"Censorship, like charity, should begin at home: but unlike charity, it should end there." - Claire Booth Luce
Born Ann Clare Boothe in 1903, playwright, editor and politician Claire Booth Luce was an associate editor of Vogue (1930) and associate editor and managing editor of Vanity Fair (1930–4), after which she penned several Broadway successes including The Women (1936) and Kiss the Boys Goodbye (1938). She divorced her first husband, and married millionaire publisher Henry ("Harry") Luce in 1935. Between 1942 and 1946 she represented Fairfield County, Connecticut in the House of Representatives and later was US ambassador to Italy (1953–7).
In 1964, Harry retired as editor-in-chief of Time and Luce also retired from public life. In 1979, she was the first female to be awarded the Sylvanus Thayer Award by the United States Military Academy at West Point. In 1981, President Ronald Reagan appointed her to the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board where she served until 1983, the same year that she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
She died of brain cancer at the age of 84 in her apartment in Washington D.C. Her name lives on with revivals of her plays and through the Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute, a non-profit think tank that seeks to advance American women through conservative ideas.
This quote & biography originally ran in an issue of BookBrowse's membership magazine. Full Membership Features & Benefits.
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