Helen Gahagan Douglas

Helen Gahagan Douglas (born Helen Mary Gahagan; November 25, 1900 – June 28, 1980) was an American actress and politician.

Her career included success on Broadway, as a touring opera singer, and in Hollywood films.

Gahagan found great success and became a well known star on Broadway in the 1920s, appearing in popular plays such as Young Woodley and Trelawney of the Wells.

Gahagan gained admittance to Barnard College of Columbia University, class of 1924.

To the dismay and shock of her father she left after two years, without finishing her degree, to pursue an acting career.

In 1927, at the age of 26, Gahagan set out to forge a new career as an opera singer, and, after two years of voice lessons, she found herself touring across Europe and receiving critical praise, unusual for an American at the time.

In 1930, she returned to Broadway to star in a production of Tonight or Never, where she co-starred with actor Melvyn Douglas.

The two married in 1931, Gahagan keeping her maiden name.

Introduced to politics by her husband, Gahagan Douglas joined the Democratic Party shortly after the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932.

The Roosevelts and the Douglases would develop a close friendship, with Eleanor Roosevelt serving as a political mentor to Gahagan Douglas.

Her portrayal of the villain in the 1935 movie She inspired Disney's Evil Queen in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937).

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.

Gahagan Douglas went to Los Angeles in 1935, starring in the Hollywood movie She, playing Hash-a-Motep, queen of a lost city.

The movie, based on H. Rider Haggard's novel of the same name, is perhaps best known for popularizing a phrase from the novel, "She who must be obeyed".

Gahagan's depiction of the "ageless ice goddess" served as inspiration for the Evil Queen in Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

While in Vienna in 1938, performing in opera (which was a dream come true for Gahagan Douglas), she found herself having coffee with a Nazi sympathizer.

The experience sickened her to such a degree that she immediately flew back to Los Angeles, determined to fight Nazism publicly.

She largely disliked the atmosphere of Hollywood; following the birth of her daughter, Mary Helen, in 1938, Gahagan Douglas took to learning about the plight of migrant workers and grew increasingly politically aware.

The Douglases joined the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League; in 1939, they joined others in calling for a United States boycott against goods produced in Nazi Germany.

Gahagan Douglas was a member of the national advisory committee of the Works Progress Administration and of the State committee of the National Youth Administration in 1939 and 1940.

She soon became the director of the John Steinbeck Committee, named for the author of The Grapes of Wrath, and by 1940 she was the national spokesperson for migrants.

She then served as Democratic national committeewoman for California and vice chairwoman of the Democratic state central committee and chairman of the women's division from 1940 to 1944.

She was also a member of the board of governors of the California Housing and Planning Association in 1942 and 1943, and was appointed by Roosevelt as a member of the Voluntary Participation Committee, Office of Civilian Defense.

She was later appointed by President Harry S. Truman as an alternate United States delegate to the United Nations Assembly.

In 1943, Democratic leaders, including FDR, persuaded Gahagan to run in the 1944 election for the California's 14th congressional district seat opened by the retiring Congressman.

To try to appeal to conservative voters, she started using her husband's last name.

As the California Democratic committee chairwoman, she spoke at the 1944 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

Her impressive speech raised her profile, with some imagining a VP spot in her future, if not a presidential candidacy.

In the fall elections, Gahagan Douglas won the House race and subsequently ran for — and won — two more terms, serving in the 79th, 80th and 81st Congresses (January 1945 – January 1951).

In 1946, she was among those honored by the National Association of Colored Women for her role in interracial cooperation for advancing race and gender equality.

Douglas had been a colleague of the organization's founder, Mary McLeod Bethune, on the National Youth Administration.

In the 1950 United States Senate election in California, 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.

She was married to fellow actor Melvyn Douglas, and they had two children, Peter and Mary.

Helen Mary Gahagan was born in Boonton, New Jersey, of Scotch-Irish descent.

She was the eldest daughter of Lillian Rose (Mussen) and Walter H. Gahagan, an engineer who owned a construction business in Brooklyn and a shipyard in Arverne, Queens; her mother had been a schoolteacher.

She was reared Episcopalian.

Gahagan was raised at 231 Lincoln Place in the Park Slope area of Brooklyn, an upper-middle-class neighborhood.

She attended the prestigious Berkeley Carroll School, where she "attracted the favorable attention of Brooklyn critics through her performance in school plays".

Following an argument with her father, who did not believe becoming an actress was a suitable occupation for a woman, she was sent to study at the Capen School for Girls in Northampton, Massachusetts.