The Pink Lady: The Many Lives of Helen Gahagan Douglas

I enjoyed reading The Pink Lady because at the time she (Helen Gahagan Douglas) ran against Richard Nixon I was a student at UCLA. My grandmother had been in the campaign that Nixon won previously. She told me "Nixon was a bad guy," so I worked for Douglas. She was really lambasted by the Nixon campaign with lots of inaccurate information. I never knew of the other parts of her life and this book reinforced my reason for supporting her. It also showed how good people can be easily ruined in public life. Judy B. Rosener Ph.D.

This book was a great read and gave insight not only into the life of "The Pink Lady", but into the politics and people of the time.

I just finished this outstanding book. The Pink Lady is the story of the incredible life of Helen Gahagan Douglas. Her life reads like a movie script- she was a Broadway stage star, she married Melvyn Douglas, was an opera singer who abandoned the stage for politics and many progressive causes. Denton chronicles the brutal 1950 senate campaign between Douglas and Nixon. What is surprising to me is that I knew nothing about the colorful life of Ms. Douglas and Sally Denton has reawakened a most relevant story about this trail blazing woman. Her story has been silenced until now and Sally Denton creates a historical picture that is educational, enlightening and a fun read.

The Pink Lady The Pink Lady has the distinction of being both a serious work of history and a captivating page-turner. Helen Gahagan Douglas was a fascinating character who lived in a fascinating time: she was a confidante of Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt, wife of the famous actor, Melvyn Douglas, lover of Lyndon Johnson (among others), two-time Congresswoman, and victim of Richard Milhous Nixon in the notorious campaign for the Senate in 1950. Sally Denton has told Helen Douglas's story with economy and verve from her childhood in Brooklyn after the turn of the century through her death in 1980. Highlights include her stardom on Broadway in the 1920s, her commitment to the New Deal and politics in the 1930s and forties, the political campaign that became the model for dirty politics in America, and commitment to peace and disarmament after that. As someone who has written about disarmament issues I believe Douglas was not only on the right side of the argument at the beginning of the Cold War, in the company of men like George Kennan, but has proved to be prophetic as we look back on that seminal period.