Price of Fame

by Sylvia Jukes Morris

  The following day, September 19, she opened the hall, a futuristic, curving concrete structure locally dubbed “the pregnant oyster,” and delivered an address entitled “Berlin, Symbol of the West.” Her audience included such American cultural figures as Thornton Wilder, William Saroyan, Martha Graham, Virgil Thomson, Burgess Meredith, Ethel Waters, and Lillian Gish.

  Clare’s remarks were State Department boilerplate, except for a paragraph unmistakably written by herself.

  Who, but you, knows what courage it took to lift the offal of war from this dear ground—to lift it, crumbling stone by stone, and charred timber by timber, to untwist the twisted steel and reforge the rusted wire and iron? We who have not endured such savage destruction, who have never walked, as you have, streets more peopled with ghosts than with the living, we cannot know the full measure of your courage in the early postwar days.47

  Instead of returning home straightaway to work on her memoirs, Clare seized the chance to do some diving in the Aegean. Stavros Niarchos sent his plane to bring her from Berlin to Athens, where she boarded the Creole and sailed with him to Rhodes. She made several ninety-foot plunges in the island’s historic waters before running out of compressed air. Seeing the U.S. Sixth Fleet anchored nearby, she put on a shirt and pink slacks (“Always pink for the Navy”), took a launch to the aircraft carrier Randolph, and returned with replenished canisters.48

  While Clare swam, sunbathed, and read Homer’s Odyssey for the third time, the Southern states of America were in turmoil over enforcement of the new Civil Rights Act.49 On Monday, September 23, President Eisenhower signed an executive order to integrate public schools. But in Little Rock, Arkansas, Governor Orval E. Faubus vowed to oppose the order as an infringement of states’ rights. A shrieking, spitting mob of white supremacists forced nine black girls out of Little Rock Central High School. The next day, an enraged Ike airlifted in a thousand regular U.S. Army paratroops to restore order, and that night addressed the nation on television. He spoke of the seriousness of the crisis, and insisted on the enforcement of constitutional law. On Wednesday morning Central High School was encircled by federal troops, bayonets at the ready. The nine girls were escorted back to their classrooms, and by the time Clare reached New York on Friday, a tense calm prevailed in Little Rock.

  At about this time, Ike offered her a seat on his newly formed Commission on Civil Rights, “charged with the continuous appraisal of the status of civil rights.” But Clare turned it down.50 Then, on October 4, just as she was beginning work on a speech to be delivered at the annual Alfred E. Smith Memorial Dinner, news broke that the Soviet Union had launched into space orbit a 184-pound steel sphere named Sputnik, Russian for “satellite.” Traveling at 18,000 mph, and visible from earth on clear nights, it resembled a steadily moving star. Its four radio antennae transmitted pulsating beeps, which Columbia University students recorded and broadcast over WKCR. Within twenty-four hours Sputnik had crossed the United States at least four times.

  Having recoiled in East Germany at the “poor, sad, hopeless” aspects of the Soviet system, Clare was aghast at the Kremlin’s ability to fund and deploy a supersophisticated technology that might lead to the militarization of space. She immediately adapted the content of her Smith dinner address, which had been mostly about civil rights, and retitled it “Little Rock and the Muscovite Moon: Challenges to America’s Leadership.”

  On October 17, she stood at a Waldorf-Astoria podium before twenty-five hundred people in white tie and evening gowns. Among them were her host, Cardinal Francis J. Spellman, New York Governor Averell Harriman, and Mayor Robert F. Wagner. “Your Eminence,” she began, “tonight my theme is the challenge to America’s leadership represented by two recent symbols … symbols of defeat. They are the symbol of Little Rock and the symbol of the Muscovite moon.”

  She went on to say that she saw the first as posing a moral threat, and the second as posing a material one. “How serious is the material challenge of the Muscovite moon? Is the satellite which the mighty arm of Soviet Russia has just punched into our heavens, an insuperable one to American scientific know-how? It is not.” She informed her audience that the United States had long been working on a space satellite, and conceded “the fact that our vanguard will be a rear guard is humiliating.” Even so, she was confident that the country had the money, resources, and skills soon to make the Sputnik obsolete.

  Why, then, does the little derisive beep of the Muscovite moon, as it travels its almost hourly trajectory around the globe, sound so like a signal of doom in the ears of so many people in the world?

  It sounds like a signal of doom, not because it has overtaken our defenses, but because it has punctured our pretensions; not because it is a sign of the decline of the West, but because it is a symbol of that pride which since King David’s time commonly “goeth before a fall.”

  She pointed out that after Hiroshima, Americans had flattered themselves that their way of life had “built-in supremacy.” The delusion was based on temporary nuclear monopoly, and fed by the conceit that democratic government was inherently superior to Marxism.

  Well, let’s listen to the record. It will have circled our globe and be passing overhead again without mistakes and without delay, within the hour. Beep. Beep, beep. In twelve days it has clocked more than six million miles, and is good for several billions more.

  There can be no doubt: the baleful beep of the Sputnik which is heard in every land, every hour, on the hour, is an intercontinental, outer-space raspberry to a decade of American pretensions.…

  It is a grim portent to hundreds of millions of people that American leadership can no longer be counted on to keep even a narrow lead over its enemies.

  Turning to the fallacy of America’s moral exceptionalism, Clare noted that the insistence of flag-wavers that the United States was a country “utterly devoted to the equality of its citizens” was also delusive. “What have the people of the world heard on the radio, seen on their television in these last weeks to justify that contention?” she asked. “They have seen men—white men—strike children because their skins were dark. They have seen teenagers tormenting other boys and girls for the same reason. And seeing, they have understood there are hearts in America that seethe with racial hatred.”

  She reminded her listeners that this was the same America “which destroyed all the great cities of Germany because they sheltered men who believed in the inferiority of certain races.” She cited the irony whereby American propagandists had told refuseniks living in Warsaw Pact countries that they were being persecuted for “the ‘crime’ of political nonconformity.” These people might well think that it was worse to deprive children of their right to an education because of “the ‘crime’ of physical nonconformity.”

  In conclusion, Clare said there could be no blinking at contemporary realities.

  The [Soviet] moon has exposed our material pride. Little Rock has exposed our moral hubris. And taken together, these two events have tended to destroy the image America has sought to project of herself in the eyes of the world.…

  We implore our Southern neighbors—and those in the North who agree with their stands on segregation and integration—if they will not lift their eyes to the highest heaven, at least to lift them as high as the Sputnik. For that moon raises the real question: the question all Americans must soon answer. The question is not whether Central High will be peacefully integrated, but whether it—and every other Central High in America—will be violently disintegrated by the warheads of which Sputnik itself is merely the pioneer.51

  Clare sat down to cries of “Bravo!” Cardinal Spellman said it was the finest address he had ever heard. Judge Irving R. Kaufman, convictor of the Rosenbergs, felt the same, and wrote to tell her so. “Your speech, which was a masterpiece in both substance and delivery, jogged us out of our complacency.” He also wrote the Cardinal. “What a talented lady she is. Our government would be wise in making more use of those talents.”52

 
; 41

  NO ONE STARED

  Only when one has lost all curiosity about the future has one reached the age to write an autobiography.

  —EVELYN WAUGH

  By late October of 1957, Clare was free to go to Arizona for her planned six-month spell of memoir writing. Harry, still tied to his ever-growing magazine empire (Sports Illustrated was losing lots of money), could not follow her there until shortly before Christmas.1 En route to Phoenix on October 28, she was still in an apocalyptic mood, and wrote her husband a note about the international nuclear threat, urging him to take precautionary measures. “Get your plane, your pilot for your family, and arrange … shelter.”2

  Settling down to work, she soon found that research and fact-checking, not to mention the often painful honesty required for autobiographical writing, proved more daunting than anticipated. Then there were other unfinished projects, including her play for the Gish sisters and a fifteen-thousand-word diving book for Prentice-Hall due in mid-December.3 A daily distraction was what Sister Madeleva described as “the crystal sun-smitten world” of Clare’s desert retreat, with its temptations of swimming, golf, gardening, painting in her new studio, and being caught up in the Biltmore circle’s seasonal social round.4

  Keeping the house running smoothly was difficult, since she competed for a shrinking pool of help with equally affluent “snowbirds.” A prime annoyance was that Dorothy Farmer refused to winter in Phoenix, so she had to train a succession of temporary secretaries. At least she had Arthur Little, her dependable gardener from Sugar Hill, to act as chauffeur and factotum.5

  By November 23, Clare sounded less than wholehearted about her current occupation, telling a former embassy employee, “I have had to make a choice between applying myself to my own work—writing—or giving that up permanently and becoming a ‘public figure.’ Well, for better or worse, I’ve opted for ‘English Lit.’ ”6

  Yet two days later she intruded herself into politics when President Eisenhower, who had been preparing for a post-Sputnik NATO summit in Paris, was rushed to Walter Reed Hospital with a cerebral spasm.7 This was the third serious illness, counting an attack of ileitis, that he had suffered in twenty-six months. At 9:00 the following morning, a parish priest, Father George H. Dunne, S.J., arrived to play golf with Clare, and found her on a sunny patio, telephone at her side.

  “I just phoned Nixon,” she told him. “ ‘Dick,’ I said, ‘you have got to attend that meeting in Paris two weeks from now. Never mind what others advise.’ ” She had also called William F. Knowland and Joe Martin, the Republican leaders of the Senate and House, and commanded them to “see to it that Nixon understands that the Paris meeting must not be abandoned.”8

  Father Dunne had the impression that in rallying all Washington to Nixon’s side, Clare had just taken over the management of the country. She was too busy at any rate for golf, and told one of her secretaries to play with the cleric instead.9

  Unable to resist the lure of the dais, Clare flew back to New York in December to give two speeches. She reneged on her diving book contract, and told the Gish sisters not to expect the play she had promised. “I can’t figure out a straight story line.”10 All she had managed of her autobiography was a fragmentary plan.

  1903—Born N.Y. City

  … (Father leaves) Chicago Flat

  … travel Violinist Father

  … Jersey days …

  … New York flats—poverty

  1934–1935—La vie libre d’une Femme du Monde

  Artists & Writers

  Politicians & Statesmen

  People

  Lovers—

  The Meaning of a woman’s Life–11

  For Clare, a part of the price of fame seemed to be an inability to describe her humble origins and the ruthlessness of her ambition, not to mention the decline in her playwriting ability. Like many blocked authors, she looked for excuses.

  There’s always the negative consolation the times themselves provide a writer with—that unless one happens to be a genius it doesn’t matter too much what books are written or read on the eve of Armageddon. Did I say Armageddon? I don’t really mean that. I’m inclined to agree with Dr. Kissinger in his analysis of the situation—that we are in the age of the creeping Munichs.12

  Henry A. Kissinger, associate director of Harvard’s Center for International Affairs and author of a new book, Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy, was, she told Nelson Rockefeller, “my latest enthusiasm.… I’ve not got around to reading him before.”13

  Her growing paranoia, incipient in her Sputnik speech and in her letter to Harry about preparing for nuclear attack, was yet more apparent at a dinner party that month attended and documented by Father Dunne. It took place at the house of Frank C. Brophy, Jr., a local Catholic lawyer and philanthropist. After dessert, the company of ten adjourned to the sitting room, where Clare began a monologue that accused FDR of being a Communist sympathizer, and then moved on to an anti-Semitic diatribe that reminded Dunne of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

  According to Mrs. Luce, there existed a relatively small group of wealthy Jews who met once a year in the greatest secrecy and planned the strategy of world Jewry for the future. Every major evil that had occurred in the political, economic, and social areas, dating back at least to the overthrow of the czarist regime in Russia in 1917 and the breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Empire—which breakup she deplored—and continuing through World War II and its aftermath, had been planned at and was the result of these meetings.

  Clare did not say how she had managed to penetrate the secrecy of these gatherings. Father Dunne was appalled that a woman of such reputed intelligence could mouth obvious absurdities. Noticing that their host was nodding politely as she rambled on, he interrupted. “Frank, why do you agree with all of this nonsense? Simply because it comes from Clare Boothe Luce?”

  At once, Clare stood up to leave. Before stepping into her car, she turned and said, “Tell Father Dunne that at least I am not anticlerical.”

  The next day, the priest wrote a mutual acquaintance, Father John Courtney Murray, of how disturbing he found the incident. Murray replied, “You have seen one facet of a multi-faceted woman … the facet which I call—and she is aware of this—the ‘from rags to bitches’ side.”14

  Harry traveled to Phoenix on February 1 with Laura Hobson, currently working as a publicist for Time. She was to be Clare’s houseguest. Heeding Miss Thrasher’s warning, “Mr. Luce does not like to sit next to anybody he knows when he’s on a plane,” Laura took a seat some distance away. But when they stopped to change planes in Chicago, the boss sought her out. He was in a talkative mood, and held forth on how impossible it was to quit smoking. When Laura said she had done so, he became visibly annoyed. He also seemed irked by the current bestseller he was reading, Max Shulman’s Rally Round the Flag, Boys! “I can’t understand half the expressions in it. I suppose it’s the new slang.”

  As the plane neared Phoenix, Laura passed Harry’s seat on her way to the bathroom.

  Something about the way he was sitting caught my peripheral vision; he seemed slumped sideways.… He was pale, waxy-looking. I knew something was very wrong; I knelt beside him, right there in the aisle.

  “Harry, are you all right?” A stewardess came rushing up.

  “Oxygen?” she said, but rushed off for aspirin and water.

  I reached for his wrist, to try for his pulse, but he yanked his hand back. “It’s nothing,” he said. “I’m all right.”

  But I stayed there, kneeling beside him; his color began to return; he sat back, straightening himself firmly; he did look more himself. But I was glad we were approaching the airport.

  As Arthur Little drove them to the house, Harry was silent. Clare seemed to notice nothing amiss when they arrived.15

  The following day, Sunday, Harry suddenly said, “I’m dying.”16 Clare summoned an ambulance to take him to St. Joseph’s Hospital. Laura was in the garden when the stretcher was carried out. He
looked spent, she noted, “so unlike the powerful Henry Robinson Luce the whole world knew.”17

  Laura followed the couple to the hospital, where she found Clare crying and saying to a nun, “If anything happens to Harry, my whole life would be over.”18

  On Monday, Dr. Hayes Caldwell checked Harry’s blood count and ordered an X-ray and electrocardiogram. All looked fine, but next day Clare found him in bed surrounded by bloody paper tissues. Aghast, she summoned Caldwell, who diagnosed a pulmonary embolism. He called New York to consult with a Time Inc. physician, and Dr. Rosenbluth. Both concurred with his finding, and Harry was prescribed anticoagulants.19

  But on Wednesday, February 5, another electrocardiogram showed an alarming change. Harry had had what Caldwell called “a coronary insufficiency”—in plain language, a heart attack.20

  Aside from her own distress, Clare was aware that the value of Time Inc. stock depended largely on the good health of its founder. Any news that Henry Luce, two months shy of sixty, was seriously ill might be calamitous, not only to the company but to themselves as major shareholders. She managed to keep his condition secret until reporters began to pester Caldwell for a statement. The doctor referred all inquiries to her. She decided to announce only that her husband was being treated for pneumonia brought on by severe influenza.21 The story ran as a special in The New York Times on February 12, under the headline HENRY LUCE IN HOSPITAL: MAGAZINE EDITOR STRICKEN BY PNEUMONIA.