Clare Boothe Luce - Early Life

Early Life

Luce was born Ann Clare Boothe in New York City on March 10, 1903, the second child of Anna Clara Schneider (aka Ann Snyder Murphy; aka Ann Boothe, aka Ann Clare Austin) and William Franklin Boothe (aka "John J. Murphy"; aka "Jord Murfe"). Her parents were not married and would separate in 1912. Her father, a sophisticated man and a brilliant violinist, instilled in his daughter a love of literature, if not of music. But William Boothe had trouble holding down any job, and spent years as a travelling salesman. Parts of young Clare's childhood were spent in Memphis and Nashville, Tennessee, Chicago, Illinois, and Union City, New Jersey as well as New York City. Clare Boothe had an elder brother, David Franklin Boothe. As adults, they were both plagued by suspicions that they had been born illegitimate, a fact that Clare had difficulty admitting to all her life.

She attended schools in Garden City and Tarrytown, New York, graduating in 1919. Her ambitious mother's initial plan for her was to become an actress. Clare understudied Mary Pickford on Broadway at age 10, and had a small part in Thomas Edison's 1915 movie, The Heart of a Waif. 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 was hired by Alva Belmont to work for the National Woman's Party in Washington, D.C. and Seneca Falls, N.Y.

Highly intelligent, ambitious, and blessed with a deceptively fragile blonde beauty, the young Clare Boothe soon abandoned ideological feminism for the safer advancement offered by marrying money. She wed George Tuttle Brokaw, millionaire heir to a New York clothing fortune, on August 10, 1923, at the age of 20. They had one daughter, Ann Clare Brokaw (August 22, 1924 – January 11, 1944). According to Boothe, Brokaw was a hopeless alcoholic, and the marriage ended in divorce in 1929.

On November 23, 1935, Clare Boothe married Henry Robinson Luce, the publisher of Time, Life and Fortune. She thereafter called herself Clare Boothe Luce, a frequently-misspelled name that was often confused with that of her exact contemporary Claire Luce, a stage and film actress. As a professional writer, Luce continued to use her maiden name.

On January 11, 1944, her daughter and only child Ann Clare Brokaw, a senior at Stanford University, was killed in an automobile accident. As a result of this tragedy, Luce explored psychotherapy and religion, joining the Roman Catholic Church in 1946. She became an ardent essayist and lecturer in celebration of her faith, and was ultimately honored by being named a Dame of Malta.