20. CBL, “The Real Reason,” III.
21. Martin Gilbert, Churchill: A Life (New York, 1991), 865–67. The Washington Post, in a series entitled “The Century in the Post,” excerpts from “the first rough drafts of history,” Mar. 6, 1999.
22. John Billings diary, Mar. 14, 1946, JBP.
23. Morris, Rage for Fame, 238–39.
24. Warren, “Churchill’s Realism.” The following night, Under Secretary of State Dean Acheson abruptly dropped out of an event at the Waldorf-Astoria where Churchill spoke.
25. John Billings diary, Mar. 14, 1946, JBP.
26. Brooklyn Eagle, Mar. 17, 1946.
27. CBL to Harry Truman, June 29 and Mar. 25, 1946, CBLP; The New York Times, Oct. 19, 1982; Clarke, The Last Thousand Days, 461. Between May 1946 and September 1947, America took in 5,718 Jews, an average of about 350 a month. Coupled with the 350 that Great Britain was allowing into Palestine meant it would take 143 years to disperse the 100,000 stateless Jews.
28. Chicago Tribune, Aug. 1, 1946, and Jan. 5, 1947.
29. “Why Clare Boothe Luce Went Home,” scrapbook clipping, Jan. 5, 1947, CBLP.
30. Chicago Tribune, Aug. 1, 1946, and Jan. 5, 1947.
31. CBL to Harry Truman, June 29, 1946, CBLP. One sentence in her column read, “Senate nicknames for Harry (Pendergast Machine) Truman and Mrs. (Office Helper) Truman: ‘Kickback Harry’ and ‘Overtime Bess.’ ” Robert Hannegan to CBL, Apr. 30, 1946, CBLP. The only East Room invitation CBL received that spring was to witness the President being presented with the first sheet of a new three-cent commemorative stamp.
32. Philadelphia News, Apr. 18, 1946.
33. “Are Communism and Democracy Mutually Antagonistic?” Radio debate transcript published by the Catholic Information Society, New York, May 21, 1946, CBLP.
34. DFB to CBL, Aug. 25, 1945, CBLP.
35. Ibid., Nov. 7, 1945, CBLP.
36. Ibid., Jan. 18, 1946, CBLP. DFB had just heard from CBL for the first time since Aug. 1945.
37. Charles Willoughby to CBL, Apr. 2, 1946, CBLP.
38. CBL to HRL, July 7, 1946, CBLP.
39. HRL to CBL, July 11, 1946, CBLP.
40. CBL interview, July 24, 1982. SJM: “He wanted you in the Congress to begin with.” CBL: “Yes, but he didn’t like it in the end. He tired of my not making it home at weekends.”
41. CBL to HRL, July 11, 1946, CBLP.
42. The New York Times, July 18, 1946.
43. Palmer, “The New Clare Luce.”
44. Unidentified scrapbook clipping, Mar. 27, 1946, CBLP.
45. Sterling Seagrave, The Soong Dynasty (New York, 1985), 431. In The Washington Post Magazine, Jan. 24, 1988, Walter Judd, a leader of the so-called China Lobby in the 1940s, said there was no such organization, merely a group of about fifty people “trying to save China in order to benefit the United States.”
46. CBL’s original bill, or the law it subsequently became, may have inspired a scene in William Wyler’s 1946 movie, The Best Years of Our Lives.
47. CBL, “On My Record in Congress—Bills Introduced.”
48. Stephen Shadegg, “It Was Never Nothing,” unpublished autobiographical fragment, 326, CBLP.
19. IN LIMBO
1. John Billings diary, Aug. 15, 1946, JBP.
2. CBL to HRL, Aug. 15, 1952, CBLP.
3. Chamberlain CBL Profile, JBP.
4. CBL to SJM on several occasions.
5. Greenwich Time, Aug. 16, 1946. On Sept. 9, the Bridgeport Post reported that CBL had also been asked by the GOP to run for Governor of Connecticut. Her objections to being away from home in D.C. would not pertain, they said. CBL was reportedly “overwhelmed,” but did not in the end agree to run.
6. Alice Longworth quoted in the Bridgeport Post, Sep. 22, 1946.
7. John Billings diary, Feb. 18, 1947, JBP.
8. Ibid., Sept. 3, 1946, JBP.
9. Ibid., Sept. 15 and 16, 1946, JBP.
10. DFB to CBL, “Duties of Captain Boothe,” June 21, 1946, CBLP. According to Charles Willoughby to CBL, June 6, 1946, DFB seemed “happy and interested” in his job. CBLP.
11. Willoughby to CBL, Aug. 4, Sept. 6, ca. Oct. 8, and Nov. 4, 1946, CBLP.
12. DFB to CBL, Mar. 29, 1946, CBLP.
13. Ibid.; Mrs. John Hill interview, Mar. 10, 1988.
14. Mary Lois Purdy Vega interview, Aug. 12, 1988. CBL told Wilfrid Sheed that DFB had beaten up a Japanese in the street. Wilfrid Sheed, Clare Boothe Luce (New York, 1982), 49.
15. DFB to CBL, Dec. 29 and 30, 1946, CBLP.
16. Ibid., Dec. 31, 1945; CBL to DFB, Jan. 1, 1946, CBLP. DFB recalled his sister telling him to “sweat it out” in the army because he had no capabilities for business, and she could not back him “because I have no rich men that love me any more and besides when you got through with me there was nothing left.” The last was a reference to DFB’s sponging on her and HRL, as well as his mismanagement of her Brokaw alimony and other stocks. DFB to George Waldo, n.d., October 1947, CBLP.
17. Alexander Heymeyer of Cravath, Swaine & Moore to CBL, Mar. 4, 1946, and to Isabel Hill, May 23, 1946, CBLP.
18. The Washington group arrived in Tokyo on Aug. 24, 1946, minus CBL.
19. DFB to CBL, Aug. 26, 1946, CBLP. Willoughby’s dalliance came to nothing. His only fantasies of a romantic nature remained those connected with CBL at Hobe Sound, of “curious flecks of gold, like a halo, around a beautiful head, with the classical purity of a marble profile.”
20. Shadegg, Clare Boothe Luce, 214.
21. CBL to William Peterson of Guam Dredging Contractors, Nov. 30, 1946, CBLP.
22. DFB to George Waldo, Oct. 7, 1947, CBLP.
23. DFB to CBL, Nov. 11, 1946, CBLP.
24. Ibid.
25. Ibid., Dec. 29 and 30, 1946. CBL cabled DFB on Dec. 23, 1946, “It was a great joy to see you lots of love Sister.”
26. Ibid., Jan. 15, 1945, CBLP.
27. Ibid., Dec. 29 and 30, 1946, CBLP. “Hate is so wicked, for it not only destroys your objective, but you yourself in the process.”
28. CBL quoted in DFB to CBL, Jan. 5, 1947, and in DFB to George Waldo, ca. Oct. 1947, CBLP.
29. DFB to CBL, Jan. 5, 1947, CBLP.
30. Ibid.
31. Ibid., Jan. 20, 1947, CBLP. DFB’s separation was effective June 1, 1947.
32. DFB to George Waldo, Oct. 15, 1947, CBLP. David sent a copy of this letter to CBL.
33. CBL quoted in DFB to CBL, Jan. 20, 1947; DFB to George Waldo, Oct. n.d., 1947, CBLP.
34. DFB to CBL, Jan. 20, 1947, CBLP.
35. Ibid.
36. See Hicks Stone, Edward Durell Stone: A Son’s Untold Story of a Legendary Architect (New York, 2011).
37. CBL to John Billings, Mar. 3, 1947, CBLP. For the names of visitors to the plantation, see Mepkin guest book, CBLP.
38. CBL to Margaret Case, Feb. 27, 1947, CBLP.
39. DFB to CBL, Dec. 15, 1945, CBLP.
40. John Billings diary, Feb. 14, 18, and 20, 1947, JBP.
41. CBL interview, June 13, 1982.
42. Ibid., Dec. 12, 1981. Harry reappeared at the office with “all the spark and sparkle” gone out of him. John Billings diary, Feb. 20, 1947, JBP.
43. CBL to HRL, Mar. 20 and Apr. 8, 1947, responding to his issues, CBLP.
44. Ibid., Apr. 8, 1947, CBLP. CBL interview, Jan. 10, 1982.
45. CBL to HRL, Mar. 20, 1947, CBLP.
46. DFB to George Waldo, Oct. 15, 1947, CBLP. A copy of this letter went to CBL.
47. DFB to CBL, Jan. 5, 1947, CBLP. DFB conceded that he believed in God, and CBL told Sheen she saw that as progress. CBL to Fulton J. Sheen, Apr. 24, 1947, CBLP.
48. DFB to CBL, Jan. 20, 1947, CBLP.
49. Palmer, “The New Clare Luce.”
50. Lawrenson, Stranger, 104.
51. Blanche Knopf to CBL, Apr. 23, 1947, CBLP.
52. The book version had been offered to Heinemann as well, annoying the London publisher Hamish Hamilton. He complained of CBL’s defection, and she blamed
her agent, George Bye. CBL to Hamish Hamilton, Apr. 2, 1947, CBLP.
53. The offer from Sheed to publish “The Real Reason” in book form came in 1953. CBL declined, feeling that republicizing her Catholicism would have a negative efffect on her image as Ambassador in the United States. Dorothy Farmer to Frank Sheed, Nov. 30, 1953.
54. Maisie Ward transcript, May 1953, CBLP. The editor of McCall’s said he decided against having Clare respond to readers’ letters in a Q&A column, because it might dissipate the effect of her work, “by making your Faith a matter of temporal controversy,” and because “The Real Reason” had established her “as one of the leading lay spokesmen” of her church. Otis L. Wiese to CBL, May 6, 1947, CBLP.
55. CBL telegram to DFB, Apr. 24, 1947, CBLP.
56. Mrs. John Hill interview, Mar. 10, 1988. Mrs. Hill heard about DFB’s stealing from her mother-in-law and CBL’s secretary, Isabel Hill. The Hills met DFB at Mepkin, where they were on honeymoon from Apr. 19 to May 1, 1947.
20. A TERRIBLE MAELSTROM OF TROUBLE
1. Vogue featured Sugar Hill interiors in its March 1949 issue. The Luces left almost everything in the Greenwich house [NB: It was called “The House”] for its buyers. CBL had wanted to retrieve innumerable items before the sale, but Harry felt they would get a better price with a “completely furnished effect.” He advised removing only irreplaceable antiques and items of sentiment.
2. DFB to CBL, May 7 and 8, 1947, CBLP. CBL hoped in vain that Sheen would be in Mobile at the same time as DFB and could complete his conversion. CBL to Fulton J. Sheen, Apr. 24, 1947, CBLP.
3. CBL, “A memo to Harry about Diminishments,” ca. Aug. 1960, CBLP.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.; John Billings diary, June 17, 1947, JBP.
6. Ibid., June 18, 1947.
7. C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (London, 1942), 50, 48.
8. Ibid., 126–30.
9. Ibid., 94.
10. John Billings diary, July 14, 1947, JBP.
11. CBL, “To HRL’s psychiatrist,” Mar. 10, 1960, CBLP.
12. Ibid. Another reason HRL gave for his impotence was that he put CBL “on a pedestal.” Morris, Rage for Fame, 308, 284–85, 357–60.
13. CBL to HRL, July 26, 1947, CBLP.
14. CBL, “To HRL’s psychiatrist,” Mar. 10, 1960, CBLP. HRL had potency problems even around the sexiest of women. Mary Bancroft quoted him as reporting that Pamela Churchill (later Harriman) once flagrantly tried to seduce him, but was “too businesslike” in ripping off her clothes, expecting his “automatic enthusiasm.” When he failed to respond, she mocked him and broadcast the encounter to her friends. Bancroft to W. A. Swanberg, Apr. 19, 1971, MBP. For more on HRL’s sexuality see Morris, Rage for Fame, 357–60.
15. CBL, “A memo to Harry about Diminishments,” ca. Aug. 1960, CBLP.
16. CBL to HRL, July 26, 1947, CBLP; CBL interview, June 10, 1982.
17. CBL to HRL, Mar. 1, 1940, CBLP.
18. Ibid., July 26, 1947, CBLP. This last claim echoed one HRL had made some four years after their marriage. He said that from the start, “I loved you better than I loved myself … gladly would I have died for you—you know that—and if you had died I would have wished not to live.” HRL to CBL, Mar. 18, 1940, CBLP.
19. John Billings diary, Aug. 4, 1947, JBP; Billings to Al Grover, Aug. 5, 1947, JBP.
20. John Billings diary, Aug. 5 and 6, 1947, JBP.
21. CBL memo to herself, imagining the affair from HRL’s viewpoint, Sept. 8–10, 1959, CBLP; CBL interview, June 10, 1982.
22. CBL memo, Aug. 10, 1949, CBLP.
23. CBL, “To HRL’s psychiatrist,” Mar. 10, 1960, CBLP.
24. CBL quoted in DFB to George Waldo, Oct. 7, 1947, CBLP.
25. John Billings diary, Aug. 11, 1947, JBP.
26. Ibid.
27. Ibid.
28. CBL to HRL, n.d., Aug. 1947, CBLP.
29. CBL interviewed by Sally Quinn, Chicago Sun Times, Sunday, June 3, 1973.
30. DFB to CBL, “Friday,” most likely Aug. 15, 1947, CBLP.
31. DFB to George Waldo, n.d., “Tuesday a.m.,” Oct. 1947, CBLP. CBL sold the Boston house in May 1948.
32. John Billings diary, Aug. 19, 1947, JBP.
33. Ibid., Aug. 27, 1947, JBP.
34. Elizabeth Root Luce to HRL, July–Aug. 1948, SJMP.
35. Ibid.
36. John Billings diary, Aug. 25, 1947, JBP.
37. Jean Dalrymple interview, Feb. 5, 1988. Also see Alan Brinkley, The Publisher: Henry Luce and His American Century (New York, 2010), 321.
38. John Billings diary, Aug. 27, 1947, JBP.
39. Ibid.; Jean Dalrymple interview, Feb. 6, 1988. “Harry really loved me for twenty-four years. Our romance was not consummated. Never, actually, physically.”
40. John Billings diary, Aug. 27, 1947, JBP.
41. CBL to HRL, n.d., CBLP.
42. HRL to CBL, “Monday,” almost certainly Aug. 25, 1947, CBLP.
43. John Billings diary, Sept. 2, 1947, JBP. Mary Bancroft wrote HRL that Jackson liked to gossip about his boss outside the office, too. “I have not gathered that he hates the G.A. [“Guardian Angel,” her nickname for CBL] as relentlessly as some—but apparently he regales people with the devastating effect on you. Probably all it means is that he’d like to be your G.A. himself and guide you along the paths he thinks you should follow.” Mary Bancroft to HRL, Mar. 21, 1952, MBP.
44. John Billings diary, Sept. 2, 1947, JBP.
45. Ibid.
46. John Billings diary, Sept. 3, 1947, JBP; Al Grover to John Billings, Oct. 24, 1947, JBP.
47. John Billings diary, Sept. 17 and 18, 1947, JBP.
48. Ibid., Sept. 25, 1947, JBP.
49. DFB memo to CBL, July 30, 1947, CBLP; DFB quoting CBL to George Waldo, Oct. 7, 1947, CBLP.
50. DFB memo to CBL, July 30, 1947, CBLP.
51. DFB to George Waldo, Oct. 7, 1947, CBLP.
52. Ibid.
53. Ibid.
54. Ibid.
21. HOLLYWOOD
1. Payne and Morley, The Noël Coward Diaries, 93.
2. John Billings diary, Nov. 27, 1947, JBP. Janeway’s dismissal was effective Jan. 1, 1948.
3. Robert E. Herzstein, “Five Years with Henry Luce: Second Thoughts,” Historian, newsletter of the Department of History, University of South Carolina (Summer 1996).
4. C. S. Lewis to CBL, Oct. 26, 1947, CBLP.
5. CBL interview, June 20, 1982.
6. The Isenbrandt cost $20,000 and was meant to celebrate the Luces’ decision to stay together, as well as Christmas.
7. List of Luce artworks, CBLP.
8. John Billings diary, Jan. 3, 1948, JBP.
9. Walter Graebner to John Billings, ca. Dec. 1947, JBP. HRL paid $750,000 for serial rights to Churchill’s memoirs, sharing the privilege with The New York Times, which paid $400,000. The former Prime Minister thus earned an unprecedented rights total of $1.15 million. HRL had earlier paid Churchill $20,000 to reproduce his paintings in Life, and $50,000 to reprint some of his speeches. See Brinkley, The Publisher, 330–32.
10. CBL to Alice Austin, Dec. 26, 1947, CBLP. CBL admitted to her stepfather’s wife that she had little to show for three weeks at the studio.
11. Ralph Ingersoll, The Great Ones (New York, 1948), 209–10.
12. CBL interview, June 10, 1982.
13. According to Philip Simpson, Julian’s Australian cousin, Julian married Janet Knox, a member of New South Wales’s first families. Philip Simpson, interviewed by Michael Teague, May 1990.
14. Julian Simpson to CBL, Feb. 2, 1948, CBLP.
15. In his later years, Julian Simpson was acknowledged to be homosexual. Philip Simpson, interviewed by Michael Teague, May 1990.
16. Booklet of CBL poems, CBLP.
17. CBL to Donald Ogden Stewart, Jan. 30, 1948, CBLP.
18. CBL to C. S. Lewis, Apr. 24, 1948, CBLP.
19. Ibid.
20. CBL to Donald Ogden Stewart, Jan. 30, 1948, CBLP.
21. Unid
entified Connecticut scrapbook clipping, Oct. 5, 1946, CBLP. In her Waterbury speech, CBL recalled her own first sight of Monte Cassino during World War II, and drew parallels between the Christianity of St. Benedict’s time, under siege in a “brutal, barbaric and pagan world,” and contemporary Western democracy, similarly besieged by godless Communists. Ibid.
22. Darryl Zanuck to CBL, Jan. 30, 1948, CBLP. CBL’s contract with Fox gave Gretta Palmer credit for research. She was paid $25,000 by Fox and gave most of it to the Reverend Mother Benedict at Regina Laudis, Bethlehem, Conn. Palmer to Kay Brown, Aug. 26, 1948, CBLP.
23. Meta Blackwell, in the San Bernardino Sunday Telegraph, Feb. 15, 1948; CBL to Darryl Zanuck, Mar. 2, 1948, CBLP.
24. Morton S. Biskind, MD, “DDT Poisoning and the Elusive ‘Virus X’: A New Cause for Gastroenteritis,” American Journal of Digestive Diseases 16, no. 3 (1949).
25. John Billings diary, Feb. 25, 1948, JBP.
22. CROONERS OF CATASTROPHE
1. HRL to CBL and CBL to HRL, ca. Feb. 1948, notes exchanged on whether or not to part with Mepkin, CBLP. Before the war, CBL said it took forty gardeners at $1.00 each a day to keep up gardens and stables. After it, workers could make $5.00 a day in Charleston and no longer needed to work upriver, so improvements to the plantation ceased. CBL interview, June 14, 1982.
2. Sidney Lanier, Hymns of the Marshes (New York, 1907).
3. See Stone, Edward Durell Stone.
4. CBL to Sister Madeleva, Jan. 3, 1951, SJMP.
5. Morris, Rage for Fame, 285 and 296–302.
6. Irene Selznick interview, Feb. 4, 1988.
7. Elisabeth Luce Moore to HRL, Apr. 6, 1948, CBLP.
8. Washington Times-Herald, Jan. 10, 1950. The gossip columnist Hedda Hopper put out a rumor that Senator Vandenberg could not be nominated by the GOP because of an affair with CBL.
9. Mrs. John Hill interview, Mar. 1988.
10. CBL to Shirley Clurman, Mar. 18, 1973, CBLP.
11. Transcript in Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, June 22, 1948.
12. See http://www.ushistory.org/gop/convention_1948.htm.
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