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Melvyn Douglas was born Melvyn Edouard Hesselberg in Macon, Georgia in 1901. His father was a Russian Jewish concert pianist who taught piano at colleges and his mother was of Scottish heritage. Melvyn knew he wanted to be an actor, and he dropped out of high school and joined touring stock companies. In 1928, he made a Broadway debut in A Free Soul playing the same part Clark Gable would play in the 1931 movie version. In 1930, he starred in Tonight or Never, and not only was the play a big success, but he acted with Helen Gahagan, and they married the next year (he had been previously married from 1925 to 1930). His wife continued on the stage, but made only one movie, She, in 1935. He made the movie version of Tonight or Never in 1931, and stayed in Hollywood. He had the rare ability to play leads in both dramas and comedy (and early in his career he made several low budget horror movies!). He took both leading and supporting roles. Perhaps his best remembered movie from this period was opposite Greta Garbo in Ninotchka. He joined the Army during World War II, and his wife, now known as Helen Gahagan Douglas, was elected to Congress for the first of three terms. After the war, Douglas started taking older supporting roles in movies such as Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House. But he was caught up in the HUAAC hearings, and while he wasn't blacklisted, he was "gray listed" meaning that the Hollywood studios would not hire him. In 1950, his wife ran for the U.S. Senate against young Richard Nixon, and Nixon accused her of being "soft" on Communism (he said she was "pink right down to her underwear") and she lost. Like so many others caught up in the Red hysteria, Douglas spent most of the 1950s on television, and on the stage. He won a Tony Award for his performance in The Best Man in 1960, and he won an Emmy for his 1967 TV role role in Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night. Douglas made a strong return to movies in 1962 in Billy Budd, and the following year he was magnificent in Hud (opposite equally magnificent Paul Newman, Patricia Neal, and Brandon De Wilde). Douglas and Neal won Oscars, and Newman only lost because Sidney Poitier won his groundbreaking Oscar for Lillies of the Field. If you have never seen this wonderful movie, I urge you to see it ASAP! Douglas continued giving strong performances as he grew older, and perhaps his finest of his career was in I Never Sang For My Father (nominated for the Best Actor Academy Award for this film) in 1970, opposite Gene Hackman and Estelle Parsons. In 1979, he won a second Oscar for Being There. In 1980, his wife of nearly 50 years passed away, and Douglas passed away the following year. There have been few actors who have won an Oscar, a Tony, and an Emmy, as Douglas did. There have been few who were equally comfortable in comedy and drama, and who were willing to alternate between lead roles and supporting ones, and few who were able to pass seamlessly from young actor to middle aged actor to old actor, and yet Melvyn Douglas is the only one I can think of who did all these rare feats, and did them superbly!

Important Added Info: Note that this REPRODUCTION still has been personally autographed (signed) by Melvyn Douglas!

Note that this autographed item is part of a remarkable collection. In our last two all-signed auctions, we auctioned hundreds of items from this collection and now we are auctioning 213 more items (plus signed index cards that have a different note on those)!
     In the 1970s, our consignor was a teacher who taught a film class, and he also part-time ran the local movie theater (and he saved all the presskits from the movies the theater showed).
     Starting in the late 1970s through the late 1980s, he wrote to famous celebrities, and enclosed an 8x10 from his collection, and he wrote a literate personalized letter, talking about his work as a film teacher, and discussing his favorite movie by that star.
     He received signed photos back from a good percentage of the people he wrote to, and if the people simply sent him a stock photo back, he did not save it, but if he felt the autograph was genuine, and if they added a personalized note, then he did save them.
     In the late 1980s, he pretty much stopped sending letters and photos, simply because he was just too busy. So this photo (and the vast majority of the other photos we are auctioning for this consignor) were obtained in the late 1970s or 1980s, through personal correspondence with this star. This is of course excellent, because back at that time celebrities were not selling their signatures nearly as much, and many of the stars were pretty forgotten and were happy to get letters from people like our consignor!
     He of course does not have any "Certificates of Authenticity", but he only kept ones he felt were surely authentic, and those are the ones we are auctioning. However, bidders can certainly compare the signatures to known examples on the internet to judge for themselves.

As is true of all the signed items we are currently auctioning, we give every buyer 30 days in which to review what they purchased and they can return any item as long as it is within 30 days of the end of the auction. On non-signed items, we give a "lifetime guarantee" on everything we auction, but on signed items, we give the above modified guarantee of 30 days after the auction closes.

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Bruce Hershenson,
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