe Tynan (1979), Being There (1979) and Ghost Story (1981). He won his second Oscar for "Being There." Helen Gahagan Douglas died in 1980 and Melvyn followed her in 1981. He was 80 years old. - IMDb Mini Biography By: Jon C. Hopwood
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Melvyn Douglas
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Met him at the Actor's Strike.
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Other Biographies

Other Melvyn Douglas Biographies

Douglas, Melvyn (Apr 23, 1922 - Aug 16, 1989)

Other Douglas Family Biographies

Douglas, Jimmie (Born Apr 3, 1911) Douglas, Eleanor (Born 1915) Douglas, June (Born 1930) Douglas, Elmer (Nov 15, 1915 - Mar 1984) Douglas, Elizabeth (Born Sep 8, 1913) Douglas, Isaac (Born Jan 12, 1876) Douglas, Leonora (Born Jan 6, 1909) Douglas, Terry (Born Jul 20, 1959) Douglas, Michael (Born 1960) Douglas, Loyal (Born Feb 8, 1884)
Douglas, Lillian (Born c. 1894) Douglas, Allen (Born Nov 13, 1832) Arbuthnot, Margaret (1346 - Oct 25, 1372) Montagu Douglas Scott, Laura (Oct 24, 1944 - Apr 15, 2009) Douglas, Hugh (1294 - 1342) Douglas, Charles (Apr 14, 1906 - May 1985) Douglas, Earl (Jul 9, 1899 - Dec 1979) Douglas, Leah (Apr 17, 1916 - Aug 6, 2005) Douglas, Robert (Jan 20, 1892 - Mar 1964) Douglas, Thetis (Apr 10, 1900 - Jul 1972)
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