Trivia

He did not attend The 52nd Annual Academy Awards (1980) ceremony, where he won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Being There (1979), because he could not bear competing against eight year-old Justin Henry.

He is one of nine actors to have won the Triple Crown of Acting (an Oscar, Emmy and Tony); the others in chronological order are Thomas Mitchell, Paul Scofield, Jack Albertson, Jason Robards, Jeremy Irons, Al Pacino, Geoffrey Rush and Christopher Plummer.

He was the son of Lena Priscilla (Shackelford) and Edouard Gregory Hesselberg. His father, a Jewish emigrant from Riga, Latvia, was a prominent concert pianist and composer, who taught at the Toronto Conservatory of Music and encouraged his son to be a musician. Melvyn's mother, born in LaGrange Furnace, Stewart, Tennessee, was the daughter of a Union Army Officer, and was descended from Mayflower passengers. She wanted him to take up law.

He played a Presidential candidate in Gore Vidal's play, and, years later, Vidal (who was not normally very complimentary about actors) remarked that he would have made a fine President in real life.

Grandfather of Illeana Douglas.

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) .

According to the March 31, 1941, issue of Time magazine, Douglas and Edward G. Robinson, who were both Democratic activists, bid $3,200 for the fedora hat that 'Franklin Delano 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. Douglas was active in liberal and progressive political causes in the 1930s and 1940s, which led to charges being leveled against him of being a Communist and/or a "fellow traveler" by far-right-wing Republicans during the McCarthy "Red Scare" era of the 1950s. Douglas' wife, Helen Gahagan Douglas, would later be elected to the US House of Representatives as a Democrat from California, but was defeated in her 1950 bid for the U.S. Senate by Republican Congressman Richard Nixon, who derisively called her "The Pink Lady" for what he termed her "leftist" leanings. President John F. Kennedy would appoint her Treasurer of the United States in 1961. When Ronald Reagan was elected US President in 1980, Douglas said that his former friend (who changed from a liberal Democrat to an extremely conservative Republican) had begun to believe the speeches he delivered for General Electric Co. when he was the host of General Electric Theater (1953),an anthology series sponsored by the company for which Reagan, in addition to acting, also did the commercials.

On August 5, 2019, he was honored with a day of his film work during the Turner Classic Movies Summer Under the Stars.

He had six grandchildren when he died.

He won Broadway's 1960 Tony Award as Best Actor (Dramatic) for "The Best Man.".

The renowned British broadcaster and intellectual Melvyn Bragg was named after Douglas by his mother.

Douglas was sworn in as chief of the Arts Council, Office of Civilian Defense, by Miss Eileen Lusby, of the Emergency Management Personnel, in Washington, D.C., on 7 February 1942. (Associated Press, "Movie Actor Douglas in O.C.D.,", The San Bernardino Daily Sun, San Bernardino, California, Sunday 8 February 1942, Volume 48, page 17.).

He had two children with second wife, Helen Gahagan: a son named Peter (b. 1933) and daughter Mary Helen (b. 1938).

He had one son with his first wife, Rosalind, named Melvyn Gregory Hesselberg (b. January 28, 1926).

He had two grandsons from son Gregory, named Stefan and Erik.

He has appeared in three films that have been selected for the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant: Ninotchka (1939), Hud (1963) and Being There (1979).

His biography is in: "The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives". Volume One, 1981-1985, pages 240-242. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1998.

He was the brother of George Douglas.