Melvyn Douglas
| Melvyn Douglas | |
|---|---|
Studio publicity photo of Douglas, c. 1939
|
|
| Born |
Melvyn Edouard Hesselberg April 5, 1901 Macon, Georgia, US |
| Died | August 4, 1981 (aged 80) New York City, New York, US. |
| Occupation | Actor, Singer |
| Years active | 1927–1981 |
| Spouse(s) | Rosalind Hightower (1925–1930; divorced; 1 son) Helen Gahagan (1931–1980; her death; 1 son, 1 daughter) |
Melvyn Edouard Hesselberg (April 5, 1901 – August 4, 1981), better known as Melvyn Douglas, was an American actor.
Douglas came to prominence in the 1930s as a suave leading man, perhaps best typified by his performance in the 1939 romantic comedy Ninotchka with Greta Garbo. Douglas later took mature and fatherly roles as in his Academy Award-winning performances in Hud (1963) and Being There (1979) and his Academy Award-nominated performance in I Never Sang for My Father (1970).
Douglas was born in Macon, Georgia, the son of Lena Priscilla (née Shackelford) and Edouard Gregory Hesselberg, a concert pianist and composer. His father was a Jewish immigrant from Riga, Latvia, then part of Russia. His mother, a native of Tennessee, was Protestant and a Mayflower descendant. His maternal grandfather, George Shackelford, was a General and Civil War veteran.
Douglas, in his autobiography, See You at the Movies (1987), writes that he was unaware of his Jewish background until later in his youth: "I did not learn about the non-Christian part of my heritage until my early teens," as his parents preferred to hide his Jewish heritage. It was his aunts, on his father's side, who told him "the truth" when he was 14. He writes that he "admired them unstintingly"; and they in turn treated him like a son.
...
Wikipedia