Time magazine dubbed Clare Boothe Luce America’s first renaissance woman after a long career as an author, playwright, journalist, politician and ambassador.
By 30, she had been named managing editor of Vanity Fair. A decade later, she served as a war correspondent for Life. In the meantime, she wrote a wildly successful play, “The Women,” that became a movie.
Once a supporter of Franklin Roosevelt, Luce turned on his foreign policy and became a sharp critic during two terms in Congress representing Connecticut. She authored the Luce-Celler Act of 1946, which allowed 200 Indians and Filipinos to immigrate to the U.S. and become naturalized citizens.
Luce backed Dwight Eisenhower early in the 1952 presidential campaign, and as a reward Eisenhower made her America’s ambassador to Italy. There, she negotiated a peaceful solution to the Trieste Crisis of 1953-54, a border dispute between Italy and Yugoslavia.
She became an ardent anticommunist and a member of Richard Nixon’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board in 1973. In 1983, Ronald Reagan awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the first female member of Congress to receive the nation’s highest civilian honor.
— Damare Baker
photo: Getty Images