After he left, Clare wrote him to say that she had fallen into a depression so deep that it was “sheer hell,” and made worse by knowing she was “IRRATIONAL.”
The blackness just closes down, like a cold midnight on my spirit, and I am lost in a suicidal fog of searing melancholy. I really feel my heart bleed, and my spirit seems to be dying. I hurl cries for help into the black night, and no help comes. Only the knowledge that it will pass keeps me from … [sic] because if I didn’t know that, I couldn’t bear this anguish of meaninglessness, this horror in which I seem utterly abandoned by love and life. It is too huge and all embracing a thing to have much to do with self pity.… All I know is that what is not pathology is demonology, and a terrible temptation as well as a trial.
She said she was bored with the seminars—“Too much Adler”—and missed him greatly. She signed off with just her name.3
When she returned to New York on September 6, she found awaiting her the inaugural issue of a lavish style magazine called Flair. It was financed by Gardner Cowles, founder of Look, was edited by his wife, Fleur, and ran an essay by Clare called “It’s About Time.”
Her piece was the first in a series giving eminent writers the chance to sound off about anything that bothered them. Among those enlisted for future issues were George Bernard Shaw, Simone de Beauvoir, Margaret Mead, and Ogden Nash.
Clare described three kinds of time: organic, psychological, and mechanical. Neither of the first two categories, she wrote, had anything to do with the clock, which represented mechanical dead time, “the totalitarian tyrant over all our technological ‘progress,’ over everything that ticks, cranks up, takes off, turns over or—as in the case of The Bomb—goes off on schedule. In the end the clock may destroy us all.” She pointed out that when “the hypnotic hands on the dial” seemed to move too slowly, people tried to “kill time.” Or, when the hands moved too swiftly, they attempted to “steal” it. But in the end, though memory might mitigate or try to stall time’s passing, it could not “avert its last lethal stroke.”4
The essay was illustrated with a black-and-white photograph of Clare, sporting a short, wavy hairstyle and wearing a lace dress reminiscent of the Victorian era, plus a double strand of pearls.
Her uncertain sense of style was called into question again, as she began decorating a new duplex apartment that Harry had bought at 450 East Fifty-second Street. It was located across from the River House, where they had rented in the early years of their marriage, and had tenth-floor views of the East River and the rapidly rising headquarters of the United Nations. Clare estimated that renovating and furnishing the apartment would take several months and cost $50,000.
Spurning Gladys Freeman, her decorator for almost twenty years, she hired the coming man of American interior design, Billy Baldwin. Lean and immaculately dressed at forty-seven, he relished the prestigious assignment. But what transpired was an experience so galling that in a memoir written a quarter of a century later, he recalled every exasperating detail.
Clare came crisply to the point at their preliminary discussion, saying the space should be practical as well as beautiful. “I care how it looks, but I do not want to sacrifice efficiency to aesthetics.” She stressed that she liked to act quickly, assumed he did, too, and invited him to spend a day at Sugar Hill to get an idea of her taste.
Mutual friends had told Baldwin it was “pretty awful,” so he welcomed the chance to see for himself. Even so, he was unprepared for what ensued. Admitted to the Luce mansion by a butler who spoke in whispers, he soon discovered that this was customary with other servants as well, and wondered if they were reverential or simply terrified. In a bleak upstairs office, he met two cowed secretaries. They gave him a batch of typewritten requirements pertaining to the duplex. It struck him as “a veritable thesis on the gadgetry and mechanics of the new apartment,” including wiring for indirect lighting, a totally rebuilt kitchen, and a complex electronic intercom for summoning Clare’s staff, husband, or guests. A special note informed him that since most of the Luces’ books were in the country, he must buy only ones with false spines for the city. This affectation was a pet aversion of Baldwin’s, and compounded the dubious feelings he already had about the enterprise.
Clare entered the room wrapped in a becoming beach robe.
“It’s time for you to swim with me,” she announced, not bothering to indulge in the usual exchange of greetings. She led me to the pool and proceeded to do some systematic lapping while I puttered about in the delicious coolness. After about fifteen minutes, she stopped, took a long satisfied breath, and instructed me to get dressed and go tell the secretaries it was their time to swim with her. When I delivered the orders, one of the ladies burst into tears.
“How can she ask us to swim with her?” wailed the other in anguish. “Before you arrived, she was unspeakably cruel to us.” But they obeyed.
When their swimming session was over, I was again summoned and we all had a good rich lunch outdoors on the terrace. Madame,
I noticed, was having something different—a health salad. “I hope you all realize,” she lectured, “that what you are eating is as nourishing as poison.” She was packed with all the facts. But she was extremely dogmatic and wholly lacking in humor, which made conversation with her no great pleasure. Every so often, after a certain amount of concentration, she managed to produce some cheap wisecrack; that was the extent of her wit.
Baldwin’s post-lunch house tour failed to allay most of his fears. Since he preferred to create spare, modern interiors in neutral palettes, he recoiled at Sugar Hill’s profusion of heavy, multicolored, antique Oriental furniture and objets d’art. But he had come to discuss the urban environment of New York, where he hoped to have influence. This dream was quashed when Clare singled out two rooms in the apartment that needed special consideration. One was a combined sitting room and office off her bedroom, to be furnished with a large desk, bookshelves, and a chaise longue from which she could dictate. “I want the room to look like South Pacific,” she said. Appalled, Baldwin facetiously suggested sand-colored walls, a blue ceiling, and lots of tropical plants. Clare was jubilant. “You understand perfectly!”
Her second space with specific requirements was the two-story drawing room. Since it was to be used primarily for large parties, she said, a grand piano was essential, as was a U-shaped, capacious sofa for Harry, who liked to be surrounded by listeners when he held forth. Baldwin knew that the monster seating she envisaged would have to be custom-made and, along with the piano, hoisted up from the street and swung through the windows. That would be a huge expense, probably not in the budget.
Going against his own preference for sleek lines and subdued colors, Baldwin suggested the drawing room be predominantly Venetian in style with red and pink hues. Clare was ecstatic, and insisted on being involved throughout the restoration, demanding face-to-face weekly progress reports from the chief electrician, plumber, plasterer, and painter. This did not go well with them. They could barely conceal their disdain when summoned one by one to stand before her.
In spite of the size and scope of the job, everything was finished on time. Baldwin looked forward to walking his client through—previously an exciting ritual for him. Twenty-four hours before, however, a call came from one of Clare’s secretaries. “I know this is less than discreet of me,” she confided, “but Madame visited the apartment yesterday—and she hates the big room.” Baldwin was speechless. In spite of its bright hues, he considered it spectacular—“quite a feather in my cap.” Clare had approved in advance every paint and fabric sample, including a four-yard length of wall damask, and all the furniture, fixtures, and fittings.
When she arrived to confront him, she was trailed by two assistants. Glaring about her, she dispensed with pleasantries. “I loathe everything about this room, and I wish you to remove all the furniture by tomorrow.”
Struggling to keep his composure, Baldwin said he supposed all could be taken out by that deadline,
except for the sofa, which would require scheduling with the crane company.
“I will not pay for any special equipment,” Clare snapped. “Saw the thing in three—it is only suitable for the city dump anyway.”
At this the decorator lost his temper. “You knew exactly what the room was going to look like. You had the floor plans, you saw and approved every single thing in the room, and you loved it all!”
Clare strode around. “Everything is vulgar and absolutely tasteless,” she said. Pointing to a red velvet tufted sofa she had personally chosen, she thundered, “This looks like Mae West. I came to you because of your professional reputation. But sir, you are an amateur.”
Her subdued employees stood to one side, recording the entire exchange as Baldwin completed the tour with his dissatisfied customer. In the South Pacific study, he was surprised to encounter a tall, handsome young priest.
Clare’s countenance softened. “Isn’t it marvelous,” she cooed. “He comes and winds all my clocks—it’s therapy.”
After the dismantling, Baldwin received a note: “Madame would like the bill as soon as possible, and of course the entire contents of the drawing room should not appear on it.” Though he had Clare’s signature on the estimates for everything purchased on her behalf, he decided not to sue.
“I just couldn’t face the tedium and expense of a long court battle,” he wrote. “I took my loss.”5
29
PILATE’S WIFE
No creative artist ever contracted a religion without a concomitant atrophy of his talent or genius.
—BERNARD GUILBERT GUERNEY
The Luces’ annual trip to South Carolina in January 1951, marking the seventh anniversary of Ann Brokaw’s death, had a special poignancy. Clare had decided to move the remains of her daughter and mother from the nearby Strawberry Hill Cemetery to Mepkin.
Ann’s body, encased in a large metal vault, and Ann Austin’s ashes in an urn, were brought to Mepkin by two monks. Mass was sung in the icy chapel, which was so frigid that breath from the chanting Trappists misted the glass doors.1 Clare noticed that a niche by the altar, which had once been the plantation’s gun cabinet, now housed a statue of the Madonna. She saw it as symbolic of what the world needed: to replace armaments with religion.2
The spot chosen for the burial was a landscaped flower garden beneath a stand of great live oaks, with a view of the river. Frosts had burned the camellias and withered the azalea bushes. During the ceremony, which was marred by the monks’ coughing, wintry rain dripped from the Spanish moss.3
The two headstones commissioned by Clare showed that both interees had been born in August and died in January. She intended one day to join them, so that the three Ann Clares might lie close together. If Harry agreed to be buried there too, they could all spend eternity side by side, as anticipated in the words of the marshlands poem by Sidney Lanier that had first inspired her to live in the South.
Wildwood privacies, closets of lone desire,
Chamber from chamber parted with wavering arras of leaves,—
Cells for the passionate pleasure of prayer to the soul that grieves.4
Afterward, Clare half-teasingly asked Harry if one day he would like to help her “fertilize the camellias.” He muttered something noncommittal and turned away.5
Her jocularity concealed a deep seriousness. Until, or if ever, Harry converted, she shied from raising the subject of his grave site again. But the prospect of him lying beside her at Mepkin never left her mind.
Years later, she would write him to say that it was strange to think of a Presbyterian endowing a Trappist monastery that had formerly been their romantic retreat.
I am happy to know that I will one day lie in ground that once knew the height of my love for you. I will rest well in the place where we were once so good for each other. It is as though the hand of God had stretched forth to touch the hand of the missionary’s son, so that everything his hand touched, even the breast of a fond & foolish & passionate woman, should work to the Glory of God & in the future of time, to the love of Him.
Though you will not be there, in the end, I suppose, and I will, Our Lady of Mepkin Abbey is more a monument to your faith, your generosity, your love than to mine.…
Thank you Harry—for myself, for Ann, for mother, for the dear monks, for all this you have wrought.6
Carlos Chávez visited New York in early February with exciting news. He had at last begun composing the music in memory of Ann, but instead of a concerto it was to be a symphony—his third, and he hoped to conduct the world premiere in the United States with his patron in attendance.
Still working to promote him, Clare had him dine with the president of the New York Philharmonic, and with Rudolf Bing, manager of the Metropolitan Opera. In gratitude, Carlos invited her to Mexico in spring.7 Clare said she would try, although for the next three months she would be on a cross-country speaking tour booked by the Columbia Lecture Bureau.
In Oklahoma City on February 24, she spoke on “The Quality of Greatness” at the Men’s Dinner Club. Her lecture was more like a sermon, reflecting her current religious, social, and political preoccupations, as well as her belief that in spite of the country’s apparent prosperity, all changes were not for the better.
The Daily Oklahoman ran a report next day headlined A LONESOME VOICE VALIANTLY CALLING. It lauded her for startling and significant views on the state of the nation and the soul of man.
This frail-appearing woman seemed to radiate an inner fire—a zeal that carried far beyond her hearers into the space of universal understanding.…
At times she seemed to be a strange combination of Joan of Arc and John the Baptist, for she exhorted the people to struggle for the liberty that is being slowly strangled by the materialism of the welfare state and by general selfishness. She pleaded for the recovery of God’s own pattern for the human race, as contrasted with the current political prescription which deals with appeals to personal greed on the basis of “let’s get ours while the getting is good.”
There was a note almost of desperation in her voice, for she seemed to be watching precious things gradually being lost to American life, and yearning for some powerful leverage for rebuilding the great strong beams and timbers of our national house—a structure that has become a house of confusion.8
Carlos had been hoping that Clare would be in Mexico City by April 19, to attend his ballet The Four Suns, designed by Covarrubias. She would also be able, for the first time, to see him conduct at the Auditorio Nacional, with Claudio Arrau at the piano. In anticipation, he reserved hotel rooms for her and Harry, and planned a dinner in their honor, to be attended by the U.S. Ambassador.
But at the last minute, she pulled out, leaving Harry to go alone. At first her excuse was that she had to attend the funeral in Grand Rapids, Michigan, of her colleague and friend Senator Arthur Vandenberg, who had died of lung cancer.9 But since the service was held three days before her scheduled departure for Mexico, there had to be another reason. She asked Dorothy Farmer to explain to Carlos that she had to go on to the West Coast, where she was due to start work at RKO Studios on her latest movie project.
It was a religious-historical drama called Pilate’s Wife. She had been thinking about the subject for years. “Almost from the day of my conversion,” she wrote Father Thibodeau, “I knew I had to do this picture in Hollywood. (Isn’t it strange: the name means Holy rood—the wood of the Cross).… My mind teems with ideas and thoughts. What is clearest, just now, is that this must not be a ‘Spectacle’—a technicolor orgy of camels, palms, desert sands, and bearded Jews. It must be pitched at the psychological level—for its interior rather than visual impact.”10
Her notion was to tell the story of Christ’s arrest, conviction, and crucifixion, as seen through the eyes of Claudia Procula, the beautiful eighteen-year-old stepdaughter of Emperor Tiberius. Claudia had married Pontius Pilate just before he became governor of the Palestinian province of Judea.
Wh
en Clare first called Howard Hughes to discuss it, he sent an executive aide to see her. After a follow-up conference with the producers Norman Krasna and Jerry Wald, RKO contracted to purchase all rights to her “original, unpublished, unproduced story,” and assigned her to write “a stepline continuity” (outline) by May 11, for an initial payment of $11,250.11
Even before Clare’s arrival in Los Angeles, word leaked that Hughes planned to make a “mammoth spectacular” from her story. Already the name of René Clair was being mentioned as director, and Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh as stars. But Clare knew that Leigh, at thirty-seven, was too old for Claudia. She favored another British actress, the twenty-two-year-old Jean Simmons, who was about to start filming Androcles and the Lion.
Among the sources Clare claimed to use for her script were the Apocrypha, The Works of Flavius Josephus, and the New Testament. RKO Research also found a 1929 novel by Mary Granger entitled Wife to Pilate, and recommended, “It may be best to have the Studio consider buying the rights—to avoid a lawsuit for plagiarism.”12
Clare’s initial outline was enthusiastically received by RKO, and on May 29 she was told to proceed with a full treatment, preparatory to writing actual dialogue. She completed it on June 7, and decided to work on the screenplay at Sugar Hill during the summer.
Reestablished in her country study, she set the first scene of the movie in A.D. 26.
Pontius Pilate is standing on the deck of a Roman vessel approaching the port of Caesarea. It is to be the site of his main residence. Beside him stands his new wife Claudia. She is sensual, impetuous, wilful, and amoral, like most privileged young pagans of an empire and civilization in decline. As the ship nears shore, the young woman reacts to the sight of her provincial future home town in words intended to reveal her mores as well as her priorities.
Price of Fame Page 31
