Transcripts For CSPAN2 Booknotes 20141129

Was from an 18th century english poet. It was an ode, and the last two lines were, a rage for fame attends both great and small; better be damned than not be named at all. and i realized that from a small girl, she had realized she wanted to be famous. So i thought that rage for fame is just a perfect title because her whole life after that was to that end. Cspan when was this picture taken . Guest that picture was taken about 1942, just after shed been elected to congress by the famous canadian photographer koschjoseph kosch. Cspan how old was she here . Guest she was only about 39. Cspan and how long did she serve in congress . Guest she served in congress for two termsfour years altogether. Cspan when did you first meet her . Guest i first met her in the fall of 1980 at her house in washington, but it was really a strange meeting because i had already conceived the idea of doing a biography of her. When ijust out of the blue, this invitation came from a hostess in washington, and i was in new york at the time. And i said, well, its a long way to come for a dinner party. Whos coming . i think you might ask. She said, oh, clare luce. and i had just had the idea of the biography, so i thought, well, should i go and meet this person because i may not like her or i may like her too much andeither way, its not a good frame of mind to write a biography. You have to be somewhatyou have to like but not to be in love with and you certainly, like, have not to hate. But anyway, i went there, and the hostess said, well, she wont take any notice of you because shes only interested in men. so she sat me at maat her table and i was across from her, and she sat next to the military historian, actually, alistair horne, whos just come out with a new book, ii see. And shall the whole evening, she just concentrated on talking to him about the mabout military things because that was herone of her loves. But then at the end of the evening, i was standing at the top of the staircase where she had toto leave, and she put her hands on my shoulder and i thought shed mistaken me for the hostess because, you knowand she said, oh, good night, you sweet thing, and then just swept out. And it was shortly after that that i wrote to her and asked her if i could do the book. Cspan where did you first get the idea to do a book about her . Guest i was reading a file that i keep on people that interest me and aasome papers fell out, and it was an article, a New York Times piece that was written in 1973 when the womenher play the women was revived on broadway. And it was an extremely good interview with her, and it made her sound just totally fascinating. And i thought, wow, this is a veryand, of course, i am an english immigrant, so im not as familiar with Clare Boothe Lucei wasnt thenasas you are. And i thought, this would be a great subject, and took it from there. Cspan give us a brief overview of what things she did in her life. Guest well, she had very little education, as you probably have discovered, and she left school at 16 and married, at 20, a very wealthy fifth avenue millionaire and found that hehe drank a lot. They had one child. And after six years of marriage, she was divorced. And then she found herself extremely restless and bored and even depressedwent to a psychiatrist for a while. That didnt seem to fix it. So she decishe met conde nast at a dinner party one night and asked him for a job on vogue or vanity fair or one of his magazines, and he said, oh, no, you society womenill give you a job and then come winter youll be off to palm beach. but she wouldnt take no for an answer, so she simply took herself down to the grabar building, wherewhich housed vogue in those days, found an empty desk and sat down and began to write captions for vogue articles. At the end of the week, when the pay man came around with the paychecks, there wasnt anything for her. So she said, oh, well, you know, when the editor gets back from europeshe was seeing thethethethe french collections in parisim sure ill be put on the list. so when the editor came back and saw her sitting there, she thought conde nast had hired her, and he saw her there, he thought the editor had hired her. And thats how she got the job on vogue. Cspan what was next . Guest then she became a feature writer. And right next door to vogue was thwere the offices of vanity fair, and the editor theneditor in chief was a man called frank crowninshield, extremely cultivated bostonian, and he used to go snooping in the vogue offices looking for talent for his own magazine, and thats how he found dorothy parker. And then he quickly sniffed out clare luce and heclare brokaw in those daysand lured her away. And she gsheshe started to work for him, and she learned a great deal from herthe thenmanaging editor, a man called donald freeman, who was just a little younger than she was, and he fell madly in love with her, but he taught her all he knew. And she began to write stories of her own, as well as doing editing chores. And then when he was killed in a car crashmaybe a suicide over love for her, were not quite sureshe weshe became managing editor. So really, she got the job in vogue late 1930 andearlysorry, late 1929 and the move to vanity fair at the end of that year, and by 19late 1932, she was managing editor. Cspan how long did she keep the job . Guest its extraordinary. Well, iin her usual way, you know, she mastered a job very quickly and then got quickly bored and wanted to move on to something new. She loved to learn. So after a couple of yearsless, actuallyabout 18 months as managing editorshe took a leave of absence and said she wanted to try her hand at writing plays. So she went south and stayed at a resort which you may know called the cloister in georgia, and Eugene Oneill lived just along the beach from the hotel. She got herself a dinner invitation so she could compare herself with the great dramatist to see if he really was smarter orthan she was, and i dont think she found herself wanting, and so stayed down there for about three months writing plays. And then when she went back to new york, still didnt have a finished work, so she took a job as a Foreign Correspondent on anot a Foreign Correspondent, but areally more of a travel writer with hearst and other syndicated newspapers, and worked on that for a few months until she met henry luce. Cspan how did she meet henry luce, and who was he . Guest henry luce was the publisher then of time and fortune magazines, and they met at a dinner party, and he was extremely rude to her on their first encounter. He had a very quick conversation about picture magazines, which were still not really a big thing here but theythey were in europe, and he was thinking of emulating them. And she, while she was at vanity fair, had tried to make vanity fair into a picture magazine, but conde nast had lost a lot of money in the crash and he didnt have the finances. But she still had the idea that it would be a great thing to do. She talked to luce about that, and then suddenly he took out his pocket watch, looked at it and said it was time to go, snapped it shut and clicked his heels and walked away. And she thought he was the rudest man. He picked her brains and just left her standing. But when they met the next time, which was at a Birthday Party for cole porterit was actually not his birthday, it was the Opening Night of anything goes, i think. It was to celebrate anything goes, his new musical thatelsa maxwell gave his party. Elsa remembered it as being his birthday, but i found that it wasnt. Andand again, she saw him coming across the room carrying champagne glassesone was for his wife. And she said, oh, mr. Luce, is ois one of those for me . and at that momoment, the lights went down because the floor show was coming on, and so she said, why dont you sit down. so he sat down, and they talked and talked and talked very intensely. And then he invited her down to the lobbythis was the waldorfastoria hoteland he just admitted that hed fallen in loveit was a coup de foudre, it was like a stroke of lightningand that she was now the one woman in his life and that he would call on her next thursday afternoon to see what they were going to do about it. Cspan and he was married at the time. Guest he was married with two small children, yes. Cspan you talked with the son of henry luce, henry luce iii. Is he still alive . Guest yes. Yes, hes still alive and was most cooperative. Cspan how old a man is he . Guest and hes now about 71, 72 years old. Cspan has he been active in the magazines at all . Guest yes, he worked on the magazines. Hes now on the board because he now runs the henry luce foundation. But he headed the London Bureau for a while and he helped build the new Rockefeller Center offices and so on. Cspan what did he think of his father . Guest oh, i think he loved him dearly and admired him greatly but feltthey werent close because he was so busy. His father was always so busy and traveling so much. And, of course, after the divorce, he stayed with his mother and he didnt see very much of his father andwhich i think was a great pity because he admired him so much. Cspan at the time that henry luce told clare boothebrokaw, i guess, at the time. Guest yes. Cspan . That he was in love with her anddid he say he was going to marry her . Guest well, at first, he wanted to have a little experiment, that they would see each other quietly for a year, buthe didnt want any scandal because he didnt want to disturb his little menage, you know. He didnt want any kind ofand, of course, he didnt want scandals attached to his magazines either. But clare didnt want that, and she said, you know, i dont think thats appropriate for us. Were both wellknown figures in new york society, and wetheres no way we could keep it secret anyway. I think you should go away and take care of your affairs, and meanwhile, ill go to europe for several months. And then if you then resolve that you still want to marry, then come to me. cspan how important wasi guess he was called harry luce. Guest yes. Cspan . At that time in this country. And whatwhatagain, what year are we talking about . Guest were talking now about 193435. They actually married at the end of 35. He was not yet quite as powerful as he later became in thein the 50s, but certainly was getting that way where what was said in Time Magazine was almost more important than what was said in washington and in the white house even because the magazine was so widely circulated and widely read and was a real opinionmaker. Yeah. Cspan and they marriedwhat date . Guest they married in november of 1935, and it was just after the opening of her first broadway play, which was roundly panned, even by Time Magazine, and fand folded very quickly. And it was based vaguely on her first marriage to the alcoholic husband george brokaw. But it was too much of a melodrama. If she had really dealt with it as the semitragedy that it was, i think she would have had a powerful play, but she wasnt quite expert enough yet and not quite ready to, i think, expose her own life inin literature and fiction. Cspan how was the marriage between the two viewed in this country . Guest well, his magazine editors didnt care for it because they were very possessive of him, and hed always been very hardworking and very collegial with themrolling up his sleeves with them to put the magazines to bedand suddenly hes married to this enchanting woman, brilliant woman, with whom he was totally besotted. And so he would want to take the 5 00 train home to connecticut every night so he could be with her and take long vacations with her. And at one point two of his editors took them both out to dinner and said, harry, you know, you used to be here till 10 00 at night on the magazines. Now you want to be home on the 5 00 train. Theres no way you can run your magazines this way. and she verywho had hoped that they were going to offer her a job on one of the magazines at this dinner party, in tears, fled the room saying, you know, he could edit all his magazines with one hand tied behind his back, and rushed off, and then decided she was going to be a playwright, took herself off to the Greenbrier Hotel in West Virginia and wrote the women in three days, which was her biggest broadway hit. Yeah. Cspan you were saying the book the womanthe women is Still Available . Guest the women was made into a very successful movie bydirected by george cukor, you know, who was first on gone with the wind and many otherphiladelphia story, many other hit films. And its still shown on television quite often, that film, and in artart movie houses, and the play has never made her, she said at the end of her life, less than 7,000 a year ever since she wrote it over 50 years ago. Whefunny, when i went with her to london for the 50th anniversary of production of the women, they put it on at the old vic theater and we went there together for the rehearsals before itOpening Night. And one night we were having dinner at carriages andafter the rehearsal and she said, you know, there are very few plays that are put on after 50 years, and then there was a pause, and she said, well, possibly shakespeare. but its true. I. Cspan let me read the last line of your acknowledgements. finally, i wish to thank my husband, Edmund Morris, for whipping me, figuratively speaking, whenever i got overwhelmed, discouraged or just plain tired during the many years i have spent on this project, the total number of years on this project for you . Guest fifteen altogether, because the book turned actually into two volumes, and i have to write a second book now, for which all the work is done. But while she was alive, it was very distracting because i traveled a lot with her. I went to hawaii to stay with her. I looked through her personal papers there, and then after she died more papers came to light, and i had to wait for the will to be probated for them to be released. It was a very long business. And then they didnt have room at the library of congress to house them and they werent cataloged, and it just dragged on and on. Thats why it took so long, really. Cspan we talked to your husband about his book that hes been working on on the biography of Ronald Reagan andbut he talked about you. I want tothis is only 30 seconds. I want you to see this and tell us more about what hes talking about in this. Guest yes. Mr. Edmund morris author from videotape i once thought of showing it to him when he came here, but my wife learned that thats not a good idea. Shes done exactly the same thing for Clare Boothe Luce, who lived 84 years, and she once made the mistake of showing clare the complete sequence of her life, with all these little tabs popping up. And i remember mrs. Luce reacting with shock and she turned away from it. She didnt like to see the physical totality of her life spaced out in cards. And when you think about it, you can understand why. Cspan why would we understand if we saw it . Guest well, it was vast, you know, and aa life inwhen its laid out in cards, itit sort of waxes and wanes. It starts small, then in the fullness of her career the cards got, you know, longer and longer and spataking up more and more space; and then, of course, toward the end, a diminishment in old age. But she went almost by instinct and picked out the cardthe set of cards labeled, relationship with h. R. L. , Henry Robinson luce. It was very uncanny. Cspan wait, wait, how old is she in this picture in the back of the book . Guest there shes 20 years old, just married toabout to marry georgeorge brokaw. Cspan go back to thealso in the acknowledgements, youyou talk about that the library of congress has 462,000 items, 312 linear feet. Guest yes. Cspan how did they get her papers, and whats a part of all those papers at the library of congress . Guest yes. Herherher collection at the library of congress turned out to be larger than most president ial collections that the library holds because, i think, as we said, rage for fameshe knew she was going to be famous fromfrom childhood. And so she kept every scrap of paper that was sent to her and copies of all the letters that she sent out. So its prodigious, this collection. And at the time, where they firstwhen it first went to the library, it went there, really, as a result of a flood. While she was ambassador to italy, her ridgefield, connecticut, house had a flood in the basement where her papers were kept, and her secretary said, you know, weve learned from this. Its not safe because weve lost a few valuable things. so it was then decided that since shed been a former congresswoman, her papers should go on deposit to the library of congress. So the public part of her papers then went there, not including the diplomatic papers, because they were at the state department. But hershe kept her personal papers until i came along, and finally, she did agree to give those to the library as well. Cspan what year did she die . Guest she died in 1987. Cspan where was she when she died . Guest at the watergate apartments, where shewhere she had actually two or three apartments. She hadshe had two apartments that she knocked together for her living quarters. She rented apartment across the hall for her own personal office, and she had another office there for her secretaries. Cspan did she and harry luce Stay Together for their entire life . Guest yes. He died mmuch earlier than she did, of course. He died almost 20 years earlier. And they stayed together even though their marriage, in terms of the physical intimacy of it, came to an end after the first couple of years. He put her on such a pedestal that he lost his potency visavis her after the first two years because he just idolized her tso much. She was a goddess. Cspan how many times did she get elected to congress . Guest twice. Cspan from where . Guest from fairfield county, connecticut. Cspan what party . Guest the republican party. Cspan and did she have an ideology that she was known for . Guest at that time, of course, it was wartime and she was a good deal more liberal in her voting than people now give her credit for. You know, she was very pro the gi bill, she was very pro liberalizing the immigration laws. And she was much more democratic in her way of thindemocratic party, i mean, in her way of thinking in those days than i think she subsequently became before she became, you know, the great anticommunist that shes now known for and a big fiscal conservative that sh. Cspan after she was a member of congressand i know this goes beyond wherethis book ends in 1942. Guest yes. Cspan what other jobs did she have in politics . Guest in politics, really, none; in diplomacy, yes. She was appointed by eisenhower as ambassador to italy, to rome, in 1953, and she was the first woman to have a major diplomatic post of that kind. There had been women ambassadors but only to minor postsluxembourg, norway, things like that. Cspan when was shedid she have any other jobs besides the ambassadorship to rome . Guest she always kept up her journalistic career. She was a war correspondent for life magazine before she went to congress and then she always kept her hand in at writing political columns for the rest of her life, actually. Even in the end, she. Cspan when was she the best known in the United States . Guest when . Cspan when . Guest why, when she was ambassador, i think. She was, i think, the most admired woman in america next to Eleanor Roosevelt and the most admired in the world, i think, next to eleanor and the queen of england. Cspan one of the notes, by the way, in the book is that you say your greatest debt is to daniel boorstin, who is the former librarian of congress, and his wife, ruth. And in piece i wasi read in the washington times, it says that nhes not commented on this book and that the parties they had for you, he never came to any of those parties. Is there anything to that story . Guest no, he. Cspan is he notdoes he not like this . Guest hehe hadnt read the book because he hadnt yet received the complimentary copy that id sent. In fact, i had a note from ruth just yesterday saying the book did come and thank you very much. They couldnt make the parties because they travel a great deal and they just simply couldnt come to them. Soand some of them were in new york, too, so. Cspan so the impression that he didnt like the book wasnt accurate . Guest no, because he hasnt read it yet. He only received it a couple of days ago, so. Cspan lelet me ask you about. Guest i think he will like it, actually. Cspan yeah. Guest . Because its veryits based on the papers ofyou know, its not very much there thats my own views. Its mainly from her diaries, from her letters and so on. Cspan howhow many days of her life did you spend with her, do you think . Guest how many days of her life . Cspan did you spend with her . Guest oh, well, in terms of years, i met ini met her in 1980. She died in 87. So for those seven years we were together very, very often, particularly after she moved back to washington, after she sold the house in hawaii in about 84. Cspan but did you see her every day, every week . Guest oh, every week at least, yes. Cspan aand. Guest yes. I would go over, she would come to my house for dinner, i would go to her house. We went togetherwe spent time inone summer in newport. We traveled through canada, london. Cspan how close were you . Guest we were extremely close. In fact, we were getting too close at one point and i had to sort of step back a little because i was in danger of losing my objectivity, i think. You know, when you know so much about someone that you can complete their sentencesshed say, oh, that yewas the year i went to london and i stayed at theand i would say, oh, the Victoria Hotel . yes, the Victoria Hotel. and i got to know more than she could remember herself a lot of the time because i had researched her more recently. And at the end, when we were at carriages in that same trip to london, we were having dinner, she suddenly out of the blue asked me who i felt closest to. And before i could reply she said, because i feel closest to you because you know everything. cspan did you like her . Guest yes. I hadi liked her a lot and i admired her very much. She had this incredible sense of humor, that no matteryou know, sometimes she would be a bit of a monologuistat dinner parties shed get a little boring with her political views, but she was so funny that whatever she did, you know, she had this redeeming humor. Cspan as you know, you keep reading in your book of the many affairs that she had. Guest yes. Cspan and what i did was write down every person that i came across in the book that she had an affair with and i thought it might be an interesting way to talk about that kind of relationship and why. And the first one on the listand theres no reason or rhyme to thisdr. Rosenbleuth. Guest that was not actually an affair. Dr. Rosenbleuth, like many men whon first meeting her, were thoroughly enchanted by her. She wasand thats very hard for me, too, because i only knew her as an old woman. So i had to struggle constantly to imagine what the impact was of this glorious creature who was not only stunninglooking, but also a superior intelligence and charm and wit. So men were totally taken with her. And the doctor that she consulted in the early 30s was no exception. And he, too, was married, with Young Children and there was no question, i think, of divorce. But he did love her, i think, till the day he died, but there was no affair, not to my knowledge. Cspan Randolph Churchill. Guest Randolph Churchill was a sha small fling; he was much younger than she was. They met when she went to stay one weekend at his fathers Country House in kent, when she was then having an affair with the financier Bernard Baruch, and he called her in paris and said, mr. Churchill invites you to join us for the weekend. and the person who met her at the aiat the station was Randolph Churchill. And he then was about 22 years old and like an adonis; he was aa stunning man and also a romantic turn of mind, as she was. And theres one funny story. Do we have time for it . When i was in hawaii researching the bookher personal papers with her, she had invited my husband to come, too. And he said, well, i cant come because i have to work on my volume twotwo of theodore roosevelt. so she said, well, ill give you a room to work in. You wont be disturbed. so he said, all right. so he came. But it turned out that that house was right on the ocean, and all of the doors were louver doors and all the windows were slatted. So even though he was in his own little room, when we were in the library and the winds were blowing through and all the windows were open, he could hear us talking. And one day she came in and started to tell me about that weekend atat churchills Country House. When she went to bed that night, asshe was just on the point of falling asleep when her bedroom door opened and somebody came in in the dark, and she heard them crossing the room, and they tripped over the coal scuttle. And she put on the light quickly and she said, well, it was Bernard Baruch, and i was expecting randolph. my poor husband next doorhe was trying to write about the interstate commerce act of 1906, and he just could not concentrate. It was like that for the whole three weeks when we were there. Cspan you mentioned Bernard Baruch. That went on longer than the Randolph Churchill affair. Guest yes. The Bernard Baruch affair, as such, didnt go on; the lithe friendship was lifelong until he died in his 90s. Hey were always friends. Cspan stoplet me justill mentionwho was Bernard Baruch . Guest oh, im sorry. Bernard baruch was ca socalled speculator. Hes a man who knew wall street who became something of anof an adviser on economics to president spresident s wilson and president roosevelt and hoover and various others. But she fell in love with him because he was much older. Shed hshed lost her father when she was very young, so he was something of a father figure as well as a mentor. He taught her about politics and economics. And also he was not obtainable. So anybody who was not attainable for clare became the one that wawas most desired. So although they had a small fling in thein the early 30s, it didnt go on for very long because he was so much older than she was. Cspan and he was married. Guest and he was married, and he had grown children. And he was not in love with her either. He said to a frienda mutual friend who passed the word on that although he was fond of clare his heart was not involved. Cspan joseph kennedy. Guest soso that was devastating to her. I think theres no actual documentary evidence of an affair, but since he had so many with other womenand she did, in one of her diary entries ininwhen she was staying in a paris hotel once say that he was in her room all morning, and she kept meeting him on transatlantic crossings when she was alone without harry. And she saw him in rome and in london many, many times when harry wasnt there. I think that its probably correct to say that there was something of aa short fling. Cspan in the middle of all that, though, you also say that she met john f. Kennedy, the son of joseph kennedy, and it had something to do with her daughter. Guest yes. Her daughter was not actually a debutante, but she came out at the time that john kennedy was making the rounds, you know, escorting young ladies about new york and, in fact, took out her daughter on several occasions. But ann always got the feeling that her beaus were really more interested in her mother, who wasjust had so much more charm and was better looking, too. Cspan who was sir charles . Guest sir charles was general charles willoughby, who was intelligence chief to general Douglas Macarthur in the philippines. And clare was always interested in military men and particularly if they had anything to do with spying. And since he was the intelligence chief, she was incredibly drawn to him. He was also rather taciturnthe strong, silent type and tall and striking looking, and she said to me that he was the moone man that she might have liked to run away with. But it turned out that willoughby never came back after the end of the war. He elected to go to japan to bring democracy to the japanese withwith macarthur. Cspan how did they meet . Guest they met when she went as a correspondent for life to the philippines. Cspan and was she married at the time . Guest she was married to harry at the time. This was in the early 40s before she became a congresswoman. Cspan and how much of a relationship did she have with the colonelor the general . Guest well, you see, they were apart for most of the war. She went back toshe met him with harry on her first visit. After coming back from china, they stopped off in the philippines; thats when they met. And then she got an assignment from life to go back, and thats where the affair really got under way. And then it was an affair mainly by mail until he came back stateside to report on something to the adthe administration during the war in the mid40s. And they saw each other a couple of times only. And it wasso it was mainly an affair by mail. Cspan David Sarnoff. Guest David Sarnoff was not a consummated affair i dont think. It was just somesomesomehe expressed a little interest, made a little pass at her at some point. Cspan who was he . Guest well, he was then, of course, the head of rca. Cspan and how did they meet . Guest and they met when baruch took her to his apartment one night where David Sarnoff was going to show an aearly experiment in television. So she was one of the first people to see one of the first televisions and Bernard Baruch. Cspan so someone she was having an affair with, Bernard Baruch, took her to another man who got interested in her. And diddid he let her know that . Guest sarnoff . Cspan yes. Guest oh, i think he took her home and probably made a pass, you know, but it didnt go very far. I dont think it was an affair. Cspan and then you say bothconde nast and his wife both had an interest in her. Guest conde nast, according to another character in the book called mark sullivan, who is a historian columnisthe said that nast was in love with herwith clare. And clare said that, in fact, nast wanted to divorce his wife and marry her, but she was not interested in conde nast. Cspan what about it. Guest she was not attracted to him at all. Cspan what waswho was conde nast . Guest conde nast, of course, owned vogue, vanity fair and house garden magazines. And he was her boss, of course, in both those magazines, vogue and vanity fair. And she saw him frequently and socialized with him a lot. And he was madly attracted to her, but sheshe just simply wasnt attracted toto him. Cspan what aboutdwas there a pass made by his wife leslie . Guest yes, his wife was apparently sapphic, and she went both ways. And she did make aa pass at clare, yeah. Cspan bill gaston. Guest bill gaston was the husband of a woman whos probably not remembered too well now but was wellknown at the time because she starred in one of the most successful theatrical extravaganzas of all time, a play called the miracle, which was directed by the austrian producer max reinhardt. And this miracle went on tour for six or seven years in europe and america. And the two stars of it were a woman called Rosamund Pinchot and a woman called lady diana cooper. And clare always said that she was offered the part that eventually went to diana cooper in that play. And the other part went to Rosamund Pinchot, whose husband, bill gaston, was a tremendous womanizer. And clare rented his house onguess what . Crotch island one summer, and he kept coming and going, and he wouldnt let herhe wouldnt let her have any peace. Cspan you said in that summer on crotch island, there were a lot of affairs, a lot of different men. Guest a lot of different men. Cspan how did you find all this out, by the way . Guest i foundwell, she kept a diary of that summer. So it was all documented that first of all came William Harlan hale, one of her young recruits on the magazine who was going to be one of those young promising writers of the early 30s who knew Katherine Anne porter and had written. Cspan and she was, likewhat . 30 and he was, like, 22. Guest yes. Clare in 1932 was 29, and he was about 22 years old. And he was the first arrival on crotch island. They all stayed four or five days. And then when he left, mark sullivan, the much older man who was more baruchs age, came to stay. I dont think that was necessarily a consummated relationship but certainly not for one totrying on his part. And then came aa young major in the army, a young man called cary skerritt. And then, of course, bill gaston was in and out, because it was his house that shed rented. And when she got back to town, of course, it was Bernard Baruch and her mentor of vanity fair, donald freeman, who was the man who taught her everything about writing. Cspan now did you ever sit down with her and ask her about all this andand how she kept ithow she kkept the lines drawn and kept track of it all . Guest yes. She was actually much more interesting talking about harrys peccadillos than about her own. But some of them she would admit to, and the major ones were baruch and, of course, harry and hale and ggeneral willoughby. Those were the fthe major ones. I think the others she thought were just trivial relationships, nothing serious. Cspan well, you know, related to today, i mean thatsyouwewe cant pick up a paper today without reading about these today as people are still here and alive. Guest mm. Cspan did anybody know about all these back in those days . Guest its amazing to me that her name was always out of the scandal sheets. She never had a breath of scandal really attached to her name. I think privately people were rather scathing of her, particularly the men who were jealous of her at time inc. , the editsome of the editors. But on the whole, clare was not a name that got into the papers except to do with her work. She became a celebrity because she was such an achiever. Cspan playwright, reporter. Guest Foreign Correspondent, reporter, yes. Cspan . Congresswoman. Guest . Novelist, too. She wroteshe wrote a series of short stories which read like a novel but theyre actually interrelated stories called stuffed shirts. That was her First Published book. She wrote a serious work of history about the phony war called europe in the spring. And she wrote three big broadway hits, every single one a hit and every one made into a movie, which wasthe women wascame first, then one called kiss the boys goodbye, 1938, and then in 1939, a play called margin for error, which had Otto Preminger playing a nazi consul who was protected by a jewish new york policeman. Cspan at. Guest and. Cspan what was her life like at the end . Guest at the end of her life, she was lonelyextremely lonely because, you know, if youre 84 years old, a lot of your Close Friends have died already. And she had difficulty concentrating, too. And also shed achieved so much, i thinkshed proved so much that it was hard for her to just churn out articles, even though she was capable of it. She gave speeches almost to the end, still was getting 5,000, 10,000 per speech. Cspan who were her friends at the end . Guest she was extremely fond of bill buckley. In fact, she adored him. They had a very nice correspondence. On occasion, she would write for his magazine, national review. And she went on firing linehis program on pubon public television. She always kept up her friends in the Intelligence Community and inin the military. And she had close women friends in newport, chicago, new york. And theyre not names that youll particularly know; they werent well known except in society. And she had a variety of friends, and she liked young people, too. Sheshe befriended henry luces grandchildren, would take them on her travels and encourage them in their enterprises, just. Cspan what did she die of . Guest well, its ironic because she had a brain tumor. And my husband used to joke with her because, quite often, shed have these little ailments and wed be there when the doctor would come. And hed test her wrist, you know, take her pulse, test her heart, tap her stomach and everything. And then hed say, well, i cant find anything. and she would look at the ceiling and say, well, i think that after i die, theyll say, there was absolutely nothing wrong with her. And edmund used to tease her; he said, when you die, he said, theyll have to beat your brains to death with a stick, because she was so sharp always, so quick. And then she got this brain tumor and, of course, he felt terrible that hed said that. But she just. Cspan once she got it, how long did she live . Guest mercifully, it was quick. It was diagnosed about february of 1987, and she died in october. Cspan were you there when she died . Guest no, because she wasnt up really to seeing anyone at the end. And i didnt really want to because i wanted to keep thatyou know, i had to write about her alive, and it was terribly painful tofor me to see her like that. I was somei was at the last dinner party that she gave, which was in july. Cspan who was there . Guest quite a lot of Washington News people charles krauthammer, morton kondracke; pat buchanan was there and their wives; and henry luce iii was there; herher stepson; my husband, myself. Just a small group, a couple of tables. Cspan what was youryour reaction when she died and you had all this material and all that time you spent with her and a book to write . Guest yes. When i picked up the phone and the secretary said, sylvia, clare died last night, i had that feeling you sometimes have withand your heart goes, like, thud in your heart. It was a real thud. And then, although i rushed over to the apartment straight away and was at all the Funeral Services and wentwent down to the burial, which was on her southern plantation in south carolina, which is now a trappist monasteryshes buried there under the great live oaks by the cooper riveri found afterwards the next three months or so, i had kept dreaming about her a lot. I had strange dreams, and one was particularly weird because it was hershe was like a stripper in a vaudeville show wearwearing a bright blueit was a technicolor dream which, i think, is strange, because i think most people dream in black and whiteit was a blue spangled dress. And although she actually didnt take off her clothes, i knew it wasthey werewere kicking their legs and so on. It was a strip show. But it was an old clare; it was an old face with a sort of blond wig and very long black eyelashes and a deep gash of a red mouth. And i realized that what this dream symbolized probably was that, in a way, i was going to expose clare in my writings. I was going to write about her most intimate life. And it was very troubling, probably, in my streein my sleep. And i find that i was grieving, and the grieving wouldnt end; it just went on and on. For several months, i dreamt about her constantly. And i suppose it was because i loved her, you know; id come to love her, even though i tried to distance myself from her. Cspan what do you think she would really think of your book . Guest i ask myself that because on a trip oncei went with her once onbill casey, you remember, the head of the fbiwas it fbi or cia . Cspan cia. Guest i think. unintelligible cia, yes. We went toto thehe whe was to make the Winston Churchill fulton, missouri, speech, you know, at westminster college. And she asked me to go, because she was going to introduce him. So we were on this little propellor plane there, and she was talking about my book in the plane andoh, she said, oh, im going to leave you this in my will. and i said, you cant leave me anything in your will. oh, why not . she said. let the chips fall where they may. i said, because it wouldnt be appropriate, you know . It would look like a bribe. so she knewshe let me see absolutely every scrap of paper, and i think she took comfort in the fact that i did know her at the end, and i knew everything about her and that i liked her in spite of everything, you know . And some of the things she did wereas anybody who gets on in life, they have to do pretty ruthless things and pretty inconsursiderate and selfish things. But nevertheless, i think she would admire the fact that ii laid it all out there in an honest and fair way, and i tried to be balanced. And its not hagiography; at the same time, its not one of these hatchet jobs i. Cspan what does hagiography mean . Guest the study of saints. And she knew she was no saint. Cspan by the way, did she leave you any money in her will . Guest no. unintelligible . Cspan did shedid she die a wealthy woman . Guest what she left, actually, was she left her tapes and records to my husband because hethere was one thing about clare she was very competitive with everyone, and she was always better at everything than everyone. She was a great athlete. She was a great golfer. She could shoot. She could swim. She could hunt. She could ride. And she was always better at it than everybody else. But the only thing she was not good atand its ironic, because her father was a musicianwas music. She was tonedeaf. She couldnt carry a tune at all. But in old age, she started to listen to records, and she accumulated quite a collection of records. And she would listen to them in her room when she was trying to get to sleep, because she was a terrible insomniac. And i think, in the end, it was a gesture toward my husband, you know, that she had tried to master the thing that he is good at, because he wanted to be a concert pianist. I dont know whether you know that, but edmund never knew whether he wanted to be a writer or a pianist. So it was her little way of saying at the end to edmund, i did come to appreciate your field, too. cspan where did you meet Edmund Morris . Guest we met in london. I actually had been in america for a couple of years traveling, working, going to mexico, the west coast. And then i would get back to new york, find i had no money left, so id have to stay a little longer. And in that time, i didnt know it, but i kind of became an american. So when i went back to london thinking, oh, i have family in england and i was going home, i realized as soon as i set foot off the plane that id become an american, and i wasnt going to settle there. But i forced myself to stay; i took a job teaching in london, and i tooki rented a room in a little house. And edmund was in advertising then; he worked in advertising. And he used toin exchange for being able to play this ladys piano every lunchtime so he could practice, he agreed to do some light household chores for this lady. And i said i am going back if i can raise the fare. We came back with one suitcase between us. What year did you get married . 66 i mean 68. And we came to a house and we talked year has been any were working the way of this book at the same time. But you have a town house sell looks out over the capital . We were coming to washington to work on our books. It was expensive and we spent nearly 100 in one week. And then we thought we would never have equity if we keep doing this. So i put a small down payment on the condominium. So we had little fantasies about it was ever favorite house on the hill. And then we got the book on Ronald Reagan. We were in new york one day and a big hurricane came. 1985. And we got a call to ask if we could put her up and she could spend the night. And she said by the way theyre selling that house that you like. I do the owners so i called up and said they interested they said when you come back to washington comeback. She had a party at the time. So we walked through and got to the top floor and behind the dome is the capital and i said i have to have this. So we bought it. 1986. Host. Cspan he has written how many books . Guest his was called great events that change the world it had 30 chapters from the vikings to the moon shot dead we divided between as. And then we had three and a half thousand words each we would like to go into greater depth so that is how we did it. Cspan your first book . Guest it came about that he wrote a screenplay once it was called the dew from new york. And we were researching a screenplay for the New York Times article one north dakota. And somebody gave him a contract for a book was to be a short biography for roosevelt. So that was just volume one. I said who is this lady . It is the second wife edith. Not much is known about her and i said she intrigues me. The was not much known about her. So i wrote a proposal and the publisher was interested i got the contract right away so i got the book to take her life for her death. Cspan both have the same publisher . At that time it was a subsidiary of putnam but now were both at random house. Cspan the same publisher, both writers everything working at the same time in the same house. What you think of this life . It is a nice life but it is insecure. In the sense that youre only as secure as the book you were working on and you dont know if it will do well or not. And fortunately we dont have children because i think it would be too precarious. Cspan who is paula deen . Guest at the time and is finishing the book my sister was six. I just felt very close to her at that point because i dedicated the last book to edmund. Site dedicated it to her. Cspan how will she now . She is fine. She lives on a farm. Cspan the second volume is coming up when is that do . In a couple of years and they should write that much more quickly because i have all the Research Done for that. Cspan you talk about claires mother. Who was she . A fascinating lady. She was the kind of character on the page she took over i had a terrible struggle to keep her off the page because she was such a character. Claiborne of the Lower West Side to laboring butcher and he never moved out. And she was gorgeously beautiful. And she wanted out of the ghetto and a sister died of meningitis type of disease she used to hang around a wine bar. One day she met a very dynamic man more than twice her age named franklin do with. And they began an affair. She was 88 years old and he was in his 40s. And she became pregnant at 18 years old. And david, Clare Boothe Luce brother and the baby was born the following year and there were still not very. I dont think they ever buried he did not get a divorce and 1907 when the child was four years old. I never found any marriage certificates chicago and new york beverage they lived. Never found one. But she could not have reburied in new york state because in those days you could not marry if you were the guilty party in the divorce action which he was. By the time he was free to marry their relationship was on the rocks and shortly after word clares mother left him returnee hes leaving him in chicago. But the fact telling them he had died and clare corrupt thinking that her father was dead. Cspan how did she die . She died in the accident. She was in miami shoes to go there every winter with her boyfriend he finance his education joel jacobs. Extremely wealthy man through the keystone to hire a company. She would not marry him because in those days there was snobbery about burying somebody jewish. And wanted to be raised in the episcopal faith. She married eventually a doctor but the little man from the tire company kept coming around. They both like the races and light gambling. She was driving and could not stop and when to bypass the station and the trade was coming hit her perfect was severed at the ankle. And she was thrown and killed almost instantly. Host . Cspan where was this picture taken . This was taken it was taken by a photographer in 1941. By the famous designer valentino. And she is wearing jewels and the featured article and this actually never ran in the article. The the outstretched hand was the subtitle was the ascent of Clare Boothe Luce because i have arrived. And at the height of her beauty and fame. Cspan of the twopart series rage for fame all about Clare Boothe Luce. Thank you very much. Ronald reagan had several beginnings Weather Radio broadcaster in iowa or a successful hollywood actors serving as a spokesman for the General Electric Company Posted a numberone rated Television Program or becoming governor of california and seeking the presidency. Each of these ads a specific piece to our understanding of the man and his character. We continue to learn more about him as we will be today. Our guest author thomas reed was present at more than one of these beginnings and in this book the reagan enigma shares his personal archives for their