Oscar Profile #132: Melvyn Douglas

Born April 5, 1901 in Macon, Georgia to Lena Priscilla (née Shackelford) and Edouard Gregory Hasselberg, Melvyn Edouard Hasselberg took the stage name Melvyn Douglas from his maternal grandmother. His Russian Jewish born father was an internationally famous concert pianist and college professor. His mother, a native of Tennessee, was a Protestant descendant of the Mayflower.

Having dropped out of high school to pursue an acting career, Douglas first found success on stage. He was married to the artist Rosalind Hightower from 1925 to 1930. Their son, Gregory, also an artist, is the father of actress Illeana Douglas. He made his Broadway debut in 1928 in A Free Soul in the role that later established Clark Gable on screen. In 1930 he starred in Now or Never opposite future wife Helen Gahagan. They were married in 1932, had two children, and remained married until her death in 1980.

He made his film debut in 1931 and by 1932 was appearing in five films including As You Desire Me opposite Greta Garbo. Quickly establishing his versatility, Douglas easily moved from dramatic to comedic roles. His best comedy roles of the 1930s were opposite Irene Dunne in Theodora Goes Wild and Ninotchka in which he made Garbo laugh. A staunch Democrat, he worked for the Roosevelt White House before entering World War II. His wife, whose only film was the starring role in 1935’s She, became a U.S. Representative from California in 1944. She served three terms before being beaten by Richard Nixon who gave her the nickname “the Pink Lady” because she was “soft on Communism”. She gave him the nickname “Tricky Dick”.

Douglas’ film roles after his war service were mainly in support in such films as Sea of Grass and Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House. Though never blacklisted, he was “gray Listed” in Hollywood in the 1950s and did not make a film between 1951 and 1962. He was, however, quite active on TV and the Broadway stage in the interim, winning a Tony for 1960’s The Best Man.

Douglas returned to the screen almost unrecognizable as an old man in 1962’s Billy Budd. The following year he won his first Oscar as Paul Newman’s father in Hud. He won an Emmy for 1967’s Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night and received his first and only Best Actor Oscar nod for 1970’s I Never Sang for My Father. Much active on TV during the 1970s, he made a triumphant return to the big screen in two 1979 films, The Seduction of Joe Tynan and Being There, winning a second Oscar for the latter. His last film was 1981’s Ghost Story co-starring Fred Astaire and Patricia Neal, which was released posthumously.

Helen Gahagan Douglas died on June 28, 1980 at 79. Melvyn Douglas died on August 4, 1981 at 80.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

THEODORA GOES WILD (1936), directed by Richard Boleslawski

This was one of the great screwball comedies, albeit one that is shamefully not as well-known as The Awful Truth; Bringing Up Baby or Ball of Fire. Irene Dunne, who gives an incandescent performance as the small town girl who writes a scandalous novel, credited Douglas with helping her with her comic timing. He plays the book illustrator who does the cover for her book and outs her to the public, causing the denizens of her home town to have fits. Spring Byington sparkles as the town gossip. With all eyes on Dunne, it may not be one of Douglas’ greatest showcases, but it’s certainly one of his best films.

NINOTCHKA (1939), directed by Ernst Lubitsch

Lubitsch’s lighter than air comedy, with a screenplay by Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett, is one of the undisputed best films of Hollywood’s generally acknowledged greatest year. Douglas had the best of his suave leading man roles here as the charmer who melts the icy cold Russian envoy played by Greta Garbo in her first screen comedy. Advertised with the slogan “Garbo laughs”, the film had a lot to live up to, and it does. Ina Claire is also outstanding as the former grand duchess whose jewels are a bone of contention. Bela Lugosi, Felix Bressart, Sig Ruman and Alexander Granach co-star.

HUD (1963), directed by Martin Ritt

The light leading man and dependable second lead had by now become a great actor. In only his second film in this phase of his career, Douglas is riveting as a proud, stern old man with a moral code his wastrel son (Paul Newman) can’t live up to.

The film is unusual in Oscar annals in that Patricia Neal, whose role is limited in the film won the year’s Best Actress award due to the paucity of roles for women that year, while Douglas, whose role is much larger, won as Supporting Actor. Newman was nominated for Best Actor, but Brandon De Wilde who had the film’s central role as Newman’s impressionable nephew and Douglas’ grandson wasn’t. He did, however, accept Douglas’ Oscar on his behalf.

I NEVER SANG FOR MY FATHER (1970), directed by Gilbert Cates

Douglas had previously won lead actor Tony and Emmy awards, but this marked the only occasion for which he was nominated for an Oscar in a leading role.

The actor plays a difficult, demanding 80 year-old who loses his wife and then dies himself, an eerie foretelling of Douglas’ real life in which his wife Helen Gahagan Douglas died shortly before his own passing at 80 ten years later. Douglas’ performance is riveting. He receives strong support from Oscar nominated Gene Hackman as his son as well as Estelle Parsons as his daughter and Dorothy Stickney as his wife, whose death brings out the worst in him.

BEING THERE (1979), Directed by Hal Ashby

Douglas won his second Oscar playing a wealthy Washington lobbyist in support of Peter Sellers as the simple-minded gardener who becomes a social phenomenon.

There are those who dismiss Douglas’ win as a sentimental gesture to the actor who was believed to be in fragile health, but it is a bravura performance that stands on its own as one of the actor’s best. Ironically, Sellers, also Oscar nominated for his performance, would predecease him, passing away on July 24, 1980 at the age of 54, less than a month after Douglas’ wife, former Congresswoman Helen Gahagen Douglas also died. Douglas would go on to play important roles in four more films before his own death in August, 1981.