Douglas, Helen Gahagan, 1900-1980

<p>Helen Gahagan Douglas (November 25, 1900 – June 28, 1980) was an American actress and politician. Her career included success on Broadway, as a touring opera singer, and the starring role in the 1935 movie <i>She</i>, in which her portrayal of the villain inspired Disney's Evil Queen in <i>Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs</i> (1937).</p>

<p>In politics, she was the third woman and first Democratic woman elected to Congress from California; her election made California one of the first two states (along with Illinois) to elect female members to the House from both parties. In 1950, she unsuccessfully ran for the United States Senate, losing to Republican Richard Nixon. The campaign became symbolic of modern political vitriol, as both Gahagan's primary opponent Manchester Boddy and Nixon referred to her as "pink right down to her underwear", suggesting Communist sympathies.</p>

<p>She was married to fellow actor Melvyn Douglas.</p>

<p>Decades before Ronald Reagan, stage star and California celebrity Helen Gahagan Douglas made the transition from acting to politics to become one of her party’s standard-bearers. In an era when Cold War priorities often marginalized domestic reforms, Douglas became a beacon to New Deal liberals who hoped to push economic and social legislation into the post-World War II period. Impatient with the institutional pace and intricacies of the House, Representative Douglas used her skills as an actress and her fame to speak passionately about topics ranging from equal rights for women to civil rights for African Americans and protections for the American worker.</p>

<p>Helen Gahagan was born in Boonton, New Jersey, on November 25, 1900, one of five children raised by Walter Hamer Gahagan II and Lillian Rose Mussen Gahagan. Her father owned a prosperous construction and shipyard business, and the family lived in the upper-middle-class section of Park Slope in Brooklyn, New York. Helen Gahagan attended the prestigious Berkeley School for Girls in Brooklyn. She later studied at the Capen School for Girls in Northampton, Massachusetts, and then at Barnard College in New York City. Against her father’s wishes, Gahagan left school before earning a degree. From 1922 to 1938, she pursued a career as an opera singer and an actress, starring in a variety of shows and plays. In a 1930 Broadway hit, <i>Tonight or Never</i>, Helen Gahagan met and costarred with her future husband, Melvyn Douglas. They married on April 5, 1931, and left New York City to relocate in Los Angeles as Melvyn pursued a film career. There, the Douglases raised two children: Peter and Mary Helen.</p>

<p>The move west, made in the early years of the Great Depression, exposed Helen Douglas to the suffering and deprivations wreaked by a disastrous drought and economic crash. It also inspired her to become active in public service on behalf of migrant farm workers and others whom the Depression had dislocated. “I became active in politics because I saw the possibility, if we all sat back and did nothing, of a world in which there would no longer be any stages for actors to act on,” she recalled. Domestic woes were compounded by foreign dangers. Douglas and her husband traveled frequently and witnessed firsthand Japanese militarism and European fascism in the 1930s. With international tensions on the rise, Helen Douglas set entertainment work aside and threw herself into public-service projects, becoming a member of the national advisory committee of the Works Progress Administration and a member of the California state committee of the National Youth Administration. She traveled frequently to the White House to meet with Eleanor Roosevelt. In 1940 she became a California Democratic national committeewoman—a post she held until 1944—serving as the vice chair of the California Democratic central committee and as head of the women’s division. From 1942 to 1943, she was on the board of the California Housing and Planning Association.</p>