Melvyn Douglas est un acteur américain, né le 5 avril 1901 à Macon, en Géorgie, et mort le 4 août 1981 à New York.

Il était marié à la femme politique Helen Gahagan Douglas. Il a remporté deux fois l'Oscar du meilleur acteur dans un second rôle pour Le Plus Sauvage d'entre tous et Bienvenue Mister Chance.

Biographie

Douglas was married briefly to artist Rosalind Hightower, and they had one child, (Melvyn) Gregory Hesselberg, in 1926. Hesselberg, an artist, is the father of actress Illeana Douglas.

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, supporting the Democratic Party and Roosevelt's re-election. As a three-term Congresswoman, she was later Richard Nixon's opponent for the United States Senate seat from California in 1950.

Nixon accused Gahagan of being soft on Communism 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 popularized Nixon's epithet "Tricky Dick".

Douglas and Gahagan had two children: Peter Gahagan Douglas (1933) and Mary Helen Douglas (1938). The couple remained married until Helen Gahagan Douglas' death in 1980 from cancer. Melvyn Douglas died a year later, in 1981, aged 80, from pneumonia and cardiac complications in New York City.

Ses meilleurs films