Luce, Clare Boothe

(1903-1987)

   Born to a poor family, Clare Boothe Luce rose to be a successful journalist, editor, playwright, socialite, politician, and, after her first marriage failed, wife to the media magnate Henry R. Luce. After briefly working as an actor, from 1930 to 1934 she worked as an editor at the fashion magazines Vogue and Vanity Fair. She wrote a number of plays that became even more successful as films, including The Woman (1936), Kiss the Boys Goodbye (1938), and Margin of Error (1939). A later screenplay, Come to the Stable (1949), was nominated for an Academy Award. From 1939 to 1940, Luce was a war correspondent in Europe for Life magazine. A Republican, she served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1943 to 1947. During Dwight D. Eisenhower’s administration, she was the U.S. ambassador to Italy from 1953 to 1956 and to Brazil in 1959. Having failed to win party support for her candidacy for the U.S. Senate in 1964, Luce joined her husband in retirement. However, she sat on Ronald Reagan’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board from 1981 until 1983. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1983 in recognition of her achievements.

   See also Cinema; Literature and theater.