Price of Fame

by Sylvia Jukes Morris

  The Democrats convened in Los Angeles on July 11, and four nights later Joe Kennedy arrived at the Luces’ Waldorf suite to watch his son John accept the nomination.118 “We stand today on the edge of a New Frontier,” the charismatic young candidate said, “the frontier of the 1960s.… Beyond that frontier are uncharted areas of science and space, unsolved problems of peace and war, unconquered problems of ignorance and prejudice, unanswered questions of poverty and surplus.”

  Randolph returned to New York, and on July 20 boozily inveigled himself into a dinner Clare was attending with the former heavyweight boxing champion Gene Tunney, at the new Four Seasons restaurant on Park Avenue.119 She managed to have him seated far from her, because of his habit, going back to 1934, of loudly proposing marriage every time they met. To avoid having him escort her home, she slipped out early, on the pretext of going to the ladies’ room. But when she hailed a taxi in the street, Randolph came flying out, pursued by Tunney, and jumped into the cab with her. It moved off too soon for Tunney, who ran alongside, shouting to the driver, “I am Gene Tunney. You get this lady back to the Waldorf at once, safely, or you will be hearing from me!”

  At this he dropped off, and Clare became aware that Randolph was moaning. “What’s the matter with you?” she asked. “I’m going to sue,” he said. It transpired that in the chase out of the restaurant, Tunney had given Churchill a fourth-class kidney punch, in an unsuccessful attempt to fell him.

  Saying to herself, “I’ll leave this groaning object to pay,” Clare jumped out at the Waldorf and headed upstairs, telling the desk clerk not to admit Mr. Churchill under any circumstances.

  Randolph subsequently telephoned and asked Clare if she would be a witness for him in his lawsuit against Tunney. She assured him that on the contrary, she would be a witness for Gene.120

  Farce turned to near tragedy later that night, when Harry came home to find that Clare had taken an overdose of sodium amytal.121 In all likelihood, she had heard from Randolph, who was known for his blunt honesty, that he was staying with Lady Jeanne Campbell. The shock that “Baby Bunting” was back in town—no doubt at Harry’s urging—made Clare realize that her husband had betrayed her yet again. This brought on what she termed “a blackness,” accompanied by the thought, “Nobody could love me who really knew me.”122

  She was rushed more than forty blocks to Doctors Hospital on East Eighty-seventh Street to be pumped out. Harry issued a statement from her room that she had suffered “a digestive disturbance.”123 Then, in an agony of contrition, he sent her a handwritten apologia, insisting that he did not mean to renege on his commitments of the previous month.

  I want to go on with you because I have loved you very deeply and I do love you. Thus by going on, we can both honor the past and, in some measure, correct it. But most properly, it seems to me, I have mainly the future in mind.…

  In the future I do not see any Utopia or glamorous “New Frontier.” I do see goodness and kindness and, especially companionship. I see for both of us a chance to renew ourselves in the “things men live by, love, work, prayer, play.” …

  Of the four things, let me here speak only of love. Our love is deep—it has also suffered wounds, it has its limitations, but it meets many of the tests—not least, survival. Speaking for myself,

  I seek your good as you seek mine. I enjoy the pleasure of your company—no trivial test! I would share with you, more than I have, thoughts and troubles and hopes. I would hope there would be many sunny hours before the sunset and then at last a sunset hand-in-hand.

  With love—and “such as I am”—

  Yours,

  Harry

  Just then, Randolph told Jeanne that if only Clare would marry him, “Robinson,” as he called Harry, might be hers. He showed up at the hospital to propose, and when told that Clare was seeing no visitors, went up and down the corridor stomping like a child.124

  Louisa Jenkins was not fooled by reports that Clare was suffering from colitis and an ulcer. She wrote, “What are you trying to do?… Why don’t you just go your way and let him have 50 mistresses if he wants.”125

  Randolph wrote her in much the same vein. “You may think you have had a total victory over Robinson & brought the old scoundrel to heel. But you have got the albatross firmly tied around your neck for life & it will prove a diminishing consolation to you that he will never hear the skirl of the pipes.”126

  Clare’s recovery was slow, and prevented her from attending the Republican convention in Chicago, where Vice President Nixon was resoundingly nominated on July 26. His speech was pedestrian compared with Kennedy’s. He pledged to wage “a campaign such as this country has never seen before,” and in the course of it to “visit every one of the fifty states of this nation.”

  Harry’s ultimate course of action came to him improbably, during a psychedelic session with Gerald Heard at Sugar Hill on August 8. This time, while Clare took 125 micrograms of LSD, he tried a mild dose of psilocybin, and heard God in the garden forgiving his sins, and ordering him to give up Jeanne Campbell. For at least the third time, he told the latter they could not wed, and in midmonth set off with Clare for the Greek islands, leaving his bewildered and wounded lover behind.127

  The Luces let it be known that their vacation, hosted by Stavros Niarchos aboard the Creole, and later at his vast estate on Spetsopoula, was to be “a second honeymoon.” But soon after sailing from Athens, and entering the Gulf of Corinth, Clare began to complain in her diary about the distance that persisted between her and Harry. She also felt alienated from her fellow voyagers, who included King Paul and Queen Frederica of Greece, Tina Onassis, Lady Diana Cooper, and Cecil Beaton. Their conversation at dinner consisted entirely of social gossip—“whether Pam Churchill is happy or not with Leland Hayward, or whether or not Slim Hayward got a rough deal.” Nobody seemed interested in her.128

  “Am I getting old?” Clare wrote, after seeing Eugenia Niarchos and Tina sitting around all day in bikinis. “I find them much less attractive and glamorous showing so much flesh all the time. Perhaps people are less themselves naked, unpainted … than they are clothed.” She cringed at the sight of Harry ambling about the deck in old shorts that drooped from his potbelly, faded silk socks, and sneakers, with smeary spectacles perched on his nose. He was now so deaf that he needed a hearing aid, but obstinately refused to wear one.129 The only time he paid any attention to her was at night, when he came into her stateroom to ask, as he had done for more than twenty years, “Do you want me to read to you?” If she said no, he was visibly relieved, and felt free to go off and enjoy eight hours of solitary sleep. She understood that all he wanted from her was, as he often said, “companionable silence, taciturn serenity.”

  Her own sleep was troubled by nightmares. In one, she dreamed in color of “the terrifying fall of the House of (Luce?!).” All that remained after it burned and collapsed was the splendid facade, and in the ashes behind, “my jewels—nothing else.” In another, she was blowing out candles on a birthday cake for Harry and her hair caught fire.

  My whole face was enveloped in a blue flame like a gossamer veil. I put my hands tightly to my face to keep it from burning. Harry and others poured champagne over my head, and put it out. Afterwards I was certain that my whole face had been burned away. The doctor came, and examined my hands and face, and showed them to me in a mirror.… There were blisters all over my hands face and nose. The doctor (to my horror) took a razor and sheared the tops of all the blisters off. I awoke sickened and heartsore, certain that even the remnants of my beauty were gone.

  She saw both dreams as symbolic of the ruin of her marriage, and with it “the only security I have had for years—my beauty—which I do know now is gone, and has no ‘power.’ ”

  By August 22 they were established on Spetsopoula, in the southern Peloponnesus, mainly to shoot pheasants. The opulence of the place—“caviar coming out of the faucets”—dismayed Clare. Niarchos was indefatigable in showing off his $10 million improv
ements to the grounds and buildings. He was not only oppressively egocentric, she realized, but “bored bored bored.… He revolves about his own little doings like a dervish.” Casually, he boasted to her that one night at 3:00 A.M., he had gone to the beach for sex with a girl.

  Clare felt so entrapped that she thought of ordering a boat to get her off the island. Instead, she made one last attempt to ingratiate herself with Harry. On the night of the twenty-fifth, she went to his cabin, seeking “not passion, but comfort and closeness.”

  She climbed into his bed, and immediately sensed his panic, verging on disgust, about getting in with her. He paced the room in search of a drink and a sleeping pill, in the apparent hope that his “big psychological block,” as he had begun calling it, would be alleviated.

  Then finally he got into bed (“Why does the bed have to be so damn small?”) and lay there rigid, sweating, puffing a while—perhaps a minute. He approaches it, not like a man who is indifferent to a woman, or tired, even of her, but like one who is mortally afraid of her.

  I put my head on his shoulder, made some tender remark, like “Oh, now is it so bad to just be cozy with a woman who loves you?” He then made for me the fatal remark. He said, “I’m in a terrible situation. Well they say, curse God and die!” That did it beyond all hope of repair, beyond all hope.… I cannot see how I can stay, after this.… No use no use, no use.

  Harry realized the extreme cruelty of his implication that blasphemy and death were preferable to having to cuddle her. He got out of bed and begged on his knees, for charity. “Let us both pray to God for help.”

  But Clare was beyond praying, and could do nothing for him. “I am the trouble. The fearsome thing. The repugnant thing. The loathsome, crucifying thing.”130

  44

  A NEW ERA

  Growing old is not a gradual decline, but a series of jumps down from one ledge to another.

  —KENNETH CLARK

  The “second honeymoon” ended in early September with the Luces parting temporarily, as Harry returned to New York and Clare stayed in Europe for the rest of the month. Since the awful night on Spetsopoula, both had wearily concluded that they were irrevocably welded. They shared too much of a past, too many interests, and too harmonious a political philosophy to divorce now—not to mention their enjoyment of social eminence in beautiful surroundings.

  This did not prevent Harry from seeing Jeanne Campbell as soon as he got back. But the affair, never predominantly sexual, became even less so, metamorphosing gradually to walks in Central Park and long telephone conversations. By the end of the year, Jeanne would leave the United States for the Soviet Union on an extended assignment for Beaverbrook.1

  Clare meanwhile enjoyed herself in Paris, staying at the Ritz and spending large sums of Harry’s money at Balenciaga. She lunched with the Duke and Duchess of Windsor at their country house, and, in her role as enchantress, dined with Erich Maria Remarque. “I am crazy about you,” he wrote, even though his wife, Paulette Goddard, was in town. On a side trip to northern Italy, she reunited with her old Roman courtier Count Vittorio Cini, at the Gritti Palace in Venice. George Cukor, who had directed the movie version of The Women, encountered her in Milan with three generals in tow. She tried to coax a Bolognese pharmacist to sell her an illegal supply of LSD, and when he declined, pursued other sources. From time to time, she and Harry exchanged assurances of undying commitment.2

  Before leaving Paris, Clare splurged again, this time on a white satin gown from Lanvin.3 She meant to wear it at the Inaugural Ball of whoever won the American election. By the time she got back home at the end of the month, Nixon and Kennedy had just faced off in the first television debate between presidential candidates in history. Seventy-four million of the nation’s population of 179 million had watched, and most thought Kennedy had won, with his radiant vitality and youthful good looks. But radio listeners gave the victory to Nixon, because they could not see that he had refused makeup and looked pale, dark-jowled, and sweaty. This bore out Clare’s prophecy in a recent McCall’s column that with television sets in three-quarters of American homes, future candidates would have to groom and perform for the camera, rather than focus just on issues.4

  In early October, JFK’s Catholicism became a serious liability. Clare received a call from his agitated father, asking her “to do Jack a big favor.” He complained that everywhere his son held a rally, swarms of nuns were settling in the front seats, “clicking their rosaries and their dentures” in excitement. Joe thought Cardinal Spellman might be able to do something about it, but could not approach His Eminence himself. “The SOB hates me. I beat him out of some real estate,” he said, chuckling. “But you could tell him, tactfully, that if he wants a Catholic in the White House, he’d better keep those goddam nuns from hogging all the front rows. This isn’t an ordination—it’s an election!”5

  Nixon, too, was concerned about the religious question, and asked Clare for advice on how to “keep it out of the campaign as much as possible.” He had found that 25 percent of the voters in Akron, Ohio, were for him because they were anti-Catholic. It followed that others might be against him because he was a Quaker.6

  As a friend and co-religionist of the Kennedys, Clare was rumored to be a JFK supporter. She did favor him, feeling that although he had less experience than Nixon, he had “more capacity for growth in office and would probably win.”7 However, on October 4 she issued a statement saying that as a veteran of Republican politics, she intended to vote for the Vice President.

  Choosing a candidate was not so easy for Henry Luce. As Editor in Chief of a hugely influential news empire, his endorsement was coveted by both candidates. They vied with each other in professing strident anti-Communist views, knowing Harry’s obsession with the Cold War. He felt that Kennedy was more “imaginative” on foreign policy, and was tempted to back him for that reason. He also admired the young man’s social sophistication and literary bent, going so far as to write a new foreword to his book about appeasement in the 1930s, Why England Slept. But having given Nixon five favorable cover stories in four years, he found it hard to reject him now. So in midmonth, Life came out for the Republican, but so halfheartedly as not to spoil Kennedy’s chances in November.8

  Time’s coverage of the campaign led to an outraged telegram from Randolph Churchill, who was still smarting from Clare’s rejection of his marriage proposal. It was sent to Harry at seven addresses.

  HAVE BEEN READING TIME MAGAZINE CAREFULLY FOR THE LAST FEW WEEKS AND AM STAGGERED THAT A RICH MAN LIKE YOU SHOULD TRY TO BECOME RICHER BY PRINTING UNSAVORY STORIES ABOUT OTHER PEOPLES PRIVATE LIVES. HAS IT NEVER OCCURRED TO YOU THAT YOU YOURSELF ARE IN A MOST VULNERABLE POSITION AND THAT YOUR PRIVATE LIFE MIGHT MAKE ADMIRABLE MATERIAL FOR OTHER GOSSIP COLUMNISTS? IF I WERE YOU ROBINSON I WOULD HAVE A CARE OR YOU MIGHT LAND UP ON A MUCK HEAP.9

  On November 8, Kennedy and his running mate, Lyndon Baines Johnson, won the election by a margin of only .17 percent of the popular vote. If the Luce magazines had been less respectful of the Democratic ticket during the final weeks, Nixon might have been President-elect.

  After the election, Father Murray saw signs of melancholy reappear in Clare, and wrote Dr. Cohen for help. He attributed her morbidity to several causes: a loss of confidence (after being bested by Marya Mannes, she had developed a fear of public speaking), confusion as to her identity, paralysis of will, and at the root of these an inability to do creative work. “The suicidal impulse has not asserted itself,” Murray said, “though there has been the not unusual talk of it.”10

  LSD had seemed to improve Clare’s mood in the past, so with her consent he asked the doctor to travel to Phoenix, administer the drug, and return periodically until her mental health was restored. Since such visits would constitute medical treatment, Clare was prepared to pay. Cohen replied that he would certainly charge for his services.11 He flew to Phoenix on November 27, and after administering LSD stayed overnight.

  On December 6, Clare wrote him t
o say that she was feeling much more able to cope. “While the melancholy lurks, it is background, chiaroscuro, without which the highlights have no meaning. The best part of it all is that I feel almost ready to accept my own face, with all its sadness and imperfections.” She said that her experiences with Gerald as invigilator, while usually “marvelous,” were “not as corrective” as with him.12

  Cohen returned on the weekend of December 10, and in a letter enclosing his bill four days later wrote, “It would be just as proper for you to send me a statement for a delightful Sunday and a notable drive to the airport Monday morning.”13

  Clare neglected to have Harry send a check for several weeks.14 She was beginning to have romantic feelings for “Sid” and, as before with Carlos Chávez, found it hard to accept that professionals she was attracted to should want to be reimbursed for services. Nevertheless, she asked the doctor to supervise further LSD trips, and on one occasion teasingly suggested that he send her “25 g. by mail pronto” in exchange for a mosaic of a lion lying with a lamb.15

  After several months, Cohen mailed Clare a partial diagnosis of what ailed her. Most significant, to his mind, were her “self-punitive drives,” which led to depressive episodes. “I think you are seeing yourself through distorted lenses. They must be removed over time and a new perception of you refitted [so that] you may come to see yourself as lovable.”

  Before that state could be reached, he wrote, there was “much dredging to be done” that could not be accomplished solely by taking acid. He suggested she consider psychiatric therapy, not necessarily with him, since they were often a continent apart. “I would rather be your friend,” he wrote. “But if you wish, and if LSD would accelerate the therapeutic working-through, it might be possible for me to be your therapist.”16