Price of Fame
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13. Reuven Frank, “National Conventions,” The New York Times Magazine, Apr. 17, 1988. Life publisher Andrew Heiskell arranged the deal for Time Inc. HRL never showed much interest in television.
14. Constance O’Hara to Brock Pemberton, Nov. 18, 1948, CBLP; O’Hara, Heaven Was Not Enough, 291–97. Most of the letters denigrating CBL’s convention remarks were anonymous.
15. H. L. Mencken, “Decibels Hit Ceiling in Keynote-Night Din,” Baltimore Sun, June 22, 1948. The author is indebted to Marion Elizabeth Rodgers, author of Mencken: The American Iconoclast (New York, 2005), for this item. Also see Joseph C. Goulden, ed., Mencken’s Last Campaign: H. L. Mencken on the 1948 Election (Washington, D.C., 1976).
16. CBL in McCall’s, June 1964, quoted a World Telegram newsman as reporting that “the blonde beauty from Connecticut looked like she’d been scalped.”
17. CBL GOP convention speech, June 21, 1948, CBLP.
18. CBL in McCall’s, June 1964. “Even though my speech … went on to praise Foster Dulles and Thomas Dewey, [GOP leaders] did not quite forgive me.”
19. GOP convention speech, June 21, 1948, CBLP; CBL quoted in Newsweek, Jan. 24, 1955.
20. Unsigned letters, ca. June 1948, CBLP.
21. William F. Buckley, Jr., interview, Sept. 8, 1983; Beaverbrook to CBL, June, 27, 1948, CBLP.
22. John Billings diary, June 25, 1948, JBP.
23. The New York Times, July 2, 1948. Three days after announcing her plans, CBL attracted a record crowd in Fairfield.
24. Newsweek, July 12, 1948. Clare had long admired Mrs. Roosevelt, and had nothing but praise when on May 21, 1950, she spoke at a banquet honoring the former First Lady’s work as chairman of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. Stealing a line from the great Irish humorist Finley Peter Dunne, Clare said, “No woman has ever so comforted the distressed—or distressed the comfortable.” A few narrow-minded Republicans frowned on this encomium, but Eleanor wrote to thank her. “You were more than kind in what you said at the Gold Medal Award, and I am deeply appreciative of your generous words and the fact that you attended the dinner.” Eleanor Roosevelt to CBL, May 25, 1950, CBLP. Also see CBL quoted in David Remnick, “Memories of Eleanor,” The Washington Post, Oct. 15, 1984.
25. Laura Z. Hobson, Laura Z: A Life: Years of Fulfillment (New York, 1986), 105–06.
26. HRL, probably at CBL’s behest, made sure that Time “did not give too big a play to Helen G. Douglas” at the Democratic gathering. Its reports did not even mention the Congresswoman’s name. John Billings diary, July 19, 1948, JBP.
27. Elizabeth Root Luce to HRL, “July–August, 1948,” CBLP. Mrs. Luce died on November 7, 1948.
28. CBL thought HRL’s “basically secretive nature” had caused much of the misunderstanding in the family. She learned late of Elizabeth Root Luce’s liver cancer, and discovered Patricia Luce’s pregnancy only by noticing her increasing size, although HRL had known about their coming grandchild for months. He was silent even about his own ailments. If Harry said he was “a little ill,” she remarked, “it was time to send for an ambulance.” CBL to Shirley Clurman, Oct. 5, 1972, CBLP.
29. Michael Mott, The Seven Mountains of Thomas Merton (Boston, 1984), 74–84, 120, 210–11.
30. Robert Giroux to CBL, July 30, 1948, CBLP; Mott, Seven Mountains, 243. By 1984, Merton’s book had sold more than a million copies around the world.
31. Time, Dec. 31, 1984.
32. CBL to Thomas Merton, Aug. 12, 1948, CBLP.
33. CBL to Sister Madeleva, Sept. 11, 1948, CBLP.
34. CBL to Father Wilfrid J. Thibodeau, Mar. 13, 1949.
35. DFB to CBL, Aug. 31, 1948, CBLP.
36. Oakland Tribune, Sept. 8, 1948. Mary Lois Purdy Vega interview, Aug. 12, 1988. CBL told Ms. Vega, a former Time Inc. employee, that in a late-night phone call, DFB suggested she pray for him, “because I am going to kill myself.” She appealed to a friend in California to find a good psychiatrist for him, saying that he wanted to commit suicide “so that he would not one day kill another.”
23. OUTSIDE THE PALE
1. DFB to George Waldo, Oct. 7, 1947, CBLP.
2. Ibid.
3. George Waldo to DFB, Oct. 13, 1947, CBLP.
4. DFB to Waldo, Oct. 15, 1947, CBLP.
5. DFB to CBL, n.d., CBLP.
6. George Waldo to CBL, Jan. 28, 1948, CBLP.
7. Ibid., Nov. 23, 1947, CBLP.
8. Unidentified scrapbook clipping, Sept. 8, 1948, CBLP; The New York Times, Sept. 7, New York World Telegram, Sept. 8, and New York Herald Tribune, Sept. 9, 1948.
9. New York Herald Tribune, Sept. 9, 1948.
24. THE TWILIGHT OF GOD
1. CBL to Wilfrid J. Thibodeau, Feast of Saint Francis, Mar. 1949, SJMP; CBL interview, Dec. 12, 1981. CBL also said that DFB was a misanthrope, and could “never believe that the good and beautiful would triumph.” CBL to Brigadier General S. M. Mellnik, n.d. 1969, CBLP. CBL admitted to SJM that there were many dark spots in her own life that she preferred not to go into. “Like you are afraid to go into a closet where you’ve heard a strange noise.” CBL interview, June 13, 1982.
2. CBL to Thibodeau, Feast of Saint Francis, Mar. 1949, SJMP.
3. CBL recorded this frequent nightmare on June 7, 1949, CBLP. Unpersuaded by George Waldo that DFB might have crashed accidentally, she routinely referred to her brother’s demise as “his suicide.” George Waldo to CBL, Sept. 8, 1948; CBL, “To HRL’s psychiatrist,” Mar. 10, 1960, CBLP.
4. Dorothy Farmer to Allen Grover, Sept. 21, 1948, CBLP.
5. Article quoting Regina Foote in San Antonio Light, Sept. 12, 1948.
6. Dorothy Farmer to Allen Grover, Sept. 18, 1948, CBLP. DFB had sent CBL his Sept. premium notice for $20.90 after their last conversation. She paid it on Sept. 11, 1948, six days after his death, in an attempt to collect his death benefits.
7. Walter T. Stace, “Man Against Darkness,” Atlantic Monthly, Sept. 1948.
8. Barnett’s article appeared in the Ladies’ Home Journal, Nov. 1948, McDonald’s in the American Ecclesiastical Review, May 1948.
9. Clare Boothe Luce, The Twilight of God (Chicago, 1949).
10. Ibid., 34.
11. Ibid., 38.
25. COME TO THE STABLE
1. CBL interview, Apr. 16, 1982.
2. “The Great Upset of ’49,” PBS broadcast, Nov. 2, 1988; Fleur Cowles to CBL, Sept. 22, 1948, CBLP.
3. CBL interview, Apr. 16, 1982; CBL to Jane Abel, Dec. 30, 1948, CBLP. The biggest loser in the 1948 election was the Progressive candidate, Henry Wallace. But he did get a record number of 1,150,000 Communist Party votes. By the early 1980s, the United States would be “the only democratic industrialized nation in which not a single independent Socialist or Labor Party representative held elective office.” Paul Johnson, Modern Times (New York, 1983), 213.
4. With Randolph Churchill’s help. Churchill to CBL, Aug. 8, 1948, CBLP.
5. Mark Amory, ed., The Letters of Evelyn Waugh (New York, 1980), 287–89.
6. CBL interview, Jan. 8, 1982.
7. Unidentified scrapbook clipping, CBLP.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.
10. O’Hara, Heaven Was Not Enough, 296–97.
11. CBL to Wilfrid J. Thibodeau, Apr. 25, 1949, SJMP. In 1953, CBL was distressed to see in Merton’s published journal impatient references to her. “I realized I had intruded on his contemplative life, which I ought never to have done.” CBL to Father James of Mepkin Abbey, Jan. 25, 1953, CBLP.
12. Beaverbrook to Brendan Bracken, Jan. 17, 1949. It was the host’s nurse who noticed HRL’s familiarity with the Mass. The author is grateful to Sally Bedell Smith for this letter from the Beaverbrook archive in London.
13. CBL to Raimund von Hofmannsthal and Blanche Wise, Feb. 11, 1949, CBLP; CBL to George Bye, Feb. 2, 1949, CBLP.
14. CBL interview, June 20, 1982.
15. CBL to Darryl Zanuck, Mar. 2, 1948, CBLP. Her letter expressed disappointment at not being asked to do rewrites of Be
thlehem.
16. Dorothy Farmer to CBL, n.d., Jan. 1949, CBLP.
17. Script of “Saint Anthony and the Gambler,” CBLP; Samuel G. Engel to Kay Brown, Jan. 28, 1949, CBLP. CBL subsequently sent copies of “Saint Anthony” to Irene Dunne, Joseph P. Kennedy, Sam Goldwyn, Hedda Hopper, and Bob Hope. Only the last showed serious interest, saying he had forwarded the script to Paramount and asked if it could be rewritten to fit him. Nothing came of Hope’s overture. Bob Hope to CBL’s office, Dec. 19, 1949, CBLP; CBL cable to Bob Hope, Dec. 27, 1949, CBLP. As late as May 1, 1950, Hedda Hopper was suggesting in her column that Mary Martin and Bing Crosby should do CBL’s “wonderful comedy” for Paramount. CBL was still writing revised versions as late as 1961. CBLP.
18. O’Hara, Heaven Was Not Enough, 321. CBL introduced O’Hara to Thibodeau that spring.
19. CBL to Thibodeau, Feb. 16, 1949, SJMP.
20. Ibid., Feb. 27, 1949, SJMP.
21. Ibid., Feb. 20, 1949, SJMP.
22. Ibid., Mar. 13, 1949, SJMP.
23. Ibid., Feb. 27, 1949, SJMP.
24. Curtis P. Freshel to CBL, Mar. 16 and Apr. 18, 1949, CBLP. Freshel said that he converted to Roman Catholicism because of his admiration for CBL. According to CBL, Freshel was a friend of George Bernard Shaw and an illegitimate son of Edward VII. She said that after his wife died in 1948, he gave her a diamond ring that the king had given to his mother. CBL interview, May 1, 1985.
25. O’Hara, Heaven Was Not Enough, 241. Locusts was part of Britain’s 1938 Silver Jubilee Festival. It also played in Manchester. O’Hara anticipated a stellar career, but the onset of war foiled a revival of her play in London. A second script, Honorable Estate, based on the relationship of the English novelist George Eliot and her lover, George Lewes, was praised by the great actress Laurette Taylor, and a third, tinkered with by Brock Pemberton and Antoinette Perry, also failed to reach the stage. In despair by the fall of 1940, O’Hara attempted suicide. She recovered and persevered. But in 1946, The Magnificent Heel, produced by Pemberton, had opened and closed out of town.
26. O’Hara, Heaven Was Not Enough, 299
27. O’Hara to Dorothy Farmer, n.d. 1949, CBLP.
28. CBL to Dr. Karl Stern, Nov. 12, 1952, CBLP. Dr. Stern, a Catholic psychiatrist living in Montreal, Canada, contributed to CBL’s book Saints for Now. She wrote him that she was concerned about the autobiography O’Hara was writing, and wanted to record her version of their friendship.
29. O’Hara, Heaven Was Not Enough, 300–03. At her mother’s suggestion, O’Hara sent CBL a copy of Years of the Locusts. Georges Bernanos, author of La Joie, was a conservative French Catholic author who also wrote Diary of a Country Priest and the libretto for Poulenc’s Dialogues of the Carmelites. He was anti-Vichy and spoke out against government intrusion into private life.
30. Ibid., 303. Brock Pemberton to CBL, Apr. 4, 1949, wrote, “Constance O’Hara tells me she is about to do some work for you. I hope she settles down enough to do it. I never saw anyone so excited.” The producer seemed to hint at O’Hara’s volatility. CBLP.
31. On June 7, 1949, CBL recorded various nightmares in which she was balding and losing teeth. CBLP.
32. O’Hara, Heaven Was Not Enough, 311.
33. Ibid., 310.
34. Ibid., 314–16.
35. Ibid., 316–22.
36. Ibid., 322–24.
37. CBL to Thibodeau, Apr. 17, 1949, CBLP.
38. CBL to Pope Pius XII, Easter day, Apr. 17, 1949, CBLP.
39. CBL to Thibodeau, Apr. 17, 1949, SJMP.
40. O’Hara, Heaven Was Not Enough, 330–31.
41. Elsa Maxwell, “Week-end Roundup,” New York Post, May 1, 1949. In the week of May 1–7, the Posture Selection Committee of the International Chiropractors Association nominated CBL as “an outstanding example of good posture in the career woman classifiction.” Norwalk Hour (Conn.), May 2, 1949.
42. Moss Hart to CBL, n.d. 1949, CBLP; Morris, Rage for Fame, 295.
43. Walla Walla Union Bulletin, Oct. 2, 1949, and Reno Evening Gazette, Oct. 20, 1949.
44. Connecticut’s other senator, William Benton (D), in contrast, was sure only of the remaining two years of his appointive term. In 1952, he would be able to run for a full term in his own right. An Apr. 13, 1949, Bridgeport Post editorial described CBL as “one of the most gifted and far-sighted women ever to grace American public life.”
45. CBL to Thibodeau, May 4, 1949, SJMP.
46. CBL to Beaverbrook, June 7, 1949, BP.
47. CBL, “The Mystery of Our China Policy,” Plain Talk, July 1949.
48. The role of Sister Margaret was Loretta Young’s ninetieth part. She had already won an Oscar for The Farmer’s Daughter. Hugh Marlowe appeared in Twelve O’Clock High and costarred with Gene Tierney in Night and the City.
49. CBL to Darryl Zanuck, May 21, 1949, CBLP.
50. O’Hara, Heaven Was Not Enough, 334.
51. CBL to HRL, May 17, 1949, CBLP.
52. After the screening, Spellman said that he “enjoyed it immensely.” Oren Root to CBL, May 20, 1949, CBLP.
53. CBL cable to Darryl Zanuck, May 21, 1949, CBLP.
54. Darryl Zanuck to CBL, June 1, 1949, CBLP.
55. Darryl Zanuck cable to CBL, quoting Daily Variety and Hollywood Reporter comments, June 22, 1949, CBLP.
56. Variety, June 22, 1949. Life helped to promote the movie by running a spread on Regina Laudis, the Connecticut nunnery on which CBL based her story. HRL told John Billings that CBL should be given full credit in the magazine for her input, because Hollywood would do the reverse. Memo, Apr. 8, 1949, CBLP; CBL to Beaverbrook, June 7, 1949, BP.
57. CBL to Thibodeau, June 6, 1949, SJMP.
58. CBL dream memo, June 13, 1949, CBLP.
59. CBL to Evelyn Waugh, June 9, 1949, CBLP.
60. O’Hara, Heaven Was Not Enough, 339.
61. The audiovisual Catechism was screened in Philadelphia later that year, with CBL cited as “Editorial Supervisor.” The church hierarchy rejected it. O’Hara, Heaven Was Not Enough, 356–60.
62. Ibid., 355.
63. Ibid.
64. O’Hara, Heaven Was Not Enough, 366. O’Hara told Brock Pemberton that the “tragic termination” of her four-month intimacy with CBL had been due to “misunderstanding, my own temper, priestly indifference, lies and jealousy.” O’Hara to Pemberton, n.d., CBLP.
65. O’Hara to CBL, ca. late 1949 or early 1950, CBLP. It is clear from O’Hara’s other correspondence that by “church” she meant Monsignor Sheen. See O’Hara to Gretta Palmer, ca. Oct. 1949, CBLP; Palmer to O’Hara, Oct. 31, 1949, CBLP.
66. O’Hara to Palmer, n.d. 1949, CBLP. O’Hara also wrote to CBL, “Clare, it was obvious that I was very, very fond of you.… You never bored me dear.” Undated letter, 1950, CBLP. O’Hara’s autobiography, Heaven Was Not Enough, was published in 1955, to generally favorable reviews.
67. CBL to Thibodeau, Feb. 20, 1949, SJMP.
68. O’Hara had once told CBL that as a girl, she had described herself as the black sheep of her school. But CBL might also have been signaling that she considered the troubled Catholic a lost lamb who needed shepherding back into the Church. O’Hara, Heaven Was Not Enough, 363–64.
69. CBL to Dr. Karl Stern, Nov. 12, 1952, CBLP.
70. Sheed, Clare Boothe Luce, 5.
71. Morris, Rage for Fame, 26; Sheed, Clare Boothe Luce, 13.
72. The soubriquet “Little Flower” further distinguished her from the better-known Saint Teresa of Ávila.
73. Sheed, Clare Boothe Luce, 8.
74. CBL to Thibodeau, Aug. 11, 1949, SJMP.
75. Sheed, Clare Boothe Luce, 8–9.
76. Ibid., 17.
77. CBL to Thibodeau, Aug. 4, 1949, SJMP.
78. Sheed, Clare Boothe Luce, 7.
79. Ibid., 8.
80. CBL to Bernard Denenberg, May 20, 1969, CBLP. She bought the Chagall at an auction of Frank Crowninshield’s artworks in 1943, and it would hang over her bed, wherever she had a house, for the
next twenty-five years.
81. Sheed, Clare Boothe Luce, 8.
82. Ibid.; 21–22.
83. CBL to Thibodeau, Aug. 11, 1949, SJMP.
84. Sheed, Clare Boothe Luce, 35.
85. Ibid., 12.
86. Ibid., 8–10.
87. Ibid., 11.
88. The New York Times, July 28, 1949. When Time’s critic gave the film short shift, calling it “a fluffy souffle” and its comedy “cute,” HRL had the piece rewritten to be less negative.
89. CBL to Barbara Jenks, a Catholic admirer, May 17, 1949, CBLP.
90. Come to the Stable failed to win any Oscars.
26. PILGRIMAGES
1. Sheed, Clare Boothe Luce, 21. CBL told Sheed that “being a dramatist was the one thing she had not done just to prove she could do it.” Paul Johnson, Intellectuals (New York, 1988), 313.
2. Hartford Courant, July 27, 1949; New York Journal-American, July 28, 1949.
3. Hartford Times, Sept. 24, 1949.
4. New York Herald Tribune, Sept. 22, 1949.
5. Bridgeport Post, Sept. 27 and June 5, 1949, quoting Thomas R. Harnett of the Mercantile Bank, Dallas.
6. CBL’s speech slated for the Bridgeport Chamber of Commerce was entitled “Our American Way of Life and How We Can Best Defend Our System of Free Enterprise.”
7. Bridgeport Telegram, Sept. 27, 1949, and Williamsport Gazette and Bulletin (Pa.), Sept. 29, 1949.
8. Robert J. Donovan, Tumultuous Years: The Presidency of Harry S. Truman, 1949–1953 (New York, 1983), 101–03.
9. CBL, “Christianity and the Negro,” The New Leader, Oct. 1, 1949; Miami Daily News Record, Oct. 10, 1949.
10. Naugatuck News (Conn.), Oct. 13, 1949.
11. Charleston Gazette (W. Va.), Nov. 22, 1949.
12. Wilfrid J. Thibodeau to CBL, Aug. 12, 1949, CBLP.
13. Bridgeport Herald, Nov. 27, 1949.
14. CBL to HRL, Oct. 31, 1949, CBLP. She added, “It would be swell wouldn’t it. You could do such great good in that post, and yet never lose touch with your real metier, the interpretation of world events.” Myron Taylor served as personal envoy from 1939 to 1950. Despite his strange title, he was extended ambassadorial status by the Vatican in 1940. The United States did not appoint an official Ambassador to the Holy See until 1984.