Clare Boothe Luce

Clare Boothe Luce

Clare Boothe Luce in 1932, photo by Carl Van Vechten
United States Ambassador to Italy
In office May 4, 1953 – April 27, 1956
President	Dwight D. Eisenhower
Preceded by	Ellsworth Bunker
Succeeded by	James David Zellerbach
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Connecticut's 4th district
In office January 3, 1943 – January 3, 1947
Preceded by	Le Roy D. Downs
Succeeded by	John D. Lodge
Personal details
Born	Ann Clare Boothe March 10, 1903 New York City, New York, U.S.
Died	October 9, 1987(1987-10-09) (aged 84) Washington, D.C.
Political party	Republican
Spouse(s)	George Tuttle Brokaw (1923-1929, divorced); 1 child Henry "Harry" Luce (1935-1967, his death)
Relations	Anna Clara Schneider & William Franklin Boothe (parents); David Franklin Boothe (brother)
Children	Ann Clare Brokaw (1924-1944)
Occupation	Editor playwright social activist journalist diplomat
Religion	Roman Catholic

Clare Boothe Luce (March 10, 1903 ^[1] – October 9, 1987) was an American playwright, editor, journalist, ambassador, socialite and U.S. Congresswoman, representing the state of Connecticut.

1 Early life
2 Writing career
3 Political career
4 Death
5 Legacies
- 5.1 Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute
- 5.2 Clare Boothe Luce Heritage Foundation Award
6 Publications
7 See also
8 References
9 Sources
10 External links

Early life

Luce was born Ann Clare Boothe in New York City on March 10, 1903, the second child of dancer Anna Clara Schneider (aka Anna Snyder; aka Anne Boothe) and William Franklin Boothe. Her parents were not married and would separate in 1912. Her father, a violinist and patent-medicine salesman, instilled in his daughter a love of music and literature. Parts of her childhood were spent in Chicago, Illinois, Memphis, Tennessee, Union City, New Jersey and New York City. Clare Boothe had an elder brother, David Franklin Boothe.

She attended schools in Garden City and Tarrytown, New York, graduating in 1919. Her original ambition was to become an actress. She understudied Mary Pickford on Broadway at age 10, then briefly attended a school of the theater in New York City. While on a tour of Europe with her mother and stepfather, Dr. Albert E. Austin, whom her mother married in 1919, she became interested in the women's suffrage movement.

She married George Tuttle Brokaw, heir to a New York clothing fortune, on August 10, 1923, at the age of 20. They had one daughter, Ann Clare Brokaw (April 25, 1924 – January 11, 1944). According to Boothe, Brokaw was an alcoholic, and the marriage ended in divorce in 1929. Brokaw remarried, to Frances Ford Seymour; they remained wed until his death in 1935. Frances Brokaw, remarried, to actor Henry Fonda, and gave birth to Jane and Peter Fonda.

On November 23, 1935, Boothe remarried, to Henry Robinson Luce, the publisher of Time, Life and Fortune. On January 11, 1944, Luce's daughter Ann Clare Brokaw, while a senior at Stanford University, was killed in an automobile accident. As a result of this tragedy, Luce explored psychotherapy and religion, joining the Roman Catholic Church in 1946, ultimately becoming a Dame of Malta.

Writing career

A magazine writer, and sometime playwright (The Women, Kiss the Boys Goodbye, Margin for Error), Luce was known for her skill with satire and understatement, which she displayed in aphorisms such as "No good deed goes unpunished". After the end of her first marriage, Luce resumed her maiden name, and joined the staff of the fashion magazine Vogue, as an editorial assistant in 1930. In 1931, she became associate editor of Vanity Fair, and began writing short sketches satirizing New York society. In 1933, the same year she became managing editor of the magazine, her sketches were compiled and published under the title Stuffed Shirts.

Boothe resigned from Vanity Fair in 1934 to pursue a career as a playwright. In 1940, after World War II had begun, Luce took time away from her success as a playwright and traveled to Europe as a journalist for her husband's Life Magazine. During a four-month visit, she covered a wide range of battlefronts. Her observations of France, England, Italy, Belgium and Holland amid the German offensive were published as Europe in the Spring in 1940. This anecdotal account describes "... a world where men have decided to die together because they are unable to find a way to live together."

In 1941, Luce and her husband toured China and reported on the status of the country and its war with Japan. After the United States entered World War II, Luce toured Africa, India, China, and Burma, compiling reports for Life. Luce endured the frustrations and dangers familiar to most war correspondents, including bombing raids in Europe and the Far East. Luce's unsettling observations eventually led to changes in British military policy in the Middle East. During this tour, she published interviews with General Harold Alexander, commander of British troops in the Middle East; Chiang Kai-Shek; Jawaharlal Nehru; and General Stilwell, commander of American troops in the China-Burma-India theater.

While in Trinidad and Tobago, she faced house arrest by British Customs due to Allied discomfort over the contents of a draft article for Life magazine. In 1944 she wrote for the monthly magazine Prevent World War III. In 1947, after her second term in the US House of Representatives expired, she wrote a series of articles describing her conversion to Roman Catholicism under the influence of Fulton J. Sheen. These were published in McCall's. In 1949, she wrote the screenplay for the film Come to the Stable, about two nuns trying to raise money to build a children's hospital. The screenplay was nominated for an Academy Award.

She returned to writing for the stage in 1951 with Child of the Morning. In 1952, she edited the book Saints for Now, a compilation of essays about various saints, which had been written by authors including Whittaker Chambers, Evelyn Waugh, Bruce Marshall and Rebecca West. She wrote her final play, Slam the Door Softly, in 1970.

Political career

In 1942, Luce won a Republican seat in the United States House of Representatives representing Fairfield County, Connecticut, the 4th Congressional District. She filled the seat formerly held by her late stepfather, Dr. Albert Austin. An outspoken critic of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's foreign policy, Luce was supported by isolationists and conservatives in Congress, and received an appointment to the Military Affairs Committee. However, her voting record was generally more moderate, siding with the administration on issues such as funding for American troops and aid to war victims. Luce won a second term in the House in 1944 and was instrumental in the creation of the Atomic Energy Commission and also began warning against international Communism.

In 1946 she was the co-author of the Luce–Celler Act of 1946, which allowed immigration of Indians and Filipinos to the US, who had previously been limited to 100 immigrants per year because they were non-white, and allowed Indian and Philippines-born Americans to become naturalized citizens. In 1948 she delivered the keynote address at the Republican National Convention.

Luce returned to politics during the 1952 presidential election, when she campaigned on behalf of Republican candidate Dwight Eisenhower. Her support was rewarded with an appointment as ambassador to Italy, confirmed by the Senate in March 1953. Meeting Pope Pius XII, she allegedly instructed him to be tougher on communism in defense of the Church, prompting the Pontiff to reply, "You know, Mrs. Ambassador, I am a Catholic too."^[2] In 1957 she was awarded the Laertare Medal as an outstanding Catholic layperson. She also received honorary degrees from both Fordham and Temple universities.

As ambassador, Luce addressed the issue of anticommunism and the Italian labor movement and helped settle the dispute between Italy and what was then Yugoslavia over the United Nations territorial lines in Trieste. Not long afterward, Luce fell seriously ill with arsenic poisoning caused by paint chips falling from the stucco that decorated her bedroom ceiling, and was forced to resign in 1956.^[3]

Luce maintained her association with the conservative wing of the Republican party. She was well known for her anti-Communist views, as well as her advocacy of fiscal conservatism. In 1964, she supported Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona, the Republican candidate for president, and considered a candidacy for the United States Senate from New York on the Conservative party ticket. In 1964, her husband retired as editor-in-chief of Time, and Luce joined him by also retiring from public life. In 1979, she was the first female to be awarded the Sylvanus Thayer Award by the United States Military Academy at West Point. In 1981, newly-inaugurated President Ronald Reagan appointed Luce to the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. She served on the board until 1983, the year President Reagan awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Death

Clare Boothe Luce died of brain cancer on October 9, 1987, aged 84, at her Watergate apartment in Washington D.C. She is buried at Mepkin Abbey, South Carolina.

Legacies

Since its first grants in 1989 the Clare Boothe Luce Program has become the single most significant source of private support for women in science, mathematics and engineering. The organization has claimed that it has given grants of more than $120 million to supported some 1,550 women. Grants are made to colleges and universities, not directly to individuals.