Her father, a sophisticated man and a brilliant violinist,[6] instilled in his daughter a love of literature, if not of music, but had trouble holding a job and spent years as a traveling salesman.

[9] After a tour of Europe with her mother and stepfather, Dr. Albert E. Austin, whom Ann Boothe married in 1919, she became interested in the women's suffrage movement, and she was hired by Alva Belmont to work for the National Woman's Party in Washington, D.C. and Seneca Falls, New York.

Henry was by any standard extremely successful, but his physical awkwardness, lack of humor, and newsman's discomfort with any conversation that was not strictly factual put him in awe of his beautiful wife's social poise, wit, and fertile imagination.

[16] Clare's years as managing editor of Vanity Fair left her with an avid interest in journalism (she suggested the idea of Life magazine to her husband before it was developed internally).

In the early years of her widowhood, she retired to the luxurious beach house that she and her husband had planned in Honolulu, but boredom with life in what she called "this fur-lined rut"[23] brought her back to Washington, D.C. for increasingly long periods.

The New York Times found it socially superficial, but praised its "lovely festoons of epigrams" and beguiling stylishness: "What malice there may be in these pages has a felinity that is the purest Angoran.

After the United States entered the war, Luce toured military installations in Africa, India, China, and Burma, compiling a further series of reports for Life.

One draft article for Life, noting that the general lived far from the Egyptian front in a houseboat, and mocking RAF pilots as "flying fairies", was discovered by British Customs when she passed through Trinidad in April 1942.

An outspoken critic of Roosevelt's foreign policy,[32] Luce was supported by isolationists and conservatives in Congress, and she was appointed early to the prestigious House Military Affairs Committee.

Although she was by no means the only female representative on the floor, her beauty, wealth, and penchant for slashing witticisms[peacock prose] caused her to be treated patronizingly by colleagues of both sexes.

[33] She made a debut in her maiden speech, coining the phrase "globaloney" to disparage Vice President Henry Wallace's recommendation for airlines of the world to be given free access to US airports.

[34] She called for repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act, comparing its "doctrine of race theology" to Adolf Hitler's,[35] advocated aid for war victims abroad, and sided with the administration on issues such as infant-care and maternity appropriations for the wives of enlisted men.

"[37] During her second term, Luce was instrumental in the creation of the Atomic Energy Commission[38] and, during the course of two tours of Allied battlefronts in Europe, she campaigned for more support of what she considered to be America's forgotten army in Italy.

She was present at the liberation of several Nazi concentration camps in April 1945, and after V-E Day, she began warning against the rise of international Communism as another form of totalitarianism, likely to lead to World War III.

Boothe led a group of women delegates to the 1952 Republican National Convention who sought to nominate Margaret Chase Smith in the balloting for vice presidential nominee.

Her anti-Communist speeches on the stump, radio, and television were effective in persuading a large number of traditionally Democratic-voting Catholics to switch parties and vote Eisenhower.

Italians reacted skeptically at first to the arrival of a female ambassador in Rome, but Luce soon convinced those of moderate and conservative temper that she favored their civilization and religion.

[45] Her principal achievement as ambassador was to play a vital role in negotiating a peaceful solution to the Trieste Crisis of 1953–1954, a border dispute between Italy and Yugoslavia that she saw as potentially escalating into a war between East and West.

Her sympathies throughout were with the Christian Democratic government of Giuseppe Pella, and she was influential on the Mediterranean policy of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, another anticommunist.

Although Luce regarded the abatement of the acute phase of the crisis in December 1953 as a triumph for herself, the main work of settlement, finalized in October 1954, was undertaken by professional representatives of the five concerned powers (Britain, France, the United States, Italy, and Yugoslavia) meeting in London.

[46] As ambassador, Luce consistently overestimated the possibility that the Italian left would mount a governmental coup and turn the country communist unless the democratic center was buttressed with generous American aid.

[51] A great appreciator of Italian haute couture, she was a frequent visitor and client of the ateliers Gattinoni, Ferdinandi, Schuberth, and Sorelle Fontana in Rome.

She began to learn enough of the Portuguese language in preparation for the job, but she was by now so conservative that her appointment met with strong opposition from a small number of Democratic senators.

That same year, which also saw the political emergence of future friend Ronald Reagan, marked the voluntary end of Henry Luce's tenure as editor-in-chief of Time.

Her husband, Henry, died in 1967 before that dream could be realized, but she went ahead with construction of a luxurious beach house in Honolulu, and, for some years, she led an active life in Hawaii high society.

As a Congresswoman, Ambassador, and Member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, Clare Boothe Luce has been a persistent and effective advocate of freedom, both at home and abroad.

(During her ambassadorial years, at a dinner in Luxembourg attended by many European dignitaries, Luce was heard declaiming that all women wanted from men was "babies and security".

)[62] Yet, her own professional career as a successful editor, writer, playwright, reporter, legislator, and diplomat showed how a woman of humble origins and no college education could raise herself to an escalating series of public heights.

The terms of the bequest require the following criteria: The program is divided into three distinct categories: The Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute (CBLPI) was founded in 1993 by Michelle Easton.

[64] The non-profit think tank seeks to advance American women through conservative ideas and espouses much the same philosophy as that of Clare Boothe Luce, in terms of both foreign and domestic policy.