Clare Boothe Luce

Clare Boothe Luce

Clare Boothe Luce was an American writer, politician, diplomat, and conservative public intellectual whose career crossed theater, journalism, Congress, and foreign service. Born Ann Clare Boothe in New York City on March 10, 1903, she lived through an era when women were still fighting for public power and then helped occupy some of the rooms where that power was used. She died on October 9, 1987, after a life that made her one of the most visible American women of the twentieth century.

Luce is best known as the author of The Women, her 1936 hit play with an all-female cast. Her writing also included drama, screen scenarios, fiction, journalism, and war reportage. She had years of close contact with the magazine world: she was managing editor of Vanity Fair, later married Henry Luce, publisher of Time, Life, Fortune, and Sports Illustrated, and suggested the idea of Life magazine to him before it was developed internally. Her public life soon moved beyond print. From 1943 to 1947 she served as U.S. representative from Connecticut’s 4th congressional district, and from 1953 to 1956 she was U.S. Ambassador to Italy.

Her early life gave her a mix of polish, ambition, and restlessness. Her parents were not married and separated in 1912, and parts of her childhood were spent in New York City, Tennessee, Illinois, and New Jersey. Her father, a brilliant violinist, gave her a love of literature, while her mother at first imagined an acting career for her. Luce understudied Mary Pickford on Broadway at age 10, appeared on Broadway in The Dummy in 1914, and had a small part in Thomas Edison’s 1915 film The Heart of a Waif. After travel in Europe, she became interested in women’s suffrage and worked for the National Woman’s Party in Washington, D.C., and Seneca Falls, New York.

Her views changed over time, sometimes sharply. In youth she briefly aligned with the liberalism of President Franklin Roosevelt as a protégé of Bernard Baruch, but later became an outspoken critic of Roosevelt. In later life she was a leading conservative and was well known for her anti-communism. During World War II she strongly supported the Anglo-American alliance, while also criticizing British colonialism in India. After the death of her only child, Ann Clare Brokaw, in a 1944 automobile accident, Luce explored psychotherapy and religion. She was received into the Catholic Church in 1946 and became an ardent essayist and lecturer on her faith.

Luce’s words still carry because they came from a life lived in public argument and private strain. She wrote for the stage, reported on war, spoke in politics, and represented the United States abroad. She campaigned for every Republican presidential nominee from Wendell Willkie to Ronald Reagan, and was known as a charismatic, forceful public speaker. Her sentences belonged to someone who understood performance, persuasion, and belief, and who kept testing ideas against the hard facts of power, grief, faith, and ambition.