Quotes
A brief biographical sketch from Encarta:
Luce, Clare Boothe (1903-87), American playwright, legislator, and diplomat, born in New York City, and educated at private schools. From 1930 to 1934 she held editorial positions on such magazines as Vogue and Vanity Fair. In 1935 she married her second husband, the publisher Henry R. Luce. She wrote three successful plays, The Women (1936), Kiss the Boys Goodbye (1938), and Margin for Error (1939), all noted for their acid wit and all later filmed. She was a war correspondent during the early part of World War II. Following her conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1946, she wrote many articles on religious subjects for national publications. A Republican, Luce represented Connecticut in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1943 to 1947. In 1953 President Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed her ambassador to Italy; the first American woman ambassador to a major country, she held the post until 1957. Her biography, written by Wilfrid Sheed, was published in 1982.
Clare Boothe Luce Program at the Henry Luce Foundation
Her wartime Journalism experiences:
A web biography:
Born in New York City to an ex-chorus girl and an itinerant musician who soon deserted his family, Clare and her younger brother knew poverty first-hand. Blessed with native intelligence, good looks and an ambitious mother, Clare was sent to the best schools her mother could afford, where she could meet the "right" people. In due course Clare met and married the wealthy George Brokaw, with whom she had her only child, Anne. The marriage ended in divorce. She then went to work as an editor of Vanity Fair, traveling 72,000 miles as correspondent, and wrote the first of several plays, The Women. In 1935 she married Henry Luce, co-founder of Time Magazine and later Life Magazine. In 1941 Clare Boothe Luce agreed to run for political office, filling the seat held by her late step-father, Dr. Austin. She won the election and in 1949 was re-elected. While in Congress she was named to the powerful Committee on Military Affairs. Throughout her term she attacked President Roosevelt's foreign policy and management of the war effort. As the war ended, Clare issued a warning about the threat of aggression from the Soviet Union. At the request of President Eisenhower, she was named Ambassador to Italy in 1946. She was a member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board under Presidents Nixon, Ford and Reagan. She was devastated by the death of her daughter in an automobile accident and, following the death of Henry Luce, Clare lived in Hawaii much of the year, returning to Washington in the 1980's where she died in October 1987. (From http://www.cwhf.org/browse/inductees/luce.htm)