By George Grow
Broadcast: August 29, 2004
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VOICE ONE:
I'm Steve Ember.
VOICE TWO:
And I'm Gwen Outen with People in America in VOA Special English. Today we tell about a woman who became famous for her activities in government, the media and the arts. She was a member of Congress and an ambassador. She was a news reporter and magazine editor. And she wrote plays. Her name was Clare Boothe Luce.
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VOICE ONE:
Clare Boothe Luce was one of the most influential women in modern American history. Yet she came from simple roots. She was born in New York City in nineteen-oh-three. Clare's father was a musician and businessman. Her mother had been a dancer.
While Clare was a girl, her parents ended their marriage. She and her brother stayed with their mother. Their mother did not have a lot of money. Yet she was able to send Clare to very good schools. Her mother then married a doctor from Connecticut. Clare's stepfather, Albert Austin, later served in the United States House of Representatives.
VOICE TWO:
As a young woman, Clare Boothe was known for her intelligence and good looks. She met her first husband through a family friend. George Tuttle Brokaw was a wealthy man. He also was more than twenty years older than Clare. They were married in nineteen-twenty-three and had one child – a daughter. However, her husband had a problem with alcoholic drinks. Their marriage ended after only six years.
Clare developed a serious interest in writing. In nineteen-thirty, a friend, the magazine publisher Conde Nast, offered her a job. She wrote comments for pictures published in Vogue, a magazine for women about clothes and fashion. A short time later, she accepted a job at other magazine, Vanity Fair. She wrote reports about social events and famous people in New York. Later these reports were published in a book.
VOICE ONE:
Clare Boothe became a top editor at Vanity Fair. She worked there until nineteen-thirty-four. By then, she was also writing plays. One play was called "Abide With Me." It was about a man who mistreats his wife. "Abide With Me" opened in a theater on Broadway in New York City in nineteen-thirty-five. Critics hated it.
Two days after the show opened, Clare Boothe married Henry Robinson Luce. He was a famous and important magazine publisher. He published Time and Fortune magazines. She had first met Henry Luce at a party in New York. At the time, he was married and had two children. He and Clare were married a short time after a court order canceled his first marriage. They would stay together for more than thirty years.
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VOICE TWO:
Clare Boothe Luce returned to writing plays. Her second play, "The Women," made fun of rich women. It opened on Broadway in nineteen-thirty-six. The show was very popular. It was later made into a movie. Another play, "Kiss the Boys Goodbye," also was a success. So was her next play, "Margin For Error." All three plays were noted for their use of sharp language and making fun of human failings.
Clare Boothe Luce was known for expressing her opinions. Her most famous saying was: "No good deed goes unpunished." She often spoke about the problems of women trying to succeed in a world mainly controlled by men. She said: "Because I am a woman, I must make unusual efforts to succeed. If I fail, no one will say, 'She doesn't have what it takes.' They will say, 'Women don't have what it takes." She made these comments in a speech to the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.
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We women are supposed to be a minority. I've never understood that myself because we outnumber the men in actual numbers, and we live five years longer. So I've never felt like a minority because, as you know, minorities are never supposed to say anything unkind about one another.
