Clare Boothe Luce Dies of Cancer at Age of 84

Clare Boothe Luce, author, playwright, former congresswoman and ambassador, died early today of cancer at her home in Washington.

The widow of Henry R. Luce, founder of the Time-Life publishing empire, was 84.

From penniless beginnings, Clare Boothe Luce turned herself into a witty, celebrated figure in 1930s New York “cafe society”--a term she may well have coined--and then went on to add one achievement after another: successful playwright, two-term congresswoman during the pre-women’s liberation 1940s, and the first female U.S. ambassador to a foreign country.

What made her singularly interesting, in light of latter-day feminism, was that despite her self-reliant determination and ability, Mrs. Luce was a continuous object of criticism nearly all her life, particularly from women.

She was an ardent feminist, but enough of a realist in her time to know her cool, blonde beauty would gain entree faster than her brains.

She was, biographer Wilfred Sheed wrote, “a bridge figure between the courtesan and the career girl.”

She was born Anna Clare Booth (without an e) April 10, 1903, in either New York, Tennessee, Chicago, or London--as biographical accounts (even her own) differed. Her father, a musician, left her chorus-girl mother when she was very young.

Until her mother remarried, to a wealthy Connecticut doctor, the family finances erratically rose and fell with her courtships. As a result, young Clare had little formal education and at one point in her teens worked in a factory making paper flowers.

On a 1920 transatlantic voyage, she met a wealthy, well-connected socialite and suffragette, Mrs. Oliver H. P. Belmont, which brought two results: Clare did some work for the women’s movement, and she found her first husband, millionaire George Brokaw.

She emerged from the marriage in 1929 with a daughter, Ann, and a settlement of $26,000.

Determined to be a writer, she approached a friend, Conde Nast, owner of both Vogue and Vanity Fair magazines, for a job.

Within three years she was managing editor of Vogue and a social celebrity herself.

Then, in 1935, she married Henry Luce, who proposed to her on their third meeting and then divorced his wife.

In 1936 she wrote a play, “The Women,” which became a runaway hit. It has since been translated into several languages, repeatedly performed on stage and twice made into a motion picture.

And by 1940 she had started what became a two-decade venture into conservative, profoundly anti-communist Republican politics.

Two years later she ran for Congress from Connecticut, won and served two terms.

She retired from Congress in 1946, following the death of her daughter, Ann, in a traffic accident in 1943, and converted to Roman Catholicism. In 1953, after an unsuccessful try for a U.S. Senate nomination, President Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed her his ambassador to Italy, a post she resigned in 1957 due to a peculiar illness she claimed was caused by arsenic dripping from embassy ceilings.

When asked on quitting if she felt that being a woman had left her at a disadvantage as a diplomat, she replied: “I couldn’t possibly tell you. I have never been a man.”

Eisenhower then nominated her as ambassador to Brazil, but a furor ensued when she characterized Sen. Wayne Morse, an opponent to her selection, as a man who’d been “kicked in the head by a horse.”

She withdrew her nomination and then retired from public life.