LUCE, CLARE BOOTHE

born March 10, 1903, New York, N.Y., U.S. died Oct. 9, 1987, Washington, D.C. ne Ann Clare Boothe American playwright, politician, and celebrity, noted for her satiric sense of humour and for her role in American politics of the 1940s to the '60s. Privately educated in Garden City and Tarrytown, New York, Clare Boothe was associate editor of Vogue in 1930 and associate editor and managing editor of Vanity Fair during 193034. Some of her satirical articles for Vanity Fair were collected in Stuffed Shirts (1931). She was divorced from her first husband, George Tuttle Brokaw, in 1929, and she married magazine publisher Henry R. Luce in 1935. After an earlier play failed, Luce wrote The Women (1936), a comedy that ran for 657 performances on Broadway; Kiss the Boys Goodbye (1938), a satire on American life; and Margin for Error (1939), an anti-Nazi play. All three were adapted into motion pictures. She was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives as a Republican from Connecticut, serving in the 78th and 79th congresses in 194347. She was influential in the Republican Party nationally. In 1953 President Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed her ambassador to Italy, but she resigned in 1956 because of ill health. In 1959 and again in 1964 her political involvement brought her into the public eye, but thereafter she withdrew from politics, living in Phoenix, Arizona, until the death of her husband, and in Honolulu, Hawaii. In 1981 Luce became a member of President Ronald W. Reagan's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. In 1983 she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Additional reading Luce's life and work are examined in Ralph G. Martin, Henry and Clare: An Intimate Portrait of the Luces (1991); and Sylvia Jukes Morris, Rage for Fame: The Ascent of Clare Boothe Luce (1997).