Price of Fame

by Sylvia Jukes Morris

  Beside herself, Clare called Shirley Potash at Time Inc. and yelled, “You knew!” Shirley denied it, even though office gossip about Harry’s affair was rife. She could not understand why Clare was so upset, after bending her ear endlessly on the subject of leaving Harry. “We have no life—he’s away, I’m here!”58

  Hank Luce, who had long known of his father’s extracurricular relationship, was sympathetic to Jeanne. He phoned her in Scotland and warned her not to talk to journalists. This did not include Harry, who called her every night, and spoke at such great length that she started sleeping in the library, so as “not to disturb the house.” She soon became a wreck from these monologues. Harry explained to her distress that his lawyer, Roswell Gilpatric, would not present any “papers” to Clare until Beth and Tex Moore had been consulted about an appropriate course of action.59

  Meanwhile, it occurred to Clare that she had only Father Murray to bat for her, whereas Harry had his family, his intimates at work, and his Presbyterian pastor to protect his happiness, status, business, and fortune. She therefore invited the priest to spend the first weekend of October at Sugar Hill.60

  Although she and Murray had only recently become spiritually intimate, they had first met in late 1946, when he had attended a lecture by Clare at Catholic University, and been greatly impressed. Hoping to become better acquainted, he had arranged on some pretext to meet her through Harry.

  She had been struck first by his six-foot-four-inch height—“the tallest man I’d ever seen.”61 He had a deep forehead, receding hairline, all-seeing bespectacled eyes, and slight limp from having one leg shorter than the other. This congenital deformity, she later learned, had pained him in childhood, making him feel “unfinished.” As he matured, he found a kinship not so much with Lord Byron as with Shakespeare’s hunchback Richard III.62

  Born in New York to upper-middle-class Scottish and Irish parents, Murray had poise, and spoke eloquently and authoritatively in pear-shaped tones.63 Clare perceived that he was not only sympathetic, but of coruscating intelligence, with a Jesuit’s logical and analytic mind. A year younger than she was, he had graduated from Boston College and taught in Italy, Germany, and the Philippines. He had lectured on philosophy at Yale before settling at Woodstock College. An avowed liberal Democrat, he had an ongoing interest in the interaction of nations with religion, tensions between faith and public life, and the morality or justness of war.

  As their friendship developed, Clare had discovered that far from being austere, Murray, like Gerald Heard, enjoyed the luxuries that came with well-off friends: a car at the airport, a bed in the city, good food and wine, country weekends with golf on the best courses, and quantities of whiskey and cigarettes. The last three guaranteed that he and Harry would form a companionable routine based on a little exercise, followed by philosophical debates that, stimulated by alcohol and tobacco, usually went on into the small hours. Harry came to admire Murray so much that when he published a Time story entitled “U.S. Catholics and the State,” he put a portrait by Chaliapin of him on the cover.64

  Father John Courtney Murray, S.J. (illustration credit 43.4)

  Clare was to grow more and more devoted to “Father John” as her estrangement from Harry grew, even though the priest often played devil’s advocate, arguing that at her age, “a marriage of convenience” was the best she could expect. He told her it was her duty to the Catholic Church to avoid a scandal.65

  “When I can talk with you,” she wrote, “the day has meaning, it stays alive, I don’t lose altitude, I can stave off melancholy and futility.”66

  As it happened, Clare could not have had a better counselor than Murray at this troubled period of her life. He would also turn out to be, in more ways than one, her rescuer.

  After his visit to Sugar Hill, Murray sent Harry what he called a “Report of an Honest Broker.” Clare, he said, felt that the Luces were a team, without him she would be “finished,” and at her age unable to build a new life alone. She also needed “someone to whom to holler for help.” Strangely, for a woman of strong character who had achieved much on her own, Harry was “the hunk of reality that has always been there, when all else dissolves.” Insecure, she wanted their marriage to continue, even if Harry had sex on the side, yet needed to know when and where they could be together or apart, and what “rules for communication” would apply.

  According to Murray, Clare’s feelings for her husband consisted of what the ancient Greeks called “Eros, Philia and Agape”—love, friendship, and goodwill. He cautioned that separation would be inhuman and dangerous, in view of her fragile emotional state.67

  On October 10, as Harry convened with the Moores in Connecticut for further discussion of his options, the two women vying for his affection addressed urgent appeals to him. Jeanne Campbell cabled from London: “Lots of anyway [sic] love and thoughts for my beloved grumpy growly friend. Happy and peaceful weekend with Beth. Think and think hard. Your Jay.”

  Clare wrote him from San Francisco, where she was making a Columbus Day speech. She offered a significant concession. Though she had “a legal hold” on him, she did not wish to exercise it.

  You are free to marry Jeanne or not—as you choose. If this is the only way for me to prove that “underneath it all” I bear you more goodwill and love than I have ever borne anyone—you have that proof. I could not face the declining years of my life with you, knowing that you shared them with me only as a prisoner.68

  She knew Jeanne was due back in New York on October 18 and said that since Harry would probably want to see the young woman, she would await his decision in Phoenix.

  The tone of this letter was tame compared with an unsent one of the night before that expressed her true feelings. It taunted Harry as being “a man ‘with all that power’ who is powerless to please himself, his girl, his God, his family, his wife all at the same time.” She warned him that his inability to reconcile desire and guilt would make marriage to Jeanne just as miserable as to her. “You will hate her tomorrow in proportion as you love her today.” In her immaturity, Jeanne had “not yet passed the test of your rancor, and depression, and boredom and hatred.”69

  From Arizona a few days later, Clare wrote another unmailed letter, this time to her rival. Mockingly headed “Bye Baby Bunting, Daddy’s gone ahunting,” and addressing Jeanne as “Dear Friend,” it defined the situation in one sentence: “Big Mama won’t let Big Poppa go.”

  Pointing out that “somebody around here has to begin to act his or her age,” Clare continued for eight densely scripted pages. She began by analyzing the impulsive libido of Henry Luce. “Seized by a Big Romance, he can act with a manliness, vigour, determination, boldness, that sweeps a woman off her feet—as it did me, 25 years ago.” This conflicted with his moral conscience, and made him feel guilty for hurting his two wives, family, friends, and colleagues, none of whom wanted to see him “shatter” all he had built over the years.

  She cited the two main reasons why “Baby would be bad, in fact is bad for Poppa.” First, his health was at risk from the endless nights of drinking and smoking during their trysts. “I just can’t see anything particularly good coming of a Romance which seems to be wrecking him physically and morally, can you?” If Jeanne really loved him, she would give him “a little less beer at 3 a.m., and a little more cheer at ten o’clock. He’s got to have eight or nine hours sleep, and he suffers (not being thirty) when he’s hung over.”

  The second reason why I don’t think he’d be happy (tho’ one would do!) is that Baby herself seems—on the record—to be a bit of a case.… I have always posited that Baby is in love with Big Poppa—because, in the final analysis (don’t look now, my Freud is going to show) she’s in love with her wretched Gramp, and her poppa too—two figures who never gave her any emotional security, clear set of moral values, self discipline—and having been pushed about and shunted off (between highly unsatisfactory periods of petting and spoiling) she feels if she gets Big Poppa she’s got them al
l to herself at last.

  She ended with a stoic admission. Whatever she or Jeanne might want or say in the matter, Harry would have to choose between them. It was likely, knowing him as she did, that he would decide not to decide. In which case, Baby could “hang around, on his terms, whatever they are, for a couple of years, waiting for a new assault on Big Mama.” Or she could find someone closer to her own age.

  “Of course, to do so, is to be awful hard on Big Poppa—his long record of getting everything he wanted from women will be broken. He’ll have to face one defeat. The awful bleak, almost intolerable prospect of finishing out his days with the one woman who has loved him more than all the others combined.”70

  Shortly after putting this letter aside, Clare heard that Harry had “capitulated” to Beth and Tex Moore’s insistence that a divorce was far too drastic a solution to his dilemma. It would threaten his children’s inheritance, and damage his reputation as a man of Calvinist virtue. The ensuing scandal might alienate millions of Catholics sympathetic to Clare, and adversely affect the value of Time Inc. stock. They therefore recommended that Roswell Gilpatric negotiate a legal separation.71

  Logistically, the moment for such a move was ripe, because the Luces had sold their triplex, and were about to take an apartment on the forty-first floor of the Waldorf Towers. However they resolved the question of who might occupy it, Harry would have legal freedom to be with Lady Jeanne Campbell whenever he wanted, while Clare could depend on financial support to continue in her customary style.

  Although she had promised to accept any decision Harry made, the prospect of him flying to Phoenix with actual documents for her to sign was too much to bear. While he was en route, she swallowed a large quantity of sleeping pills. As fate—or her own survival instinct—would have it, Father Murray was staying with her and called for emergency help.

  By the time Harry arrived, she was recuperating. He now had to face the possibility of a recurrence, should he go ahead with the separation plan.72 So when a newsman called on October 19, asking about reports that he was in Arizona to break with his wife, he said, “There’s nothing to it, this report of divorce.”

  Later that morning, when he returned to the Phoenix airport, Clare was at his side.73

  In the interim, Jeanne Campbell had returned to New York, expecting that Harry would soon be free. Instead, she was confronted by the image of Clare and Harry, “a smiling happy couple in the newspapers,” about to check into their new apartment.74

  A society reporter ran into Jeanne hurrying along Fifty-seventh Street in the crisp fall sunshine. “Pink-cheeked, tousle-haired and clad in forest-green tweeds, she looked the epitome of the Highland chieftain’s daughter,” he wrote. But she paled when he asked if there was truth to the rumor linking her to Henry Luce. Regaining composure, she said, “I am reminded of the inscription over the gate to the beautiful flower garden of Saint Andrews University in Scotland. It’s by an anonymous sage, circa 1720, and carved in stone it reads: ‘They have said; they will say; let them be saying.’ ”75

  Harry wanted to tell her face-to-face that he could not marry her. That night he invited her to the Waldorf, while Clare made herself scarce in a neighbor’s suite.76 After telling Jeanne about the overdose, he said that divorce and even separation were impossible, at least for the time being. “I don’t know what to do.” Seeing her sadness, he asked, “You’re not thinking of committing suicide, are you?”77

  A couple of days later, Harry called Jeanne and told her to leave New York at once. He was afraid of his wife’s fragile emotional condition. “I don’t care where you go, but get out of town.”78

  Conveniently, Lord Beaverbrook happened to be visiting New Brunswick, so Jeanne went to join him.79 Clare then swung into immediate action to ensure that she and Harry were seen lunching out and attending Broadway’s new hit, The Miracle Worker.80 “All is well in the Luce ménage,” she wrote Gerald Miller on November 5. “We will have been married twenty-five years this month.… What’s left of our lives will be together.”81

  The next day, the Luces left for a week in Hawaii, where Harry was opening a Time Inc. office. Before the war, they had been enchanted by Oahu, and he had promised to look for “a little palace by the waters,” where Clare could swim and surf.82 His search had been unsuccessful. They agreed to look again, seeing it as a fresh venture for them both.83 Before they headed for the mainland, Harry told Clare that he “no longer wanted a divorce,” and preferred to “go down the long road” with her.84

  A heartbroken Jeanne moved on to Geneva. Her father met her with a pile of love letters from the man who had rejected her. All were written before Harry’s decision to stay with Clare. In essence they said, “Wait and be patient. It will happen.”85

  In February 1960, Clare published the first of a series of monthly commentaries she had contracted to write for McCall’s magazine, under the title “Without Portfolio.” She was to be paid the large fee of $3,000 for each piece, and chose for her initial subject “Could a Woman Be Nominated for the Presidency?”

  The question of could was moot, she wrote, since three women already had been—two of them before the “Suffragette Amendment” of 1920. So was the question of should, because the Constitution required only that a President be native born, over thirty-five, and resident in the country for a total of fourteen years. Qualifications, she went on, were essential in four major areas: experience of practical politics, military issues, economic and financial expertise, and “a proven knowledge of international affairs.” No woman currently had all four, she said, neglecting to say that she had three.

  It followed that no female was fit for the Vice Presidency, either, given that seven of the nation’s chief executives had died in office. The Democrat James A. Farley had stated recently that “women are too emotional for the job.” Clare pounced on this fatuity.

  In the cloakrooms, I myself have seen three Congressmen who have wept tears of “feminine” rage, or pouted in “girlish” pique over some small personal affront sustained on the floor from a colleague. During the war, I was privy to the prima donna outbursts of two generals, one who felt he had been “outranked,” and had been given orders he didn’t personally like; the other who had failed to get “good reviews” in the home press for his great generalship. I have seen not a few tycoons in office tantrums a ten-year-old girl would be ashamed to throw. Indeed, I have witnessed dozens of examples among politicians, diplomats, and soldiers of behaviour so outrageously irrational and emotionally unstable that my “womanly impulse” was to shake or spank them.86

  At the beginning of that month, Gerald Heard, Michael Barrie, and Louisa Jenkins joined Clare for what Heard described as a “wonderful week” of LSD. This time the experiments were scientifically administered by Dr. Sidney Cohen, the government neuropsychiatrist who continued to supply the drug for Clare’s use.

  Harry now took his first dose under the doctor’s supervision, and was slow to “gain orbit.” But when he did, he sauntered out into the garden, where he claimed to hear beautiful music. Standing among cactus plants, he began conducting an orchestra visible and audible only to himself.87

  Dr. Cohen was a distinguished-looking man of fifty with swept-back hair and silvery sideburns. He had a reassuring smile, soft voice, and gentle manner. But he was all business when it came to LSD, which he did not condone for mass recreational use. Nor did he have much interest in Heard’s mystical, quasi-religious theories about the potential of the drug. His professional mandate was to explore LSD’s possible therapeutic use with criminals, as well as psychotics and other mentally disturbed people. That psychedelics often gave users pleasurable highs was incidental, as far as he was concerned. If people wanted “to suffer for a while,” he was their man. “Gerald is better to soar with,” he told Clare. “The subterranean is my department.”88

  Cohen was already having doubts about the side effects and complications that patients in many research programs had exhibited, and had just published
a paper on the subject in Journal of Mental Diseases.89 The bulk of data showed so far that in professionally supervised treatment, LSD could be benign and beneficial.

  Dr. Sidney Cohen (illustration credit 43.5)

  When he administered it to Clare on this occasion, it was not a happy experience for her. She imagined that he had “held up a mirror” to her, and she so disliked what she saw—“a rejected, jailed woman”—that she cried in front of him.

  Later that day, she saw the doctor walking in the garden with Louisa. He was tanned and strong, she later wrote him, with hair “like a shining helmet, eyes dark and glowing but a little cruel.” She thought of “the plumed serpent,” the sign of the Mexican king Montezuma, and teasingly called him by that name. Was this, she asked, at a primitive level, “a sexual response to the sheer manliness of you?” From then on, she was “deeply concerned to have you like me. Not love me, because I always thought you saw the same face in that mirror that I saw.”90

  After Cohen left, she realized she had flirted with him, and he had not wanted to respond.91 He did write, however, sending her a frank opinion of what he had deduced of Harry’s psychological difficulties vis-à-vis her, at the same time revealing how much he understood her own need to be free of them.

  What I am about to say is tempered by an awareness that I know only a fragment of the story. But fools and psychiatrists rush in with their ideas and formulations serenely unburdened by the facts. First, I’d like to repeat what I said over the phone—that he is struggling with emotional problems now which should have been resolved during adolescence—that his egocentricity is probably not easy to live near—and that your growth may have been retarded in the shadow of the Pillar.