Price of Fame

by Sylvia Jukes Morris

  In the light of the many things you have done and how well you have done them—the warmth of your relationships with others—and the other expressions of your creative, living potential—this release, if it comes to pass, could be the freedom which finally permits a more complete self-expression.

  Still—this does not erase the loneliness—the sense of failure—somehow the humiliation—and, of course, the rejection which is your special hooker.92

  Before returning to New York, Harry swore on the Bible that it was his “solemn intention” to stay married to Clare for life.93 Then, on February 29, he surprised her by phoning to say he was coming to Phoenix again the following day. Despite his biblical vow, he did not love her, still loved his mistress, and wanted to negotiate a “concordat” that would enable him to have his “last chance” to sexually “dominate” someone. He said he needed to get Jeanne back from Europe, so he could “make up [his] mind.” Clare saw the fatuity of this notion. Harry was in no position to decide about either of them. She had the power to refuse divorce, and Jeanne would not settle for just living with him.94

  On the day of his arrival, she poured out anguished handwritten assessments of their relationship, past, present, and future. They were cast in the form of long letters to him, and she gave him one late that night, as he was going to his room. It stated that she would “never, under any circumstances,” divorce him, or permit him to divorce her. She expected him to read it the next morning, and, as she subsequently recounted to Father Murray, was stunned to see Harry, just after midnight, enter her bedroom with a bottle of whiskey.

  It was the most extraordinary performance I have ever witnessed.… There was no way to shut him off, or get him out of the room. If I begged him to go, we both needed sleep, he said, “This is it, so we may as well have one last big talk.” If I threatened or tried to push him to bed, he said, “From now on I’m boss.” Exhausted, occasionally tearful, once “catatonic” from sheer fatigue, I had to let him go on. His general attitude was one of, “Well, I knew this is what you would finally do—but why didn’t you say so in September?” … Several times he announced he loved me, and never wanted to leave me; wouldn’t have ever left me even if I had insisted, because he knew my problems better than anyone; he swore he was not going to be grim and unhappy about it; we would make the best of it. Somewhere along the line, I got down on my knees, asking him to pray with me to God for strength.… He prayed long, fervently, and even eloquently for this purpose, we kissed one another goodnight, then he went to his room about 3 a.m., returned in five minutes to ask me if I knew about him and Mary Bancroft—I didn’t. For over an hour he talked about his twelve year friendship with [her].… Mary, by her own account had had 43 lovers, Allen Dulles being her favorite. She had always loved Harry madly, but he had not wanted to have an affair with her.

  Seeming to have a vicarious fascination with Bancroft’s lovers, and the fact that a woman so physically unappealing could be so promiscuous, he harped on the subject for an hour and a half. “She’s a Catholic, if she’s anything,” he said. “Homely. The map of Ireland is all over her face.”95

  He then took off on his extraordinary attraction for women. He has yet to meet one he couldn’t have, if he wanted her, but “affairs left me disgusted with myself.” Only love was good enough. On the other hand, he had always wished he could settle “for a blonde from the chorus.”

  When he went to bed, he was as drunk as a stable hand. And I was exhausted. And utterly baffled.… He made one final, brief appearance to tell me that there was one thing I had never understood: sex was never important to him: proof, 12 years with Mary Bancroft who had had 43 lovers, and he had never touched her.

  Clare’s problem, Harry said, was that unlike Jeanne, she thought sex was more important than love. In a telling stream of consciousness, he talked for another hour about the torment of being a youthful stutterer, declared that he was a genius—“undoubtedly I am”—and again boasted about all the women he had, or could have, seduced.

  By 6:30 A.M. he was still maundering on, and Clare was reduced to stupefied silence. “Now, snap out of it,” he said. “I am here, I love you. You belong here; we both know it.” She shook herself awake, only to hear him return to the subject of his sex life—“a matter which, at the same time,” she told Murray, “he vociferously claims does not interest him.… There can be no question but that the poor man is demented.”96

  After five hours’ sleep, she found her husband at his desk, rereading her letter declining divorce. When she patted him on the shoulder, he pushed her away, saying without apparent irony, “I am the dying Gaul. Don’t expect me to be happy about this.” Later, she saw him shambling about the garden, his large head drooping, a picture of misery.97

  Harry returned to New York still in a sulk, pursued by a taunting challenge from Clare that he be “manly” enough to go to Europe and cement the break with Jeanne. This dovetailed with Beth Moore’s recommendation that her brother take a world tour of Time Inc. offices, to distract himself from domestic concerns.98

  Clare sought her own diversion in the days that followed with yet another visit—the third in four months—from Gerald Heard and Michael Barrie. They bore a gift of LSD from Dr. Cohen. Father Murray joined them and took his first dose, a cautious one that put him, as he phrased it, “on the verge.” Cohen called to ask how things had gone, and was pleased to hear that Clare had again attained “the upper register.”99

  Alone in the house after everyone had gone, Clare had time to assess on paper the man she was so determined to stay married to—and ask herself why. She found Henry Luce still handsome at sixty-two. His forehead was high and round, and his dark gray eyes looked larger than they were, being deep set and fringed with heavy black lashes beneath densely thick brows. What was left of his pale red hair was copious and curly. With her encouragement, he shopped at James Bell and Brooks Brothers, yet managed to look disheveled much of the time, with ash from three packs a day of Camel cigarettes besmirching his suits. He wore a battered felt hat in winter, or a dirty panama in summer, and bought shirts only after Clare threw out his frayed ones. Intolerant of wool, he wore black silk socks, even to the beach, and as a result suffered from blisters.100

  Since he was indifferent to most jewelry, he sported only his father’s gold watch and chain, and a platinum-and-sapphire ring on the little finger of his right hand, a wedding gift from Clare. This he never took off, less out of affection for her, she felt, than because it was carved with the Luce family crest. The blue stone had long since been cracked by his habit of pounding on the table to emphasize a point.

  Though an inch short of six feet, broad-shouldered, and slender, Harry was unathletic in his movements. Tennis was the only game he played fairly well, but so aggressively that opponents had sustained black eyes from his smashes at the net. He openly cheated at golf, kicking the ball out of the rough for an easier shot. If challenged, he claimed to be “playing winter rules.”

  In his prime, what made him attractive to women, Clare deduced, was his aura of “relaxed power and self-satisfaction,” combined with a “closed in quality.” Though riches and power had given him a high profile around the globe, he remained to most “a man of mystery.” He rarely talked about his personal life, or was curious about other people, caring only for what facts they knew or opinions they held. Unless Clare explained, he seldom saw the comic side of human foibles and behavior.

  Careless of elementary good manners, he never opened a door or pulled out a chair for a woman, or complimented anyone’s appearance. When alone with Clare, he never lit her cigarette or poured her a drink, seldom looked her in the eye, and impatiently interrupted when she was speaking.

  He also butted in on general conversation. When those near him talked to each other, he would fold his arms and stare into space, until his heavy disapproval silenced them. Or he would abruptly stand up, look at his watch, announce that he had “work to do,” and leave. Should he be trapped at a forma
l dinner, he exuded “a black brooding anger” that could be dispelled only if everyone switched their attention to him.

  Clare noted moreover that Harry could be intolerant of correction, and childishly vain in playing the multimillionaire, grabbing restaurant checks even from hosts who could well afford them. It did not occur to him that this was offensive. “If I want to pay, that’s my business.”

  After filling nine sheets of paper, she could no longer fathom what was so bewitching about Harry that she repeatedly humiliated herself in her efforts to keep him.101

  On April 21, the eve of Harry’s departure for his world tour, the Luces attended the annual black-tie Newspaper Editors of America dinner in Washington, D.C. Clare and Eleanor Roosevelt were billed as speakers representing Republican and Democratic points of view on the theme “What’s Wrong with the Press?” But the former First Lady had canceled, and Marya Mannes of The Reporter magazine was asked to substitute. Clare made the tactical error of asking to speak first, confident that Miss Mannes could not outshine her.

  Glittering with diamonds, she addressed an audience that included Supreme Court Justices, Senators, high-ranking diplomats, and heads of government agencies. Her speech was serious and carefully scripted, focusing on “the debasement of popular taste” in the American press. Too many journalists, she said, were trading “their birthright of candor and truth in order to become White House pets, party pets, corporation pets, Pentagon or State Department or trade union or governor’s mansion pets.”

  Clare was off form and received only tepid applause, while Mannes, in simple black chiffon, spoke with verve and wit. She agreed that the space given to hard news was declining in favor of pulp stories, and made the provocative point that television broadcasts, concise as they were, did “a better job” of informing the American people than print. Turning to look saucily at the Luces, she said that certain weekly newsmagazines were “the Clapp’s Baby Food of the nation’s news diet—especially processed for quick digestion.”

  The audience roared, and Mannes continued with quips that aroused ripples of laughter. Clare had not been upstaged since her appearance in Candida. She turned white and lit one cigarette after another, grinding out butts and expelling streams of smoke from her nostrils that one observer said “would have done credit to a jet takeoff.”

  The result was a thunderous standing ovation for Mannes. In the receiving line, Clare was gracious to her rival, but ducked out early.102

  After saying good-bye to Harry, who would be gone for a month, she stayed on in Washington and redeemed herself with an effective speech at the War College. At the Sulgrave Club, she renewed acquaintance with Jacqueline Kennedy, and in a letter to Harry mentioned her “big beehive hair do, baby stare, and ‘baby-talk’ lisp.” John Kennedy was the likely front-runner for the Democratic nomination that summer, so Clare was not surprised to see courtiers already clustering around his wife. She also appeared at a state dinner for President de Gaulle of France, before spending the last weekend of the month at Brooke Astor’s country place outside New York. Simultaneously, as she was aware, Harry was reuniting in Europe with Lady Jeanne Campbell.103 But she had no inkling that he was welshing on their concordat, telling Jeanne, “We can’t marry yet, but might consider setting up house in Jamaica, or Lake Louise in Canada, or even Switzerland.”104

  A few days later, Clare was mortified by another Cholly Knickerbocker item in the New York Journal-American. “That famous publisher and his lady friend are together constantly in Paris. Eventually everybody concerned is going to have to break down and admit a divorce is inevitable.”105

  Harry, by now in Beirut, hurriedly wired her, “My comment would be, ‘There is nothing to it and columnist was evidently misinformed.’ ”106

  She replied at once from the Waldorf. “I am hurt—though I said I was beyond hurting.… But it is harder to take it in public than in private.” Noting he had sent her no letters and only three telegrams in almost three weeks, she cruelly quoted what Dr. Rosenbluth had said twenty-one years before: “Something is wrong, not with Harry’s body, but with his mind. He is crippled by some exotic neurosis … and you had best leave him.”107

  On or about May 16, she finally got a letter from Harry assuring her that the “the Great Encounter” had indeed taken place, and Jeanne had shed few tears. Clare was surprised at the apparent ease with which he had accomplished what must have been a wrenching renunciation. She wrote at once to congratulate him on his “astonishing ability to get everyone to see things your way.”

  At the end of a nine-day vacation at two Rockefeller resorts in the Caribbean, Clare reunited with Harry for the Memorial Day weekend. She soon found out that he had been lying to her about breaking off completely with Jeanne in Paris. In fact, he had taken her from there for a five-day car tour of Switzerland. This revelation plus another, that he had told Jeanne he “would marry her” if he ever got a divorce, led to long hours of argument, with Clare yet again trying to get him to say what he wanted, and he, as was his habit, asking her to decide what he should do. By late Monday night, both of them were exhausted, and she went to bed. Around twelve o’clock, Harry came into her room and said portentously, “It is God’s will. You are the cross I have to bear.”

  At the end of her tether, Clare picked up the telephone. She dialed the Waldorf’s Western Union office and dictated a telegram: “Jeanne Campbell, Inveraray Castle, Argyll, Scotland. Harry says that he wishes to marry you and that he will soon be in the position to do so. Congratulations. Clare Luce.” Harry, outwitted and furious, called the operator back and asked her to cancel the wire. He was told that only the sender could do that, so he fired off one of his own: “Disregard telegram from Clare.”108

  It was now almost 1:00 A.M. on June 1. Deadlocked once more, they parted to sleep. Later in the day, Clare resumed the confrontation, determined to make order out of the chaos of nine months of wrangling. Her agenda covered familiar ground. Did either of them really want a divorce? Absent a legal split, was he intending to continue his affair? What was “the right thing to do,” since his family, church, and business associates were afraid of damage to their public image?

  Harry asked Clare if she thought she would have a better life married to him than not. She replied that she would not want a repeat of the last four years. Wavering for the first time, he said that if they stayed together, their future would be different from the past. “Leaving ‘love’ out,” he said chillingly, “I feel I can offer all the other things.” She then asked for an assurance that he would not “reopen this question of divorce” at a later date.

  “I am an old man,” he said. “This is the last crisis of this kind I shall pass through.”

  Realizing that she was winning, Clare told him that she would start divorce proceedings next week unless he met four demands. He must convey in writing his intention to spend the rest of his life with her, notify Jeanne that their affair was over “forever” and that they must no longer communicate, and tell the Moores, in Clare’s presence, that he wanted to remain married. Finally, before the month was out, he must escort her through the new Time & Life Building on Sixth Avenue, “as though you were pleased and proud to show it to me.”

  She typed up a five-page summary of their marathon negotiations, ending with her four demands, and in each case Harry wrote, “Agreed.”109

  By now Jeanne Campbell was in Jamaica, looking for a house where she and Harry could live. She was therefore flabbergasted to receive a letter from him, telling her yet again they could not marry. He gave no explanation except to say that during his world tour Clare had made an “unserious” threat to jump from their forty-first-floor apartment.110

  Despite having his commitment on paper, Clare still toyed with him. On June 10, as they drove to Ridgefield, she said calmly that after all she had “decided on divorce.” Harry’s response, after he recovered, was to insist that “we should go on for the rest of our lives together.” To that end, and hoping that he might even no
w devise some way of continuing with Jeanne, he proposed they summon Father Murray to Sugar Hill to act as a “Qualified Witness” at another marital summit.111

  Clare agreed, seeing a chance to get what she had long wanted from Harry: a legal division of assets, which would give her security in the event of his further treachery—or death. They set a date for the weekend of June 18. Impulsively, Harry did not wait for Murray to arrive before sending Jeanne a second letter. “Everything is opening up again. It’s an extraordinary moment in our love.”112 Jeanne’s reaction was to make plans to reestablish herself in New York at once, in order to “fight” for him.113

  Father Murray was a reluctant mediator this time, because he sensed that Clare’s spiritual, emotional, and material neediness was insatiable. “By what right,” he testily asked, “do you demand to be loved unconditionally?” She was too astonished to answer.114 At any rate, the main result of the second summit was a settlement beneficial to Clare. She was to receive “with all speed” $200,000 for the purchase of a Manhattan apartment, keep joint ownership of the Phoenix house, explore the tax consequences of becoming co-owner of Sugar Hill, and get legal ownership of whatever artworks she desired from the Luce collection.115

  Discussing money and possessions made the weekend a “painful” experience for the two men, but to Clare it was “deeply contenting.” For the first time, she told Harry, she felt “secure ‘for good and always’ in your life, and in a large area of your affections.”116

  Jeanne was in the city by early July, as was Randolph Churchill, a close friend of hers as well as Clare’s former lover. He had been sent to America by the New Statesman to cover the two presidential conventions being held that month. While Randolph was in New York, Jeanne let him stay with her in a small rental apartment.117