≡Douglas, Helen Mary Gahagan1900╨1980actor and public officialBorn on November 25, 1900, in Boonton, New Jersey, Helen Gahagan was educated privately and in 1920╨1922 attended Barnard College. In the latter year she left college to seek a career on the stage. After a Broadway debut in the short-lived Manhattan that year she appeared in a number of plays over the next several years, including Young Woodley in 1925╨1926, Trelawney of the Wells in 1926, and Diplomacy in 1928, and gained a reputation as a competent actress and a stunningly beautiful woman. In 1928 Gahagan left the theater to study operatic singing and made several successful appearances on European stages. In 1930 she returned to New York and the legitimate theater. In Tonight or Never, David Belasco╒s last Broadway production, she met Melvyn Douglas, whom she married in April 1931. Notable stage appearances over the next few years included Moor Born, 1934, Mary of Scotland, 1934, Mother Lode, 1934, and And Stars Remain, 1936, and in 1935 she starred in a film version of She. During the 1930s Gahagan Douglas became sharply aware of the social dislocations of the Depression, and, becoming convinced that the Republican party she had followed by family tradition had little to offer by way of solutions, she became active in Democratic and New Deal politics. She was appointed to the national advisory committee for the Works Progress Administration in 1939 and to the California state committee of the National Youth Administration in 1940, and in the latter year she was a delegate from California to the Democratic national convention and was chosen to the party╒s national committee. During 1941╨1944 she was vice-chairman of the Democratic state central committee in California and chairman of its women╒s division. In 1942╨1943 she was a member of the board of governors of the California Housing and Planning Association. In 1944 she won election to the House of Representatives from California╒s 14th District, and she held the seat through two reelections from January 1945 to January 1951. She was a staunch supporter of President Harry S. Truman╒s Fair Deal policies, and in 1946 Truman appointed her a delegate to the United Nations General Assembly. In 1950 Gahagan Douglas ran for a Senate seat from California but was defeated by Richard M. Nixon after a campaign that later became proverbial for ╥red-baiting╙ and vicious politics. Thereafter she became known as a lecturer and author. In 1963 she published The Eleanor Roosevelt We Remember. In 1964 she was appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson to head a delegation to the inauguration of President V. S. Tubman of Liberia. In the same year she was honorary cochair of the Women╒s International League for Peace and Freedom. Ästyl ` ! ¬ 5¬ & 5¬ A !I 3 !I < !I É !I ¥ !I ¼ !I ┬ !I ╨ !I ┘ !I 6 5¬ 7 !I ≡ !I !I ░ !I └ !I ╚ !I ╙ !I ▀ !I ∩ !I $ !I ' !I + 5¬ , !I ╓ 5¬ ╫ !I ▐ !I Γ !I ▐ ≤ !I !I link ` HYPR Γ ≤
