Melvyn Douglas

Melvyn Douglas, born Melvyn Edouard Hesselberg on April 5, 1901, in Macon, Georgia, worked as an actor on stage and screen from the late 1920s into the early 1980s. He is among only 24 performers to achieve the Triple Crown of Acting, with two Academy Awards (both for Best Supporting Actor), a Primetime Emmy, and a Tony. He first gained notice in 1929 as a smooth leading man, a type best seen in the romantic comedy *Ninotchka* (1939) opposite Greta Garbo, and acted in numerous films during Hollywood’s Golden Age.

His father, Edouard Gregory Hesselberg, was a concert pianist and composer, a Jewish emigrant from Riga, Latvia (then part of the Russian Empire). His mother, Lena Priscilla Shackelford, was a Protestant from Tennessee and a Mayflower descendant. In his 1987 autobiography *See You at the Movies*, Douglas wrote that he did not learn about his Jewish heritage until his early teens, as his parents kept it hidden. His father’s aunts told him the truth when he was fourteen; he admired them greatly, and they treated him like a son. Douglas never finished high school, though his father taught music at various colleges in the U.S. and Canada. He took his maternal grandmother’s surname and became known as Melvyn Douglas.

He honed his craft in Shakespearean repertory as a teenager and with stock companies in Sioux City, Evansville, Madison, and Detroit. He served in the U.S. Army during World War I and later founded an outdoor theater in Chicago. His long career as a lead player included a 1930 Broadway role in *Tonight or Never* opposite his future wife, Helen Gahagan. He shared top billing with Boris Karloff and Charles Laughton in James Whale’s horror film *The Old Dark House* (1932). He also played the hero in *The Vampire Bat* (1932) and a sophisticated leading man in *She Married Her Boss* (1935). He appeared with Joan Crawford in several films, notably *A Woman’s Face* (1941), and starred with Greta Garbo in three: *As You Desire Me* (1932), *Ninotchka* (1939), and Garbo’s last film, *Two-Faced Woman* (1941). One of his most sympathetic roles was as a belatedly attentive father in *Captains Courageous* (1937).

During World War II, he first directed the Arts Council in the Office of Civilian Defense, then served again in the U.S. Army, rising to major in the Special Services Entertainment Production Unit. His granddaughter Illeana Douglas said he first met Peter Sellers, his future *Being There* co-star, in Burma during the war when Sellers was in the Royal Air Force. After the war, he returned to films with mature roles in *The Sea of Grass* (1947) and *Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House* (1948). From 1952 to 1961, he focused on stage and television, appearing in the DuMont detective show *Steve Randall* (also known as *Hollywood Off Beat*) from November 1952 to January 1953, then briefly hosting the DuMont game show *Blind Date* in summer 1953. In summer 1959, he hosted eleven episodes of the CBS Western anthology *Frontier Justice*, produced by Dick Powell’s Four Star Television.

He returned to films in the 1960s, taking on older-man and fatherly roles in *Hud* (1963, winning his first Best Supporting Actor Oscar), *The Americanization of Emily* and *Advance to the Rear* (both 1964), an episode of *The Fugitive* (1966), *I Never Sang for My Father* (1970, earning a Best Actor nomination), and *The Candidate* (1972). He won his second Best Supporting Actor Oscar for *Being There* (1979), but said in one of his final interviews that he refused to attend the 52nd Academy Awards because he could not bear competing against child actor Justin Henry for *Kramer vs. Kramer*. He also won a Tony for his lead role in Gore Vidal’s 1960 play *The Best Man* and an Emmy for his 1967 role in *Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night*. His last complete screen appearance was in the 1981 horror film *Ghost Story*. He died before finishing all his scenes for *The Hot Touch* (1982), which had to be edited around his incomplete role. He has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame: one for movies at 6423 Hollywood Boulevard and one for television at 6601 Hollywood Boulevard.

As Hesselberg, he was briefly married to artist Rosalind Hightower, with whom he had a son, Melvyn Gregory Hesselberg, born in 1926. That son, an artist, is the father of actress Illeana Douglas. In 1931, he married actress Helen Gahagan. That same year, they traveled to Europe and were horrified by French and German anti-Semitism, becoming outspoken anti-fascists. Douglas was an active New Deal Democrat, serving on the State Central Committee of the California Democratic Party in the 1930s and 1940s. Gahagan Douglas also entered politics.