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Thread: Clare Boothe Luce

  1. #1
    radiojane Guest

    Clare Boothe Luce



    Most famous today for her groundbreaking comedy play "The Women", Luce was also a politician, a writer for Life, and a woman who greatly enjoyed sex with men in power, enjoying trysts with people ranging from Winston Churchill's son to JFK's dad. Her life was truly an interesting one.

    Clare Boothe Luce was born Ann Clare Boothe, the illegitimate child of dancer Anna Snyder and William Franklin Boothe. Although her father, a violinist, deserted the family when Clare was 9, he instilled in his daughter a love of music and literature. Parts of her childhood were spent in Chicago, Illinois; Memphis, Tennessee; and, with her mother, in France.
    Boothe 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 European tour with her mother and stepfather, Dr. Albert E. Austin, Boothe became interested in the Women's suffrage movement.
    Boothe 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 born April 25, 1924. According to Boothe, Brokaw was an alcoholic, and the marriage ended in divorce in 1929. On November 23, 1935, Boothe married Henry Robinson Luce, the wealthy and influential publisher of Time, Fortune, and Life.
    Luce was well-acquainted with other members of New York society and was a close personal friend of actress Dorothy Hale. After Hale's dramatic death by suicide in October 1938, Luce commissioned Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, who also had been a friend of Hale's, to do a portrait of the ill-fated thespian. Kahlo, in response, painted "El Suicidio de Dorothy Hale," a lurid depiction of Hale's death that reportedly shocked and horrified Luce.
    On January 11, 1944, Luce's daughter Ann, 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 member of the Catholic group the Dames of Malta.

    As a writer for stage, film and magazines, Luce was known for her skill with satire and understatement, as well as her charm with people, which she displayed in oft-quoted 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 Italy, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and England in the midst of 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 Joseph Warren 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 contents of a draft Life article.
    In 1947, after her second term in the US House expired, Luce wrote a series of articles describing her conversion to Roman Catholicism under the influence of Fulton J. Sheen. These were published in McCall's magazine. 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. Luce 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 written by authors including Whittaker Chambers, Evelyn Waugh, Bruce Marshall, and Rebecca West. She wrote her final play, Slam the Door Softly, in 1970.
    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. Austin. An outspoken critic of the Democratic President's foreign policy, Luce won the respect of the ultraconservative isolationists 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. Recent scholarship indicates that this may have been a result of her amorous relationships with the "Baker Street Irregulars" - a group of culturally elite spies sent by Churchill to Washington to influence American political views. Luce won a second term in the House in 1944 and was instrumental in the creation of the Atomic Energy Commission and began warning against the growing threat of international Communism.
    Luce returned to politics during the 1952 presidential election, when she campaigned on behalf of Republican candidate Dwight Eisenhower. Luce's 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 a quiet reply, "You know, Mrs. Ambassador, I am a Catholic too." 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.
    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. However, also in 1964, "Harry" Luce 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.
    Luce maintained her remarkable wit late in life. Asked by a journalist if she missed her collection of friends among the leaders of the 20th Century who were then deceased, she replied: "More than my friends, I miss my enemies.... They define you so."
    Clare Luce died of brain cancer on October 9, 1987, at the age of 84 in her Watergate apartment in Washington D.C.. She is buried at Mepkin Abbey, in South Carolina.



  2. #2
    Join Date
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    Seemed like she had a very full life.
    So good for her as a woman in that time.

  3. #3
    Guest Guest
    I enjoyed the film 'The Women' lots of talented actresses in the cast

  4. #4
    Valerie Guest
    Intersting woman. She also said:

    Money can't buy happiness, but it can make you awfully comfortable while you're being miserable.

    Nature abhors a virgin - a frozen asset.

    Politicians talk themselves red, white, and blue in the face.

  5. #5
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    You mentioned that she was a playwright, an author and a politician. You neglected to say that she was also an asshole.
    KELT' HOME FOR WAYWARD YOUTH-
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  6. #6
    radiojane Guest
    Quote Originally Posted by KELT View Post
    You mentioned that she was a playwright, an author and a politician. You neglected to say that she was also an asshole.

    Had to leave something to discussion

  7. #7
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    There is a thread on her already, in fact..I believe I started it WWAAAYYY back when we first started. I'll merge this..or rather..Dj will. LOL.

    For all the welcomed newcomers, there is a search engine up on top here. Please utilize it before starting a new topic. We've been around a few years now and lots of stuff gets buried deep but it's there.

    Just a friendly reminder.
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]peek-a-boo!!

  8. #8
    radiojane Guest
    Quote Originally Posted by joplinfrk View Post
    There is a thread on her already, in fact..I believe I started it WWAAAYYY back when we first started. I'll merge this..or rather..Dj will. LOL.

    For all the welcomed newcomers, there is a search engine up on top here. Please utilize it before starting a new topic. We've been around a few years now and lots of stuff gets buried deep but it's there.

    Just a friendly reminder.

    It was searched for. Spelling makes a big difference, and even so, many times a thread will not come up.

  9. #9
    Taggerez Guest
    I used to watch Clare Boothe Luce on Firing Line. Really smart woman and refreshingly independent.

    She and Henry used to drop LSD with Cary Grant back in the 1940s

  10. #10
    ShockDoc Guest
    I think she gets my vote for the silliest sounding celebrity name.lol.

  11. #11
    OnDeMove Guest
    I know that this is more than somewhat off topic. I apologize up front. It's just that the name Clare Booth Luce always triggers this one memory for me.

    Back when Gabe Kaplan was still a stand-up comic - - before the show "Welcome Back, Kotter" was ever on the air - - he had a killer routine that involved the creation of the world first 100% effective aphrodesiac, and how it would be advertised. The bit ended with that ad, and the tagline of the ad was, "This is the product that made Oscar Wilde, Helen Reddy, and Clare Booth Luce."

  12. #12
    Join Date
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    There is an amazing doll house in the Chicago museum that was created by the great silent film star, Colleen Moore. Check it out sometime, it is amazing.

    I have the book that was written about it, and it mentions that the chapel in the dollhouse contains a sliver of the true cross in the monstrance. This sliver was given to Clare Booth Luce by the Pope, and she gave it to Colleen Moore in memory of her daughter.

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