Douglas, Helen Gahagan, 1900-1980

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 She, in which her portrayal of the villain inspired Disney's Evil Queen in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937).

Born Helen Mary Gahagan in Boonton, New Jersey and raised in the Park Slope area of Brooklyn, New York, she graduated from the prestigious Berkeley School for Girls and at the Capen School for Girls in Northampton, Massachusetts before gaining admittance to Barnard College of Columbia University, dropping out after two years to pursue a career as an actress. 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, Tonight or Never, 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. 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. 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.

In 1944, Douglas entered the race to succeed Los Angeles-based Congressman Thomas Ford, prevailing in the primary and general election, the latter by a three-point margin. As she established a reputation in the House, Douglas’s electoral support increased. In her subsequent bids for re-election in 1946 and 1948, she defeated her GOP challengers with 54 percent and 65 percent, respectively. A champion for liberal causes, critics charged her with having communist sympathies. Redbaiting tactics were used against Douglas in her 1950 bid for the US Senate, first from primary opponent Manchester Boddy, who she easily defeated, and then from her Republican opponent, Congressman Richard Nixon, who would easily defeat Douglas.

Douglas returned to acting in 1952, and later campaigned for John F. Kennedy, who ran successfully against Nixon in the 1960 presidential race. Kennedy's successor Lyndon Johnson appointed her to be "Special Ambassador" to the inauguration of Liberian President William Tubman. However, Douglas's subsequent opposition to the Vietnam War angered Johnson, estranging him from her. She also campaigned for George McGovern in his unsuccessful bid to prevent Nixon's 1972 re-election, and she called for Nixon's removal from office during the Watergate scandal. She died of breast and lung cancer in 1980.