by Helen Gahagan Douglas
This is the story of a beautiful, willful girl who defied her wealthy father to become an actress, a singer, the wife of actor Melvyn Douglas and the mother of two children. Then, in the 1930s, she visited the migrant laborers in California, caught "a raging case of impetigo," and became a politician, an effective proponent of liberal social action. Elected as a Congresswoman from California in 1944, she was defeated in a race for the Senate in 1950 by Richard Nixon, though she claims she would have lost even if he hadn't implied that she was soft on Communism. An ardent Democrat, Douglas still lambastes Lyndon Johnson. He charmed her when they were in Congress, but ultimately she found him "a restless, vain, insecure man.... When the pressure was on, he tended to become conservative and cautious." Mrs. Douglas was neither. She was imperious, a flamboyant show-off both onstage and off, but even as an actress she showed little interest in the business that brought her husband fame and success. She died in June 1980, at 79, just as this book was being completed. (Doubleday, $19.95)
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