Centerstage: Helen Gahagan Douglas: A Life

'Centerstage: Helen Gahagan Douglas: A Life'

by Ingrid Winther Scobie Oxford, $24.95

"Centerpiece" spotlights Helen Gahagan Douglas, the so-called "pink lady" Congressional representative smeared as a communist by Richard Nixon in the 1950 Senate race in California. Douglas, who abandoned an acting career to pursue the New Deal in Congress, lost that race to the man she termed "Tricky Dick."

It's a great story, though Ingrid Winther Scobie's retelling is flawed by careless editing and a ham-handed attempt to remake Douglas into a role model for modern women. Though successful professionally, Douglas' strained relationship with her husband, the actor Melvyn Douglas, and both spouses' virtual abandonment of their children hardly stand as a model of a balanced life. Nor does "Centerstage" even attempt to contrast Douglas' flamboyant principled liberalism to that other actor-turned-politician of the same era: Ronald Reagan.

"Centerstage" represents an opportunity lost in this political Year of the Woman: with more objective writing and careful editing, this could have been a great book.

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