48. Ibid., 34.
49. CBL to Count Dino Grandi, Mar. 23, 1970, CBLP.
50. New York Daily News, Mar. 26 and June 16, 1970; CBL to Dorothy Farmer, ca. June 1970; CBL to Gerry Miller, July 13, 1970; Ann Pierce (Honolulu secretary) to CBL, Nov. 20, 1970, CBLP. In spite of endless socializing, CBL complained to Dorothy Farmer, “I know a lot of nobodies.” She was disappointed that friends like Bill Buckley, whom she adored, failed to invite her for more weekends at their country or seaside houses. One reason was that she neglected to ingratiate herself sufficiently with wives. Dorothy Farmer to SJM verbally, 1982.
51. Clare Boothe Luce, Slam the Door Softly (New York, 1971). Also see Fearnow, Luce, 56–58.
52. Life’s publication of the play elicited much favorable comment. One reader sympathetic to Thaw wrote a second act in which Nora returns. There was talk of presenting the play onstage in Los Angeles and Honolulu. It was translated into Norwegian and Swedish, and CBL collected $500 in royalties from university productions in Oslo and elsewhere. She advised Peter C. Gillette, director of the Media Division at the University of Kentucky, to follow a production of her play with panel discussions (including men) about the women’s liberation movement. CBL to Gillette, June 13, 1973.
53. CBL to Stephen Shadegg, Feb. 4 and 10, 1969, CBLP; Shadegg, “It Was Never Nothing,” 328–29; Shadegg to SJM, Aug. 30, 1989, SJMP.
54. The New York Times Book Review, Apr. 11, 1971.
55. CBLP.
56. Margaret Case to CBL, Oct. 6, 1968. Case had been let go in early August, and killed herself at 8:00 A.M. on Wednesday, August 25, 1971. The New York Times, Aug. 26, 1971; Hugo Vickers, Cecil Beaton: A Biography (Boston, 1985), 550–51. By no means hard up, as she led others to believe, Case left her maid $50,000 and her great-niece her cooperative apartment, retirement benefits, and some $500,000. The New York Times, Sept. 2, 1971.
57. New York magazine, Sept. 27, 1971, Los Angeles Times, Oct. 18, 1971, Chicago Tribune, Oct. 24, 1971, and Lakeland Ledger, Oct. 31, 1971. A television version of The Women appeared in 1955. A second movie adaptation starring June Allyson came out in 1956 under the title The Opposite Sex, and a third, with Meg Ryan, Annette Bening, and Candice Bergen, in 2008. CBL told SJM that for 50 years she never earned less than $7,000 annually in royalties from The Women.
58. Unidentified scrapbook clipping, CBLP.
59. CBL to William Benton, Aug. 17, 1972, CBLP.
60. The New York Times Magazine, Sept. 3, 1972.
61. Honolulu Advertiser and Honolulu Star-Bulletin, Aug. 31, 1972.
62. CBL to Dorothy Farmer, Apr. 6, 1972, CBLP.
63. Lawrenson, “The Woman”; CBL to Dorothy Farmer, Apr. 6, 1972, ACP; Estrellita Karsh interview, Sept. 6, 1989.
64. Eyre, Clare, 141–44; CBL to Dorothy Farmer, Apr. [1972]. CBL was capable of waking Louise at 3:00 A.M. to ask for a cup of tea. Eyre, Clare, 88.
65. Nesta Obermer to CBL, Apr. 17, [1972], CBLP.
66. National Review, Sept. 1972.
67. See, e.g., The Washington Post, Nov. 20, 1981.
68. The festivities extended to Washington, D.C., where CBL’s former Rome Embassy staff gave a party on Apr. 9 at Rive Gauche, and on April 19 the Italian Ambassador held a reception for eight hundred.
69. “Suzy Says,” New York Daily News, Apr. 20, 1973, and Time, Apr. 23, 1973.
70. Newsweek, Apr. 23, 1973.
71. CBL to Gerald Clarke, quoted in Time, Apr. 30, 1973; see also Morris, Rage for Fame, prologue and 277–79 for more about Abide with Me.
72. Time, Apr. 30, 1973.
73. Village Voice, May 3, and New York magazine, May 14, 1973.
74. CBL, “Woman: A Technological Castaway,” Encyclopaedia Britannica Yearbook 1973.
75. CBL to James P. McFadden, Dec. 19, 1973, CBLP.
76. CBL to Henry Luce III, June 4, 1973, Henry Luce III private collection.
77. Henry A. Kissinger, White House memorandum of conversation, Apr. 14, 1973, GFL.
78. Kenneth M. Absher, Michael C. Desch, and Roman Popadiuk, Privileged and Confidential: The Secret History of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board (Lexington, Ky., 2012), 156.
79. Kissinger, memorandum of conversation, Aug. 3, 1973, GFL.
80. Ann Pearce to CBL, quoting Edward J. Koczak, Jr., of the National Security Agency, Aug. 10, 1973, CBLP.
81. Shana Alexander, Newsweek, Nov. 26, 1973.
82. On November 12, 1973, Time had published an editorial, the first in its fifty-year history, calling for Nixon’s resignation even before Ford had been approved as the new Vice President. CBL wrote an angry letter to the magazine, but the editor, Henry Grunwald, persuaded her to withdraw it, saying that printing it would “unquestionably lead to widely and gleefully publicized stories about a feud between you and the editors of Time.” By April 1974, however, she was no longer able to suppress her anger at Time’s “below the belt” coverage of Nixon. “Whatever Nixon is or not,” she wrote, “he is one hell of a gutsy fighter.” The magazine published these remarks. CBL to Henry Grunwald, Nov. 19, 1973, CBLP; Prendergast, The World of Time Inc., 362; The New York Times, Apr. 2, 1974.
83. The New York Times, Jan. 11, 1974; CBL to Barry Goldwater, Feb. 6, 1974, CBLP.
84. CBL interview, Apr. 15. Nixon confirmed that CBL’s note had cheered him up. Richard Nixon, In the Arena (New York, 1990), 25.
85. Serrell Hillman to SJM, Apr. 1, 1988, SJMP; CBL to Barry Goldwater, Aug. 12, 1974, CBLP.
86. CBL to Shirley Clurman, July 19, 1974, CBLP; Lawrenson to CBL, May 20, 1973, CBLP; CBL to Lawrenson, June 1, 1973, SJMP; CBL to Al Morano, Aug. n.d., 1974, AMP. CBL had offered to have Joanna Lawrenson stay with her in Hawaii, but when she heard about her brother’s acute psychological problems, she wrote to tell her to give the airfare money to her mother to pay medical bills. CBL to Helen Lawrenson, June 1, 1973, CBLP.
87. Absher, Desch, and Popadiuk, Privileged and Confidential, 234.
88. The following account of the PFIAB meetings of Oct. 3–4, 1974, is taken from Absher, Desch, and Popadiuk, Privileged and Confidential, 201–02.
89. CBL to SJM on numerous occasions.
90. Jimmy Carter to CBL, May 4, 1977, CBLP; Absher, Desch, and Popadiuk, Privileged and Confidential, 225. Carter belatedly realized the need for an independent advisory body in intelligence. In 1980, Leo Cherne was invited to reconstitute the board, but declined until Ronald Reagan renewed the request in 1981. See Absher, Desch, and Popadiuk, Privileged and Confidential, 228–29.
91. Gladys Freeman decorated CBL’s bedrooms in both places.
92. CBL to Al Morano, Oct. 17, 1976, AMP; CBL to Henry Luce III, July 22, 1976, CBLP.
93. Quoted in Edwin M. Adams to CBL, Apr. 24, 1979, CBLP.
94. Arthur Little to Dorothy Farmer, Aug. 11, 1975, and CBL to Dorothy Farmer, ca. July 1975, ACP. Little had worked for CBL for twenty-four years, and left without a long-promised pension. See also Eyre, Clare, 140.
95. CBL interview, June 10, 1982.
96. “I’ve known 18 of the 21 past winners,” CBL told a reporter, “and I think it’s a case of fame by association.” Honolulu Star Bulletin, Oct. 11, 1979.
97. At the time of The New York Times interview, Reagan was running ahead of Carter in the polls.
98. Ronald Reagan to CBL, Sept. 14 and Oct. 3, 1979, CBLP.
99. 60 Minutes transcript in SJMP.
100. West Point Assembly 38, no. 3 (Dec. 1979).
101. Ann Pearce to Paul Czarnowski of Alevy and Kantor, Apr. 1, 1980, CBLP.
102. CBL interviewed by Stephen R. Conn, Town and Country, Jan. 1981.
103. June 11, 1980, CBLP. In the same letter, CBL called Carter “the worst President of this century.”
104. CBL to John L. Harmer, June 17, 1980, CBLP.
105. CBL, “The Ghost at Westminster,” John Findley Green Foundation Lecture, transcript in CBLP.
106. The electoral college results were Reagan 489 and Carter 49. On the day the new President was sworn in, the
American hostages were released, and Carter, at Reagan’s request, flew to Frankfurt to welcome them.
107. Parts of these two paragraphs, and the Epilogue that follows, appeared in an article entitled “In Search of Clare Boothe Luce” by Sylvia Jukes Morris, The New York Times Magazine, Jan. 31, 1988.
BY SYLVIA JUKES MORRIS
Edith Kermit Roosevelt: Portrait of a First Lady
Rage for Fame: The Ascent of Clare Boothe Luce
Price of Fame: The Honorable Clare Boothe Luce
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
SYLVIA JUKES MORRIS was born and educated in England, where she taught history and English literature before immigrating to America. She is the author of Edith Kermit Roosevelt: Portrait of a First Lady and Rage for Fame: The Ascent of Clare Boothe Luce. With her husband and fellow biographer, Edmund Morris, she lives in New York City and Kent, Connecticut.
Price of Fame Page 83