Known for:	Being There, Hud, Ninotchka
Birth name:	Melvyn Edouard Hesselberg
Birthday:	5 April 1901, Macon, Georgia, USA
Height:	6' 1½" (1.87 m)

In 1967, he became the fifth performer to win the Triple Crown of acting. Oscar: Best Supporting Actor, 'Hud' (1963) & Best Supporting Actor, 'Being There' (1979), Tony: Best Actor-Play, 'The Best Man' (1960), and Emmy: Best Actor-Drama, 'Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night' (1967). Grandfather of Illeana Douglas. His son Peter was born in 1933. His daughter Mary Helen was born in 1938. Won Broadway's 1960 Tony Award as Best Actor (Dramatic) for "The Best Man." According to the March 31, 1941 issue of 'Time' magazine, Douglas and Edward G. Robinson bid $3,200 for the fedora hat that Franklin D. Roosevelt had worn during his three successful campaigns for the Presidency. They acquired the hat at a special Hollywood auction to benefit the Motion Picture Relief Fund. Both Robinson and Douglas were identified as "loyal Democrats." Douglas was extremely active in liberal causes in the 1930s and '40s, which opened him up to charges of being a "Fellow traveler" during the McCarthyite period. Douglas' wife, Helen Gahagan Douglas would later serve as U.S. Representative (Democrat-California) and be defeated in her 1950 bid for the U.S. Senate by Republican Congressman Richard Nixon, who dubbed her the "pink lady" for her leftist leanings. (President John F. Kennedy would appoint her Treasurer of the United States in 1961.) About Democrat-turned-Republican Ronald Reagan), Douglas said after he was elected President of the United States in 1980 that his former friend (and former liberal Democrat) had begun to believe in the speeches he delivered for General Electric when he was the star of a Western TV series sponsored by GE.

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