Speaking Out

A Full LifeBy Helen Gahagan Douglas Doubleday, 444 pp., $19.95 Helen Gahagan Douglas is remembered for the same reason that Aleksandr Kerensky and Atahualpa are remembered: all three got beaten hatch over hold by famous hard-pool players. Before Nixon crypto-martyrized her, however, Helen Gahagan had had more than one notable career. At 22 she was a major shine on Broadway. At 26 she gave it up for opera: which is rather like a male nurse giving it up for micro-surgery. Still, Miss Gahagan caught serious acclaim throughout Europe. Some short time later she wed Melvyn Douglas and both sort of drifted into New Deal politics, the way you or I might drift into hypoglycemia, say. With no hassle whatever, Mrs. Douglas won a House seat. Then, after the Nixon hemorrhage, she ran her long life off in board directorships, social service, and “speaking out.” (Note: Only a liberal can speak out. Conservatives, we must assume, just rant.) This autobiography is a tribute to steadfast principle, great personal charm, and pluggish work—must be that because, otherwise, I could discern scarce one repeatable insight or earlobe dab of humor in it.

Mrs. Douglas was a type specimen: the paradigmatic anti-Communist liberal. Something that Adlai Stevenson and Eleanor Roosevelt might’ve begotten on each other if they could’ve stopped talking long enough. And, to tell truth, one yearns for that human genre: it had grace and assurance and patriotic nerve. In Congress Helen supported world government, water reclamation, civilian A-bomb control, and General Marshall’s plan with the tenacity of a jump-rope chant. You couldn’t deflect her. She saw to it that the House staff cafeteria got integrated (a legislative scandal even in 1946). From her first political tee shot I doubt if she stood down on any substantive issue. Mrs. Douglas, for instance, was long a member of Henry Wallace’s pit crew. Yet in 1948 she let him go hang upwind. “I could see that radicals of the Left, many of them Communists, were taking over the splinter organization.” Nixon called her a “Pink Lady.” What would that make, oh, Michael Harrington: the Scarlet Pimpernel?

DK

About the Author

D. Keith Mano

D. Keith Mano was a TV screenwriter and author of ten books, including Take 5, recipient of the 1987 Literary Lion award, and columnist at National Review magazine for 17 years.

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A Full LifeBy Helen Gahagan Douglas Doubleday, 444 pp., $19.95 Helen Gahagan Douglas is remembered for the same reason that Aleksandr Kerensky and Atahualpa are remembered: all three got beaten hatch over hold by famous hard-pool players. Before Nixon crypto-martyrized her, however, Helen Gahagan had had more than one notable career. At 22 she was a major shine on Broadway. At 26 she gave it up for opera: which is rather like a male nurse giving it up for micro-surgery. Still, Miss Gahagan caught serious acclaim throughout Europe. Some short time later she wed Melvyn Douglas and both sort of drifted into New Deal politics, the way you or I might drift into hypoglycemia, say. With no hassle whatever, Mrs. Douglas won a House seat. Then, after the Nixon hemorrhage, she ran her long life off in board directorships, social service, and “speaking out.” (Note: Only a liberal can speak out. Conservatives, we must assume, just rant.) This autobiography is a tribute to steadfast principle, great personal charm, and pluggish work—must be that because, otherwise, I could discern scarce one repeatable insight or earlobe dab of humor in it.

Mrs. Douglas was a type specimen: the paradigmatic anti-Communist liberal. Something that Adlai Stevenson and Eleanor Roosevelt might’ve begotten on each other if they could’ve stopped talking long enough. And, to tell truth, one yearns for that human genre: it had grace and assurance and patriotic nerve. In Congress Helen supported world government, water reclamation, civilian A-bomb control, and General Marshall’s plan with the tenacity of a jump-rope chant. You couldn’t deflect her. She saw to it that the House staff cafeteria got integrated (a legislative scandal even in 1946). From her first political tee shot I doubt if she stood down on any substantive issue. Mrs. Douglas, for instance, was long a member of Henry Wallace’s pit crew. Yet in 1948 she let him go hang upwind. “I could see that radicals of the Left, many of them Communists, were taking over the splinter organization.” Nixon called her a “Pink Lady.” What would that make, oh, Michael Harrington: the Scarlet Pimpernel?

DK

About the Author

D. Keith Mano

D. Keith Mano was a TV screenwriter and author of ten books, including Take 5, recipient of the 1987 Literary Lion award, and columnist at National Review magazine for 17 years.