Melvyn Douglas
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Melvyn Douglas (born Melvyn Edouard Hesselberg, April 5, 1901 – August 4, 1981) was an American actor, whose stage and screen careers spanned from the 1930s until the early 1980s. He was one of 24 performers to win the Triple Crown of Acting - winning two Academy Awards (both in the Best Supporting Actor category), a Primetime Emmy Award, and a Tony Award.
He came to prominence in 1929 as a suave leading man, perhaps best typified by his performance in the romantic comedy Ninotchka (1939) with Greta Garbo, and appeared in many films during the Golden Age of Hollywood. Douglas later played mature and fatherly characters, as in his Oscar-winning performances in Hud (1963) and Being There (1979) and his Oscar–nominated performance in I Never Sang for My Father (1970). He won a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for Gore Vidal's play The Best Man (1960).
Early life
Douglas was born in Macon, Georgia, the son of Lena Priscilla (née Shackelford) and Edouard Gregory Hesselberg, a concert pianist and composer. His father was a Jewish emigrant from Riga, Latvia, then part of the Russian Empire. His mother, a native of Tennessee, was Protestant and a Mayflower descendant.<ref name=NYTimes>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Douglas, in his autobiography, See You at the Movies (1987), wrote that he was unaware of his Jewish background until later in his youth: "I did not learn about the non-Christian part of my heritage until my early teens." His parents preferred to hide his Jewish heritage. His aunts, on his father's side, told him "the truth" when he was 14. He wrote that he "admired them unstintingly"; they in turn, treated him like a son.<ref name=NYTimes/>
Though his father, a prominent concert pianist, taught music at a succession of colleges in the U.S. and Canada, Douglas never graduated from high school. He took the surname of his maternal grandmother and became known as Melvyn Douglas.Template:Citation needed
Career
Douglas developed his acting skills in Shakespearean repertory while in his teens and with stock companies in Sioux City, Iowa, Evansville, Indiana, Madison, Wisconsin and Detroit, Michigan. He served in the United States Army in World War I. He established an outdoor theatre in Chicago. He had a long theatre, film and television career as a lead player, stretching from his 1930 Broadway role in Tonight or Never (opposite his future wife, Helen Gahagan) until just before his death. Douglas shared top billing with Boris Karloff and Charles Laughton in James Whale's sardonic horror classic The Old Dark House in 1932.Template:Citation needed
Douglas appeared as the hero in the 1932 horror film The Vampire Bat and the sophisticated leading man in She Married Her Boss (1935). He appeared with Joan Crawford in several films, most notably A Woman's Face (1941), and starred opposite Greta Garbo in three films: As You Desire Me (1932), Ninotchka (1939) and Garbo's final film Two-Faced Woman (1941). One of his most sympathetic roles was as the belatedly attentive father in Captains Courageous (1937).
During World War II, Douglas served first as a director of the Arts Council in the Office of Civilian Defense, and he then again served in the United States Army rising to the rank of major in the Special Services Entertainment Production Unit.<ref>p.58 Zimmers, Tighe E.Lyrical Satirical Harold Rome: A Biography of the Broadway Composer-Lyricist McFarland; Illustrated edition November 1, 2013</ref> According to his granddaughter Illeana Douglas, Melvyn Douglas first met Peter Sellers, his future Being There co-star while in Burma, when Sellers was serving in the Royal Air Force during the war.<ref name=francisco>Template:Cite news</ref> After the war, Douglas returned to films and more mature roles in The Sea of Grass (1947) and Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948).
From 1952 to 1961, Douglas made no film appearances, concentrating instead on stage and television work. During November 1952 to January 1953, Douglas starred in the DuMont detective show Steve Randall (Hollywood Off Beat) which then moved to CBS. In the summer of 1953, he briefly hosted the DuMont game show Blind Date. In the summer of 1959, Douglas hosted eleven original episodes of a CBS Western anthology television series called Frontier Justice, a production of Dick Powell's Four Star Television.
Douglas returned to films in the 1960s. As he aged, he took on older-man and fatherly roles in movies such as Hud (1963), for which he won his first Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, The Americanization of Emily (1964), the American Civil War comedy Advance to the Rear (1964), an episode of The Fugitive (1966), I Never Sang for My Father (1970), for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor and The Candidate (1972). He won his second Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for the comedy-drama Being There (1979). However, Douglas confirmed in one of his final interviews that he refused to attend the 52nd Academy Awards ceremony because he could not bear having to compete against child actor Justin Henry for Kramer vs. Kramer.<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref>
In addition to his Academy Awards, Douglas won a Tony Award 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.Template:Citation needed
Douglas' final complete screen appearance was in the 1981 horror film Ghost Story. He died before completing all of his scenes for the film The Hot Touch (1982); the film had to be edited to compensate for Douglas' incomplete role.Template:Citation needed
Douglas has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame; one for movies located at 6423 Hollywood Boulevard and another for television at 6601 Hollywood Boulevard.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Personal life
Douglas, as Hesselberg,<ref name="nytimes/obit/melvyn-douglas"/> was married briefly to artist Rosalind Hightower, and they had one child, (Melvyn) Gregory Hesselberg,<ref name="gt/GH">Template:Cite news</ref> in 1926.<ref name="nytimes/obit/melvyn-douglas">Template:Cite news</ref> Hesselberg, an artist, is the father of actress Illeana Douglas.<ref name="gt/GH"/>
In 1931, Douglas married actress-turned-politician Helen Gahagan. They traveled to Europe that same year, and "were horrified by French and German anti-Semitism". As a result, they became outspoken anti-fascists.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Douglas was also an active New Deal Democrat, serving on the State Central Committee of the California Democratic Party in the 1930s and 40s.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
Gahagan Douglas (she began using her husband's name when she entered politics), as a three-term congresswoman, was Richard M. Nixon's unsuccessful opponent for the United States Senate seat from California in 1950.<ref name=NYTimes/> Nixon accused Gahagan Douglas of being soft on Communism because of her opposition to the House Un-American Activities Committee. Nixon went so far as to infamously call her "pink right down to her underwear". It was Gahagan Douglas who popularized Nixon's epithet nickname "Tricky Dick".<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
Douglas was a member of the executive committee of the Writers and Artists for Peace in the Middle East, a pro-Israel group, during the 1970s.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
The Douglases hired architect Roland Coate to design a home for them in 1938 on a Template:Convert lot they owned in Outpost Estates, Los Angeles. The result was a one-story, Template:Convert home.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
The Douglases had two children: Peter Gahagan Douglas (1933) and Mary Helen Douglas (1938).
Death
The couple remained married until Helen Gahagan Douglas's death in 1980 from cancer. Melvyn Douglas died a year later, in 1981, aged 80, from pneumonia and cardiac complications in New York City at Sloan Kettering Hospital.<ref> Richard Rosen, "Melvyn Douglas Dies at 80," New York Daily News, August 4, 1981, p. T-4. </ref>
Broadway roles
Sources: Internet Broadway Database<ref>Template:IBDB name</ref> and Playbill<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
- A Free Soul (1928) as Ace Wilfong
- Back Here (1928) as Sergeant "Terry" O'Brien
- Now-a-Days (1929) as Boyd Butler
- Recapture (1930) as Henry C. Martin
- Tonight or Never (1931) as the Unknown Gentleman
- No More Ladies (1934) as Sheridan Warren
- Mother Lode (1934) as Carey Ried (also staged)
- De Luxe (1935) as Pat Dantry
- Tapestry In Gray (1935) as Erik Nordgren
- Two Blind Mice (1949) as Tommy Thurston
- The Bird Cage (1950) as Wally Williams
- The Little Blue Light (1951) as Frank
- Glad Tidings (1951) as Steve Whitney
- Time Out for Ginger (1952) as Howard Carol
- Inherit the Wind (1955) as Henry Drummond (replacement)
- The Waltz of the Toreadors (1958) as General St. Pé
- Juno (1959) as "Captain" Jack Boyle
- The Gang's All Here (1959) as Griffith P. Hastings
- The Best Man (1960) as William Russell
- Spofford (1967) as Spofford
Douglas also staged Moor Born (1934), Mother Lode (1934) and Within the Gates (1934-1935) and produced Call Me Mister (1946-1948).
Filmography
Partial television credits
| Year | Title | Role | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1949 | The Philco-Goodyear Television Playhouse | Richard Gordon | Episodes: "The Five Lives of Richard Gordon" and "The Strange Christmas Dinner" |
| 1950 | Lux Video Theatre | James Strickland | Episode: "To Thine Own Self" |
| Pulitzer Prize Playhouse | Eugene Morgan Martin Luther Cooper |
Episode: "The Magnificent Ambersons" Episode: "Mrs. January and Mr. Ex" | |
| 1952 | Celanese Theatre | Archduke Rudolph von Habsburg | Episode: "Reunion in Vienna" |
| Steve Randall | Steve Randall | 12 episodes | |
| 1955 | The Ford Television Theatre | George Manners | Episode: "Letters Marked Personal" |
| 1955–1956 | The Alcoa Hour | Charles Turner Jim Conway |
Episode: "Man on a Tiger" Episode: "Thunder in Washington" |
| 1957–1958 | The United States Steel Hour | Census Taker Dr. Victor Payson/Narrator |
Episode: "Second Chance" Episode: "The Hill Wife" |
| 1957–1959 | Playhouse 90 | General Parker Ansel Gibbs Stalin Howard Hoagland |
Episode: "Judgment at Nuremberg" Episode: "The Return of Ansel Gibbs" Episode: "The Plot to Kill Stalin" Episode: "The Greer Case" |
| 1959 | Frontier Justice | Host | 11 episodes |
| 1960 | Sunday Showcase | Mark Twain | Episode: "Our American Heritage: Shadow of a Soldier" |
| 1963 | Ben Casey | Burton Strang | Episode: "Rage Against the Dying Light" |
| Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre | Pat Konke | Episode: "A Killing at Sundial" | |
| 1964 | A Very Close Family | Father | TV movie |
| 1965 | Inherit the Wind | Henry Drummond | Hallmark Hall of Fame TV movie Nominated—Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Single Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Drama |
| 1966 | The Fugitive | Mark Ryder | Episode: "The 2130" |
| Lamp at Midnight | Galileo Galilei | TV movie | |
| 1967 | CBS Playhouse | Peter Schermann | Episode: "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Single Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Drama |
| The Crucible | Governor Danforth | TV movie | |
| 1968 | Companions in Nightmare | Dr. Lawrence Strelson | TV movie |
| 1970 | The Choice | TV movie | |
| Hunters Are for Killing | Keller Floran | TV movie | |
| 1971 | Death Takes a Holiday | Judge Earl Chapman | TV movie |
| 1972 | Circle of Fear | Grandpa | Episode: "House of Evil" |
| 1973 | The Going Up of David Lev | Grandfather | TV movie |
| 1974 | The Death Squad | Police Captain Earl Kreski | TV movie |
| Murder or Mercy | Dr. Paul Harelson | TV movie | |
| 1975 | Benjamin Franklin | Benjamin Franklin | Miniseries |
| 1977 | ABC Weekend Special | Grandpa Doc | Episode: "Portrait of Grandpa Doc" |
Source: Internet Movie Database<ref name=IBDb>Template:IMDb name</ref>
Radio appearances
| Year | Program | Episode/source |
|---|---|---|
| 1942 | Philip Morris Playhouse | No Time for Comedy<ref>Template:Cite news Template:Open access</ref> |
| Take a Letter, Darling<ref>Template:Cite news Template:Open access</ref> |
References
Sources
External links
- "Melvyn Douglas (1901–1981)" at the New Georgia Encyclopedia ; Template:Webarchive
- Melvyn Douglas at Virtual-History.com : Photographs and literature
Papers
Metadata
- Template:IBDB name
- Melvyn Douglas - AFI Catalog - American Film Institute
- Melvyn Douglas at Turner Classic Movies
- Template:IMDb name
Template:Navboxes Template:Triple Crown of Acting winners Template:Authority control
- Pages using center with unknown parameters
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- 1901 births
- 1981 deaths
- 20th-century American male actors
- American male film actors
- American male stage actors
- American male television actors
- American people of English descent
- American people of Russian-Jewish descent
- Best Supporting Actor Academy Award winners
- Best Supporting Actor Golden Globe (film) winners
- Deaths from pneumonia in New York City
- Jewish American male actors
- Jewish American military personnel
- Male actors from Georgia (U.S. state)
- Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer contract players
- Military personnel from Georgia (U.S. state)
- Outstanding Performance by a Lead Actor in a Miniseries or Movie Primetime Emmy Award winners
- Pseudonymous actors
- Spouses of California politicians
- Tony Award winners
- United States Army officers
- United States Army personnel of World War I
- United States Army personnel of World War II
- Upper Canada College alumni