Helen Gahagan Douglas was an American actress and politician. She was elected to Congress from California in 1950 when she ran for the United States Senate against Richard M. Nixon.
Background
Douglas was born on November 25, 1900, in Boonton, New Jersey, the daughter of Walter Hamer Gahagan II and Lillian Rose Mussen. Her father, an Ohio-born engineer, prospered in construction and shipbuilding; her mother had taught school prior to marriage.
Reared in cosmopolitan turn-of-the-century Brooklyn, she once described her house as resembling the set of Life with Father, "with large, airy high-ceilinged rooms, marble fireplaces in every room, tall windows looking out over the garden, and fine paneling everywhere. "
Education
Douglas expressed early a desire to become an actress, causing her father, in an attempt to diminish her interest in what was then still considered a disreputable profession, to demand that she first attend college. Selecting to attend Barnard College at Columbia University because of its proximity to Broadway, Douglas discovered that Barnard suited her ambitions perfectly. She enrolled in every acting course the school offered, joined the college drama society, and, as an indication of her later political interests, championed the cause of Irish independence as a member of the debating team.
Career
At the end of her first year of college, Douglas appeared in an off-Broadway production of Shoot by Henry Wagstaff Gribble and then took a summer-stock role in Manhattan. Douglas attracted the attention of playwright Owen Davis who, needing an ingenue, offered her a role in his Broadway romance, Dreams for Sale (1922). She did not think much of the play's quality, but it proved to be the making of her professional career since she impressed the influential critic Heywood Broun, who praised her performance, declaring her to be one of the twelve most beautiful women in America. Abandoning college, Douglas appeared in plays around the country for several years before going to Europe to study opera. Over the next decade, continuing to perform under the name Helen Gahagan, she took parts in plays, operas, and films (she made her film debut in Rider Haggard's She in 1936).
In 1944 she won the congressional seat in California's Fourteenth District; she was reelected in 1946 and 1948. Meanwhile, Douglas made powerful future enemies for herself in California by endorsing Truman's opposition to attempts by the states of Texas, Louisiana, and California to gain jurisdiction over coastal tidelands where significant deposits of oil had been discovered. Despite her liberal sympathies, Douglas, who as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 1944 had strongly backed Henry Wallace for the vice-presidential nomination, broke with Wallace when he formed the Progressive party to oppose Truman's reelection in 1948.
The defining moment in the career, and indeed the life, of Helen Gahagan Douglas occurred in 1950 when she ran for the United States Senate against Richard M. Nixon. Douglas had decided to oppose the incumbent Democratic senator Sheridan Downey because of the latter's opposition to reclamation and his ties to California oil interests. Her depiction of Downey as a do-nothing senator under the control of big-business lobbyists caused him to abandon the race, bitterly complaining that he was not physically capable of "waging a personal and militant campaign against vicious and unethical propaganda" against him. Conservative Democrats then persuaded Manchester Boddy, publisher of the Los Angeles Daily News, to challenge Douglas. She easily won the primary and polled nearly as many votes as Nixon had in winning the Republican nomination. There then ensued what one Nixon supporter called "the most hateful campaign" that California had experienced in many years. Nixon's campaign manager Murray Chotiner, perhaps the first of a new breed of political consultants, produced the campaign's most controversial document, "the Pink Sheet. " This leaflet attempted to align Douglas with Congressman Vito Marcantonio, described as the "notorious Communist Party Liner" from New York City. The Pink Sheet charged that since 1945 Douglas had voted the same as Marcantonio 354 times and that the issues on which they most "saw eye to eye" were un-American activities and internal security. Nixon, the Pink Sheet declared, had voted "exactly opposite to the Douglas-Marcantonio Axis. " Eventually Chotiner printed and distributed more than half a million copies of the leaflet.
Nixon over the years denied that he ever said or inferred that Helen Douglas was a Communist. But the Pink Sheet certainly implied that she was. A highly respected reference service, Editorial Research, concluded that on ten major congressional issues on the so-called Communist threat, Douglas voted against Marcantonio in favor of a policy opposing a real or imagined Communist threat. In light of later events, the 1950 campaign produced some interesting endorsements. Congressman John F. Kennedy contributed $1, 000 to Nixon's campaign, while Ronald Reagan, then a leading figure in the Screen Actors Guild, campaigned for Douglas. The circulation of the Pink Sheet produced a response in kind from the Douglas campaign in the form of a yellow-colored broadside that proclaimed: "The Big Lie. Hitler invented it, Stalin perfected it, Nixon uses it. " Douglas went so far as to charge Nixon with being allied to Marcantonio on "every key vote against America in its fight to defeat Communism. " The New York Times found each side accusing the other "of hitting a new low in distortion. " Nixon's anti-Communist strategy benefited greatly from the surprise attack by the North Korean Communist government on South Korea in June 1950, an event Nixon attributed to Secretary of State Dean Acheson's declaration that Korea and Formosa were outside the American defensive perimeter in Asia.
By making Nixon appear prescient on the Communist menace, the outbreak of war in Korea guaranteed his election. But although victorious in the senatorial race and positioned firmly for his nomination and election as the 1952 Republican vice-presidential candidate, Nixon suffered lasting political damage in 1950, not the least from the name Democrats used to denounce his tactics against Douglas, "Tricky Dick, " an epithet he could not shake to the end of his career. Nixon received 2. 2 million votes to 1. 5 million for Douglas. Afterward, Douglas steadfastly refused to discuss the campaign, although she did express her opinion during the Watergate crisis that Nixon deserved to be impeached.
After the 1950 election Douglas retired from politics and lived the rest of her life in comparative obscurity. She died on June 28, 1980, in New York City.
Achievements
Douglas's successful stage career was succeeded by an even more noteworthy period as a politician. She became the third woman and first Democratic woman elected to Congress from California.
1930's saw the emergence of Douglas political consciousness, beginning with her support of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal and her vocal opposition to the Nazi party, whose brutalities she had witnessed firsthand while performing in Germany in the 1930's.
Douglas became a champion of progressive causes in California: She called attention to the plight of subsistence farmers and migrant workers, promoted civil rights and the growth of organized labor, and took a particular interest in environmental issues including offshore oil drilling and land reclamation. Her endorsement of Roosevelt for a third presidential term led to her selection as a Democratic national committeewoman for California in 1940.
In Congress, Douglas steadfastly supported President Roosevelt's New Deal and President Harry S. Truman's Fair Deal. Never shy of confrontations, she defended the record of black soldiers in World War II against the scurrilous attacks of John Rankin, a white supremacist congressman from Mississippi. She voted against increased funding for the House Un-American Activities Committee and coauthored with Senator Brien McMahon of Connecticut the Atomic Energy Act designed to control what she described as "this unparalleled instrument of destruction. "
On the pivotal issue of American aid to democratic governments in Greece and Turkey that were attempting to stave off Communist challenges, she opposed Truman's decision to provide unilateral American aid, arguing that all such efforts should be coordinated with the United Nations collective-security system.
On foreign policy questions, Douglas stood more left of center than most of her Democratic colleagues.
Personality
Douglas' intelligence and commitment combined with her physical attractiveness and effective speaking manner to make her a natural choice for elective office.
Quotes from others about the person
Boddy, an inept campaigner, characterized Douglas as one of a "small subversive clique of red-hots" out to take over the Democratic party.
An editorial in the conservative Los Angeles Times succinctly suggested the tenor of the campaign the Nixon forces waged when it described Douglas as a "glamorous actress who though not a Communist voted the Communist Party line in Congress innumerable times" and referred to her as "the darling" of Hollywood parlor pinks and reds.
Connections
In October 1930 Douglas returned to America to play the opera singer feminine lead in David Belasco's last production, Tonight or Never. Her costar was Melvyn Douglas. After their working relationship blossomed into romance, they married in her parents' home on April 15, 1931. Helen had two children with Melvyn Douglas and also raised a stepson, from her husband's previous marriage.
