Early Life and Acting Career
Gahagan was born in Boonton, New Jersey of Scotch-Irish descent. Her father was Walter H. Gahagan, an engineer who owned a construction business in Brooklyn and a shipyard in Arverne, Queens; her mother had been a schoolteacher. She was reared Episcopalian.
She graduated from the Berkeley Institute in 1920, and from Barnard College in 1924. Gahagan became a well-known star on Broadway in the 1920s. In 1931, she married actor Melvyn Douglas. Gahagan starred in only one Hollywood movie, She in 1935, playing Hash-a-Motep, queen of a lost city. The movie, based on H. Rider Haggard's novel of the same name, is perhaps best known for popularizing a phrase from the novel, "She who must be obeyed." Her character and costuming in She served as the inspiration for the appearance of the Evil Queen in Walt Disney's 1937 animated film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
Read more about this topic: Helen Gahagan Douglas
Famous quotes containing the words early, life, acting and/or career:
“Early to rise and early to bed makes a male healthy and wealthy and dead.”
—James Thurber (1894–1961)
“Now, my co-mates and brothers in exile,
Hath not old custom made this life more sweet
Than that of painted pomp?”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“If I were a woman, I would never trust men who say they are feminists. Either they are acting out of guilt, trying to establish credentials, or they think they might be able to pick up more girls. If I were a woman, I would say, go away and have your first period. Then come back and tell me you are a feminist.”
—David Thomas (b. 1959)
“It is a great many years since at the outset of my career I had to think seriously what life had to offer that was worth having. I came to the conclusion that the chief good for me was freedom to learn, think, and say what I pleased, when I pleased. I have acted on that conviction... and though strongly, and perhaps wisely, warned that I should probably come to grief, I am entirely satisfied with the results of the line of action I have adopted.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)