Price of Fame

by Sylvia Jukes Morris

  To the end, she remained a practiced vamp. One evening, having sold Halenai’a for $3.6 million and moved to what would be her final apartment, at 906-907 Watergate South, she telephoned to say she had a “terrible attack of the dismals.” I asked why, and she said, “It’s Saturday night, and I haven’t any beaus.”

  I asked her what kind of escort she would like. “A homosexual Admiral would be good,” she said, “because at the end of the evening I wouldn’t have to put out.”

  In November 1986, The Old Vic theater in London put on a fiftieth-anniversary revival of The Women, starring Susannah York and Maria Aitken. Clare asked me to accompany her to the final rehearsals and opening night. We stayed at Claridge’s. Time Inc. gave a dinner for her at Le Gavroche. I saw her working hard in conversation with former Prime Minister Edward Heath. She told me afterward, “I was having no success at charming him, so I slayed him with pure intellectual superiority.”

  One night, after a preview, we ate alone at the hotel. Clare was contemplative. She spoke sadly of her peripatetic childhood, and Ann Clare Schneider’s determination to marry her to a rich man. “Mother poisoned my life.” When I remarked on how many personal tragedies she had endured, she said, “Nothing more than I could bear.” Still in a retrospective mood, she said, “You know, few playwrights have their works performed after fifty years.” Then, after a pause, “Possibly Shakespeare.” Silent for another moment, she asked me whom I felt closest to—“not counting Edmund.” Before I could reply, she said, “I feel closest to you, because you know everything.”

  She was now eighty-three, and seemed to be her old energetic self, doing morning exercises and running along the corridors like a gazelle. During that week in London, she kept up a grueling schedule of rehearsals and interviews. But I noticed that most untypically, she mislaid keys and itineraries, mistook the time and date, and dropped her wallet. One morning, I knocked at her door for several minutes before she answered. Looking dazed, she said, “I think it would be better if you came back in half an hour. I might have taken too many sleeping pills.”

  Later, I helped her zip up her dress. “The trouble with you,” I said, “is that your mind and heart want to do more than your body will allow.”

  She nodded. “It’s why I’m always so depressed.”

  That night I wrote on a card: “Clare’s mind is going.”

  She spent much of that winter traveling to New York to visit her stepdaughter-in-law, Nancy Luce, who was dying of cancer. We continued seeing each other, and chatted often on the phone. She complained about her appearance. “I don’t go to beauty parlors anymore. My hair’s so thin, and my nails won’t grow.” Yet she still ventured out on shopping sprees with her friend Commander Edward Koczak, once spending $8,000 at Yves Saint Laurent.

  I noticed through the spring that her behavior was becoming more erratic. On her eighty-fourth birthday, she temporarily lost her power of speech and was confined to bed, unable to see visitors. I dropped off a bunch of her favorite American Beauty roses at the Watergate desk. The clerk remarked, “She must be the most popular lady in Washington. She sure receives lots of flowers.”

  In May, I went to Europe on a research trip. When I came back, Clare called to tell me she had a brain tumor. The growth was behind her left eye, and had been shrunk by steroids. Now she was undergoing radiation treatments. “This way, perhaps, I’ll make it to December.”

  At the end of that month, she wrote a poignant and telling farewell letter to “Dear Friends and Family.” Her penmanship no longer displayed her mastery of italic calligraphy, but had reverted to a rounded script reminiscent of childhood. Some sentences were scarcely coherent, though correctly spelled and punctuated. “I have to tell you how much I love you all, if not equally, as there is no such thing.… Each of you has a different place in my thoughts and memories and I leave it all to you to discover what those places are.… So I thank you for being part of my stage set.”

  Richard Nixon heard how ill she was, and wrote to cheer her up. “As I see some of the mediocrities who are running for President these days, I only wish that the Clare Luce I knew in the fifties was around today! You would be a lead pipe cinch to become the first woman President.”

  On July 12, Edmund and I took her to dinner. She was shaky on her legs, but ate well—smoked fish salad, broiled trout, strawberries and blueberries, and coffee. Her doctor had forbidden alcohol, but she called for a kir, poured some over the fruit, and impishly dumped petits fours in the rest. She talked as much as ever, if less sequentially, complaining of how she had lent Orson Welles $5,000 to produce Macbeth and never been repaid, and how the Duchess of Windsor used to rap the Duke’s knuckles when he ate with his fingers. “The jury is still out on me,” she reported of her eighteen radiation treatments.

  On July 27, Clare gave what was in effect her own farewell party. She invited twenty-two people, mostly journalists. For almost an hour, we stood in the library having drinks. Our hostess was nowhere to be seen. At last, she made a painfully slow entrance, supported by two attendants. We were shocked at her skeletal appearance, made more macabre by a silver bob-style wig.

  Guests gathered round as she sat on a low sofa, munching popcorn and drinking Perrier. Dinner was served, consisting of borscht and sour cream, pasta with shrimp, and goulash. Dessert (her final mischievous joke) was a Dove bar complete with stick, laid across fine china.

  Clare never left the apartment again. By September she was confined to bed, lying beneath the Frida Kahlo self-portrait she had bought more than fifty years before, and looked after by her secretary Sybil Cooper, her maid, Lucia Fuentes, and two nurses. She was reluctant to see anyone else—“My face looks awful”—but late that month a few friends and relatives from out of town were allowed in briefly. Father Christian of Mepkin Abbey was among the last to visit. He asked about her two favorite saints, Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas, and was surprised at the lucidity with which she differentiated them. Although she had not been to church much in recent years, when the priest put on his robes and offered her the sacraments of Confession, Communion, and Extreme Unction, she said, “I want all of them.”

  After that, unable to read, write, or watch television, she listened to music. The last cassette in her stereo player was Bach’s Mass in B Minor, stopped at the conclusion of the “Kyrie.” During the night, she could sometimes be heard softly calling out to her mother and Ann.

  At nine o’clock on the morning of October 9, 1987, Ms. Cooper called to tell me Clare had died. I felt a thud in my chest, such as you have as a child when you are frightened. I rushed over to the apartment, but the body had already been removed.

  Just before the end, she had assured a nurse that “many important people” would attend her funeral. At a memorial Mass at the Church of St. Stephen Martyr in Washington, Senator Strom Thurmond and Patrick Buchanan were among the four hundred congregants, as was Dan Boorstin, who growled, “I feel no grief at all. I think it’s because she was an unsatisfactory woman. Just wasn’t interested in anybody else.” Another Mass was held in New York’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral, attended by Richard Nixon, CIA Director William Webster, UN Ambassador General Vernon Walters, and former Secretary of the Interior William Clark. Cardinal O’Connor, Hank Luce, and Bill Buckley gave eulogies.

  “Her documented achievements,” the latter said, “are evidence of the lengths to which nature is prepared to go to demonstrate its addiction to inequality.”

  Clare was buried at Mepkin, where she had written several plays and spent some of the happiest days of her marriage to Henry Luce. The Abbot spoke of a “clear light extinguished.” As she was lowered in a gleaming pine coffin into the ground near her mother and daughter and next to her husband, I heard a monk say, “There’s no distance between them now: it’s vault to vault.” Men shoveled red soil onto the casket. A cockroach squeezed itself between two clods of earth, eager to begin the natural reprocessing of life.

  So there, beneath a great oak on the ban
ks of the tranquil Cooper River, lies Clare Boothe Luce.

  (illustration credit epl.5)

  APPENDIX

  The Last Will and Testament of Clare Boothe Luce was signed on February 20, 1987, with a codicil added on April 23, 1987, and published on December 3, 1987. She left an appraised total of $31,625,454 in personal property, including real estate, corporate stocks and bonds, and bank accounts, but not including incoming royalties from her plays. In addition, she had power of appointment over two trust funds bequeathed to her by her late husbands, George Tuttle Brokaw and Henry Robinson Luce. From the latter, of some $19 million, she left $600,000 to Mepkin Abbey, $100,000 of which was to be set aside as a permanent endowment fund for the maintenance of her and her family’s graves. Other bequests totaling $1,725,000 went to eighteen institutions, including the Heritage Foundation ($500,000, plus net proceeds from the sale of her three apartments in the Watergate complex), Saint Anne’s Chapel ($250,000), the Dr. Milton B. Rosenbluth Memorial Fund for Medical Education ($250,000), the Association of Graduates of the United States Military Academy ($250,000 “to endow the Sylvanus Thayer Award for processing the selection of women candidates”), the Clare Boothe Luce Collection in the Library of Congress ($200,000 for processing and cataloging), the Eisenhower Foundation ($100,000), the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Library ($50,000), Regina Laudis Abbey in Bethlehem, Connecticut ($20,000), and the Winston Churchill Memorial in Fulton, Missouri ($10,000).

  The decedent’s bequests to individuals amounted to only one-seventh of her estate. The principal beneficiaries were “my longtime maid and friend, Miss Lucia Fuentes” ($100,000), and a niece, Elizabeth Severinghaus Warner ($100,000). Shirley Potash Clurman, Edward Koczak, James P. McFadden, and a personal assistant, Mary Leader, each received $25,000, and Letitia Baldrige Hollensteiner, $10,000. Bequests of varying worth went to Clare Middleton Luce ($50,000), Clare Leader ($10,000), Clare Hollensteiner ($10,000), Ann Clare Shea ($5,000), and St. Clare’s Chapel in Berea, Kentucky ($5,000).

  Sybil Cooper was left nothing, but a motion for default judgment filed by personal representatives of the estate granted her $10,000 for “substantial overtime performed … prior to decedent’s death.”

  A codicil to the will bequeathed two portraits by Boris Chaliapin, one a watercolor of Ann Brokaw and the other a tinted drawing of Clare Boothe Luce, to the National Portrait Gallery. A self-portrait by Frida Kahlo wearing Spanish colonial costume went to the National Museum of Women in the Arts. The Luce Foundation received busts of Henry and Clare Luce by Jo Davidson.

  A sale of “The Jewels and Objects of Vertu of the Honorable Clare Boothe Luce” by Sotheby’s on April 19, 1988, yielded $2,163,480. Half of this came from six items: a ruby-and-diamond dome ring, a diamond brooch, an emerald-and-diamond necklace from Bulgari, and a Fabergé compact. All other property of the decedent, including works of art, furniture, and a netsuke collection, were sold at auction. The proceeds, along with her residuary estate and the balance of her Luce and Brokaw trusts, totaled some $70 million. This sum was designated the Clare Boothe Luce Fund, to be administered as an academic program by the Henry Luce Foundation. Her instructions were that it be used “exclusively to fund scholarships and professorships for women students and professors at educational institutions, a minimum 50 percent of which shall be Roman Catholic … to encourage women to enter, study, graduate, and teach … Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Meteorology, Engineering, Computer Science, and Mathematics.”

  Fourteen schools were designated as annual beneficiaries of the program, including Boston, Georgetown, Fordham, and Notre Dame Universities, and Marymount, Trinity (D.C.), Mount Holyoke, and Colby Colleges. Individual recipients were to be selected by a committee of six, alternately by the Henry Luce and Heritage Foundations. All scholarships and professorships were to be used exclusively for study in the United States.

  For Edmund

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Dennis Ambrose, Giulio Andreotti, Robert Sam Anson, Katie Baron, Elizabeth Baruch, Sonia Bertorelle, Vernon Blunt, Daniel J. and Ruth Boorstin, Taylor Branch, Jeanne Breck, Richard Park Breck, Christopher Buckley, William F. Buckley, Jr., Charles A. Buerschinger, Dr. Hayes Caldwell, Graydon Carter, Ann Charnley, Katy Close, Shirley Clurman, Richard Sidney Cohen, Sybil Cooper, Wallace F. Dailey, Philip Dunne, Elbridge Durbrow, Nan Ernst, Amintore Fanfani, Dorothy Farmer, Edward Feulner, Joan H. Fitzpatrick, Anne Ford, Pie Friendly, Lucia Fuentes, John Gable, Matt Glover, Rosalie Noland Gumbrill, Kate Hale, Gale Hayman, Nannette and George Herrick, Kathy McLane Hersh, Jonathan Hiam, Serrell Hillman, Charles F. Johnson, Mika Kasuga, Dodie Kazanjian, William Herbert Kennedy, Edward Koczak, Rebecca Kramer, David A. Lanbart, Wayne Lawson, Mary and John Leader, William R. Leahy, Robert Loomis, Henry Luce III, Leila Hadley Luce, Clare McMillan, George J. Marlin, Lore Mika, Gerald Miller, Elsabeth Luce Moore, Albert P. Morano, Jefferson Morley, Reverend Michael P. Morris, Will Murphy, Diana M. Murray, Eleanor Nangle, Allen Packwood, Tim Page, Miranda Dunne Parry, Brother Dan Peterson, Ann Pierce, Ambassador and Mrs. Maxwell Rabb, Don Ritchie, Marion Elizabeth Rodgers, Selwa and Archibald B. Roosevelt, Daphne Root, Dr. Michael Rosenbluth, Norman Ross, Stephen Shadegg, Philip Simpson, Sally Bedell Smith, Ray J. Stecker, Jr., Michael Stern, W. A. Swanberg, Nan A. Talese, Michael Teague, Father Wilfrid Thibodeau, Calvin Tomkins, Lucian Truscott IV, R. Emmett Tyrell, Gore Vidal, Sona Vogel, Alexander Waugh, Walton Wickett, Helen Worth, Richard D. Zanuck, and above all, Clare Boothe Luce.

  LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

  Unless otherwise credited, all illustrations come from the author’s collection.

  col.1 Ambassador Clare Boothe Luce. Oil portrait by René Bouché. Courtesy of Denise Bouché Fitch. frontispiece

  1.1 Congresswoman Clare Boothe Luce, 1943. Library of Congress. 5

  1.2 Clare at a congressional hearing. Library of Congress. 8

  2.1 Henry and Clare Luce, 1943. 16

  2.2 General Charles Willoughby on duty in the Pacific, c. 1943. 19

  2.3 Congresswoman Luce makes good “copy.” United Press photograph. 26

  5.1 David Boothe, c. 1943. 42

  6.1 Ann Brokaw at the Stage Door Canteen, September 1943. 53

  6.2 Clare “in bed” with General Willoughby. 57

  6.3 Clare’s needlepoint gift to Harry, November 1943. Joan Scobey and Lee P. McGrath. 61

  7.1 Clare and her daughter, January 8, 1944. 68

  9.1 Clare addresses the Republican National Convention, July 1944. 88

  9.2 Congresswoman Luce campaigns for reelection in Connecticut, 1944. 93

  10.1 Clare rides in a Jeep with General Mark Clark, December 17, 1944. U.S. Army photograph. 104

  10.2 Clare visits a wounded GI. U.S. Army photograph. 105

  10.3 General Lucian K. Truscott, Jr. 107

  12.1 Clare beguiles Fifth Army Group troops, 1945. 122

  13.1 Clare in Buchenwald barracks, April 1945. Imperial War Museum/U.S. Holocaust Museum. 128

  13.2 Clare with Buchenwald survivors, April 1945. Imperial War Museum/U.S. Holocaust Museum. 128

  15.1 Clare as Candida, August 1945. International News photograph. 143

  17.1 Monsignor Fulton J. Sheen, c. 1946. 151

  17.2 Bernard Baruch shooting at Hobcaw Barony. 154

  17.3 Clare and General Willoughby with Japanese mementos, January 1946. UPI/Bettmann Archive. 161

  18.1 Jean Dalrymple, c. 1947. Getty Images. 165

  18.2 Clare, Theodore Granik, William Z. Foster, and Harry F. Ward debate on The American Forum of the Air, May 21, 1946. Library of Congress. 170

  22.1 Clare reading under a live oak at Mepkin, 1947. 210

  22.2 Clare in a fashionable turban, spring 1948. 212

  25.1 Father Wilfrid Thibodeau, c. 1949. 234

  25.2 Clare and Wilfrid Sheed at Sugar Hill, summer 1949. 247

  27.1 Carlos Chávez, 1950. Condé Nast. 260

  27.2 Clare commissions a musical memorial to her daughter, February 18, 1950. Carlos Chávez Papers, Archivo General
de la Nación, Mexico City. 263

  29.1 Clare in Hollywood. 287

  29.2 Interior of Saint Anne’s Chapel, with paintings by André Girard. Photographs by Joe Munroe. 289

  30.1 Clare and Richard Nixon, c. September 1952. Library of Congress. 298

  30.2 Clare filming a television spot for Eisenhower, October 1952. Library of Congress. 306

  32.1 General Marshall, Clare, and Speaker Martin witness the “corralling” of the President. Associated Press. 315

  32.2 Mutual admirers: Clare and Eleanor Roosevelt. 322

  33.1 The Villa Taverna, Rome. State Department. 329

  33.2 Ambassador Luce at her desk in the Palazzo Margherita. Library of Congress. 331

  33.3 Clare holds a staff meeting in her Embassy office. 335

  33.4 Map of the Free Territory of Trieste, 1953–1954. Edmund Morris. 339

  33.5 The Ambassador tours southern Italy. AP/Wide World. 341

  33.6 Clare delivers her provocative Milan speech, May 28, 1953. Library of Congress. 342

  34.1 The yacht Niki. Library of Congress. 350

  35.1 The U.S. Embassy gates where Clare confronted rioters, November 6, 1953. State Department. 368

  36.2 Clare and President Eisenhower, January 1954. 372

  37.1 The Italian flag rises over Trieste, October 26, 1954. 396

  37.2 Fiat shows Clare a fleet of F-86s built with U.S. aid. Library of Congress. 398

  37.3 Clare presented with a Bersaglieri cap at Trieste University, December 17, 1954. Library of Congress. 400

  38.1 The Time cover that never ran. Boris Chaliapin’s watercolor portrait of Ambassador Clare Boothe Luce, late 1954. National Portrait Gallery. 404

  38.2 Winston Churchill painting in a Sicilian cave, April 1955. Library of Congress. 408

  38.3 Clare and Joe DiMaggio on the Via Veneto, 1955. 411