Luce, Clare Boothe, 1903-1987

Clare Boothe Luce (née Ann Clare Boothe; March 10, 1903 – October 9, 1987) was an American author, politician, U.S. Ambassador and public conservative figure. A versatile author, she is best known for her 1936 hit play The Women, which had an all-female cast. Her writings extended from drama and screen scenarios to fiction, journalism and war reportage. She was the wife of Henry Luce, publisher of Time, Life, Fortune, and Sports Illustrated.

Born in New York City, parts of Boothe's childhood were spent in Memphis and Nashville, Tennessee, Chicago, Illinois, and Union City, New Jersey as well as New York City. She attended the cathedral schools in Garden City and Tarrytown, New York, graduating first in her class in 1919 at 16. She wed George Tuttle Brokaw, millionaire heir to a New York clothing fortune, on August 10, 1923. According to Boothe, Brokaw was a hopeless alcoholic, and the marriage ended in divorce in 1929.

A writer with considerable powers of invention and wit, Boothe published Stuffed Shirts, a promising volume of short stories, in 1931. After the failure of her initial stage effort, the marital melodrama Abide With Me (1935), she rapidly followed up with a satirical comedy, The Women. Deploying a cast of no fewer than 40 actresses who discussed men in often scorching language, it became a Broadway smash in 1936 and, three years later, a successful Hollywood movie. On November 23, 1935, she married Henry Luce, thereafter calling herself Clare Boothe Luce.

A noted war journalist in the early days of World War II, in 1942, Luce won a Republican seat in the United States House of Representatives representing Fairfield County, Connecticut, the 4th Congressional District. In her youth, she briefly aligned herself with the liberalism of President Franklin Roosevelt as a protégé of Bernard Baruch; by the time of her election to the House, she had become an outspoken critic of Roosevelt. Although she was a strong supporter of the Anglo-American alliance in World War II, she remained outspokenly critical of British colonialism in India. Re-elected in 1944, Luce was instrumental in the creation of the Atomic Energy Commission in her second term and co-authored the Luce–Celler Act of 1946, which permitted Indians and Filipinos permission to immigrate to the US, introducing a quota of 100 immigrants from each country, and allowed them ultimately to become naturalized citizens. In January 1946 she declined to run for re-election and retired in January 1947.

Luce returned to politics during the 1952 presidential election and she campaigned on behalf of Republican candidate Dwight Eisenhower, giving more than 100 speeches on his behalf. Her anti-Communist speeches on the stump, radio, and television were effective in persuading a large number of traditionally Democratic-voting Catholics to switch parties and vote Eisenhower. For her contributions Luce was rewarded with an appointment as Ambassador to Italy. She was confirmed by the Senate in March 1953, the first American woman ever to hold such an important diplomatic post. She served in this role until 1957.

In 1959, Luce was confirmed overwhelmingly to become the U.S. Ambassador to Brazil but, following a bitter public exchange with Oregon Senator Wayne Morse that undermined her standing, she resigned her ambassadorship after just three days. The Luces then settled in Honolulu, Hawaii, where Clare remained after Henry’s death in 1967. In 1983 she accepted a post on President Ronald Reagan’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom as “a persistent and effective advocate of freedom, both at home and abroad.” After a long battle with cancer, Clare Boothe Luce died on October 9, 1987, in Washington, DC.