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Early lifeDouglas was born in Macon, Georgia to Edouard Gregory Hesselberg, a Jewish concert pianist and composer from Riga, Latvia, and Lena Priscilla Shackelford, a Tennessee-born American and Mayflower descendant.[1] Though his father taught music at a succession of colleges in the U.S. and Canada, Douglas never graduated from high school. Career
During World War II, Douglas served first as a director of the Arts Council in the Office of Civilian Defense, and then in the United States Army. He returned to more mature roles as in The Sea of Grass and Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House. As Douglas grew older, he took on the older-man and father roles, in such movies as The Americanization of Emily, Hud, The Candidate and I Never Sang for My Father, for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor. In 1959 he made his musical debut playing Captain Boyle in the ill-fated Marc Blitzstein musical Juno, based on Sean O'Casey's Juno and the Paycock. In addition to his Academy Awards (see below), Douglas won a "Tony" for his Broadway lead role in the 1960 The Best Man by Gore Vidal, and a television "Emmy" for his 1967 playing in Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night. Douglas' final screen appearance was in The Hot Touch (1982). Douglas has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one for movies at 6423 Hollywood Blvd. and one for television at 6601 Hollywood Blvd. Private lifeDouglas was married briefly to Rosalind Hightower and they had a son: Gregory Hesselberg (1920). In 1931 Douglas married actress-turned-politician Helen Gahagan. As a three-term Congresswoman, she was Richard Nixon's opponent for the United States Senate seat from California in 1950. Nixon accused Gahagan of being a Communist 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 gave Nixon his epithet "Tricky Dick." Douglas and Gahagan had two children: Peter Gahagan Douglas (1933) and Mary Helen Douglas (1938). During the 1940s and 50's, while still married to Douglas, Gahagan had a long-standing, and semi-public affair with Lyndon Johnson (as documented by Robert Caro in his biography of Johnson).
Actress Illeana Douglas is his granddaughter by his son Gregory. Academy Awards and Nominations
Further reading
Footnotes
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