[inaudible question] [inaudible question] [inaudible question] [inaudible question] >> i love historians. [laughter] i know all of these details. but war and peace would be the perfect part to take with you on an expedition like that. and i think you're more perfect than war and peace because it is awfully heavy. for in next trip need to take a copy of give war and peace a chance.

[applause] >> if you would help us by falling appears shares, the books are available at the front . >> years. i am happy to sign them. >> every weekend book tv offers programming focused on nonfiction authors and books. keep watching for more here on c-span2. and watch any of our past programs online and booktv.org. >> sylvia dude's morris recalls the life of a conservative commentator. her a election to congress, her tenure as ambassador to italy, and a political and personal life. his program lasts about an hour. sylvia jukes morris recounts the life of the late conservative commentator and congresswoman clare boothe luce. the author reports on luc's tenure as board to italy and her

political and personal life. this program lasts about an hour. [inaudible conversations] >> i am the senior director of programs and chief operating officer here at roosevelt house, and it is my great pleasure to welcomeou here to it is my great pleasure to welcome you here to tonight's very special discussion of price of fame, the on your -- hon. clare booth luce by sylvia do smores. "price of fame" is the second in a two-volume biography of ms. luce. the first volume was published 17 years ago, and as "the wall street journal" has written, both books are really models of a biographer's art, meticulously researched, sophisticated, fair-minded and compulsively

readable. now, we are, of course, gathered for tonight's discussion here in the former home of franklin and eleanor roosevelt where i think it is probably safe to assume that clare boothe luce was not a regular social visitor. [laughter] mrs. luce's relationship with the roosevelts was, one might say, complicated. she was an early supporter of fdr but soon became one of his most outspoken critics, once famously accusing him of being the only american president who ever lied us into a war because he did not have the political courage to lead us into it. her relationship with eleanor roosevelt, with whom she was in regular competition for most popular woman in the u.s., was perhaps more nuanced. like mrs. roosevelt, she had overcome the disadvantages of her childhood to become a self-made woman who was well ahead of her time with successful and highly visible

careers in multiple fields, politics, journalism and diplomacy. she may have disagreed with much of mrs. roosevelt's philosophy, but as early as 1948 she was recommending that truman ask her to be his running mate. and for her part, eleanor roosevelt publicly praised her appointment as ambassador to italy writing that mrs. luce would be an able ambassador who will represent us well. price of fame goes into fascinating detail about luce's relationships not only with the roosevelts, but with so many of the great figures of the 20th century from eisenhower to several churchills to jfk and, of course, her stormy marriage to henry luce. and so does morris herself in a wonderful account of how she became to be clare boothe luce's biographer, the only one to have access to her public and private papers. and so it is really a great

privilege to have sylvia morris with us here tonight. born in england, she taught english literature before moving to the united states in 1968 with her husband, the writer edmund morris, who i'm also proud to have with us here in the evening, and she is also the author of a biography of former first lady edith kermit roosevelt. it also gives me great pleasure to introduce our moderator, the prolific writer and editor, james atlas. he is founding editor of the viking press live series of biographies and the author of "the life of an american poet" which was nominated for a national book award. in addition to his memoir, "my life in the middle ages," he has written for "the new york times," "vanity fair" and many other publications. and so please join me in welcoming sylvia morris and james atlas for what promises to be a fascinating conversation. thank you.

[applause] >> so we must actually use these? i feel like a crooner, like frank sinatra. [laughter] i, first of all, forgive my, this gauche gesture, but my printer broke just before i came here with all my notes, so i've had to put them on my phone. [laughter] so i'm just going to be glancing at my phone, and i'm of the generation that doesn't understand how anything works. [laughter] but it's all in my head anyway. the first sentence, though, i was going to begin by saying that i have known clare for decades. now, what is wrong with this sentence? [laughter] it's -- and i couldn't stop doing it either, i don't know if you notice. always the last few weeks clare

this and clare that, and i finally realized it's because sylvia has done her job so brilliantly, that she managed to convince the reader that she was her summit, -- her subject, and that is really the goal of what we biographers do, is really to in the end become your subject, to spend, as you have done -- now, is it 34 years in your case? >> 1980 i saw a letter -- >> [inaudible] [laughter] >> you're close to the record. although others, a few others have exceeded you and your husband, edmund, with his magisterial theodore roosevelt has come close. in page numbers, since we're just doing stats here, only a few biographers with their five-volume biographies like joseph frank on dostoyevsky have

exceeded this distance. but one of the most amazing things about this book among many amazing things is that it does not feel long. as dr. johnson said of milton's "paradise lost," none would have wished it longer. i could have -- [laughter] i could have stood a few more pages. and it's told with tremendous pace and has the kind of galloping intensity of a novel, and yet it's also a tremendous work of scholarship. and clare boothe luce is not someone on whom as is often the case one feels the subject wasn't large enough and didn't warrant a book of this size. the subject was this large and did warrant a book of this size, and i'm very glad that you wrote it in this way. as a professional biographer, if there is such a thing, i also read the footnotes and the index even and the acknowledgments and

all the kind of apparatus that come to surround and -- [inaudible] a biography, and you've done a magnificent job on that too. that's all part of the story. so i wanted to ask you if you would start by telling us a little bit about the great story that people love to hear which is how you came to write it. and i want to say one more thing about sylvia here who i have known for many decades and is not clare. she called me a few weeks ago, it was very important that we talk. we had to talk about -- i thought it would be something to do with the logistics of this operation here. but instead she said to me, i want to be sure that we talk about you and your biography. and believe me, i have no

trouble doing this. [laughter] but this was not the occasion of the moment, and i cite it only to give further evidence of her generosity and the kind of generosity that's needed to write a book like this. but that's really sort of begin at the end -- >> all right. >> -- where this chapter is. >> well, james, first of all, after he had finished his biography of dell moore schwartz, he's sort of at sea, what next? and various people suggested various topics to him. and one of them was edmund will soften. so he went and he looked -- wilson. so he went and looked at the archiveses and saw it was a meaty project, but he also knew edmund wilson had written a lot about himself. and he spent about five years just thinking about whether he would do this or not knowing it would take him ten years to write after that at least and decided he didn't have the taste

for it. he didn't really like edmund wilson. and so that fell through. and he lighted instead on saul bello who had the same background, they were both from chicago, and he was still alive at the time, and they were able to meet and so on. so this is a long way of saying that in a way the sum finds you. the subject finds you. sometimes you're not really wedded to some topic, it's not be suitable for you, and you have to wait until you find the one that does suit you. and in the case of clare, i'd finished the biography some months before of edith roosevelt and was literally opening, looking in a file that i keep. i'm an inveterate newspaper and magazine clipper about people that interest me. i always keep these articles. and something fell to the floor from the file. and i picked it up, and it was an interview with clare boothe

luce by "the new york times" magazine on the occasion of the opening or at least the reopening the, the revival or her most famous play, "the women" on broadway in 1973. and i realized as i began to read this article that i kept it for good reason. this was a fascinating perp. who was a girl -- person. who was a girl who at 9 years old had understudied mary pickford on broadway, had starred -- not starred, but she was the friend of the star -- in an edison movie that was filmed out of the new jersey studios. and at the age of 20 she'd married her first multimillionaire -- [laughter] and then having had one child with him, had divorced and eventually married henry luce. so i began to think about this subject and whether it was a possibility, and quite by chance in the next two or three weeks various people called me up or i

encountered various people who all brought up the name of clare boothe luce. and the first one was on the bill blog show which was a midday radio show that my husband was going on to promote his first roosevelt book, i think. go into the studio, and there was a man, howard jarvis, proposition 13 -- california man -- and he came up to me x he said, good book you wrote on edith roosevelt. next book for you, clare boothe luce. i was taken aback because i hadn't even mentioned this to my husband yet. this was just days after the article. and then a week later i got an invitation from the library of congress. daniel -- [inaudible] who it was then. and he invited me to have lunch with his wife and himself. he said he was a fan of the roosevelt book and would like to meet me, so i went to washington

and had lunch with him, and he asked me what i was going to do next. and i found myself saying, well, clare boothe luce is this really interesting woman. and he said, oh, i'm spending christmas with her, i'll put in a good word for you. and then literally the following week i got another phone call from washington from selma roosevelt. and she was giving a dinner party, and she was inviting me to it. she said, it's actually for alistair horne, the english historian, biography of harold mcmillan, the prime minister. and she said clare boothe luce is coming. and i thought, is god trying to tell me something? [laughter] so i go to washington again, and she's -- she doesn't know that i have this in mind at all, mrs. roosevelt. but she seated me at mrs. luce's table. and she said to me ahead of time, she said she won't take any notice of you, she's not

interested in women at all. she'll only focus on the men -- [laughter] which, of course, she did. she didn't talk to anybody but alistair horne the entire dinner until the very end she lifted her head and said what do you do, young lady? i said, well, i'm a writer. and she said, oh, you're much too young to be a writer. and that was it. [laughter] so at the end of the evening i'm standing at the top of of the stairs waiting to leave, and she came up, and i thought she'd mistaken me for the hostess who was also short and dark. and, go, she was going to kiss me good night. so she gave me a kiss and said good night, you sweet thing, or something like that and swept out. and i was absolutely flabbergasted. so i then plucked up my courage and wrote her the first of several letters asking if i could do her biography. and she was really reluctant at first, but the bostons kind of gave a dinner party, and we got to meet properly there, and she

said she didn't think she could have her story told because she said, i was never -- i never really succeeded at anything to my own expectation, she said. i never reached the top of any particular tree such as sandra day o'connor has done by becoming a supreme court justice. and i said, well, that's not true. you were a successful broadway playwright, you were a congresswoman, you were a fabulous ambassador, all of these things. and at that point she put a nap a kin over her head -- a napkin over her head. [laughter] and dan boston said, oh, here we have an ideal, great subject, an ideal biographer. he said, how about it, clare? and she didn't -- she just sighed deeply and looked at the ceiling. so we went upstairs for coffee, and she sat down next to edmund, as usual, always picked out the men. and at one point she sighed deeply and looked at the ceiling, and she stretched out her arms, patted edmund on the

knee, and she said what are we going to do about your bride? [laughter] and so i got up, and i said are you two talking about me and my tush? i -- my future? i said, i have to future, it seems. she says, oh, yes, you have. i want you to meet my secretary, and you can have a chat with her, and we'll make a decision. and i thought, oh, well, this woman is going to have to decide, is secretary. but i got a call at the hotel in washington saying call mrs. luce. so i called her, and she said, well, go ahead. and i said, oh, well, then what should i do next? and she said, well, it seems to me you're doing it already. [laughter] and so i had the go ahead. and, of course, i didn't really know what i was in for because her collection of papers at the library of congress is larger than most presidential ones. it was over a thousand boxes. and that budget the half of it,

because all the important documents were still -- the personal diaries, the love letters, all of that stuff -- was at her house in hawaii. so i knew at some point i would have to go there because she's not ready to let go of those yet. so i made that trip the hawaii eventually and spent three weeks. but i never got it to see absolutely everything, and there was no photocopying machine at all in that house, and so i was just having to wait for that stuff to be shipped to the library of congress before i could really get to the meat of the story. and it was not until after her death -- and i spent last accept years of her life -- seven years of her life traveling with her, interviewing her and doing my research in between. and she, at the end she was supposed to ship, when she sold the house this hawaii, she was supposed to ship all the papers to the library of congress in a big trunk. and it never arrived. so the last couple of years of her life we were just --

[inaudible] and it wasn't until after her death that i got a call l from a warehouse in washington where her old furniture was stored, and some of the stuff she wanted sold after her death. and somebody called and said there's a big trunk here, and it's clearly labeled library of congress. but it was misshipped to this warehouse. so it took me seven or eight years after she died before i actually got to those papers. so that's a long way of saying this is why biographies take so long, because it's never plain sailing, as you think it's going to be. >> i also was very interested in her as a temperament and a personality. obviously, her life was huge and dramatic, but it begins with

this kind of i wouldn't say poverty, she was more middle, lower middle class, but she goes to chicago and beginning to find her way, and yet it must have been, there must have been some, something driving her, some brilliance that you were drawn to. it's not just the story, it's the person. >> it's the person. it's what she overcame really. she was the daughter of -- i think the illegitimate daughter because i never found the marriage certificate of her parents, and i went everywhere where they had lived and never found it. and then i found a letter from clare to henry luce during one of their marathon discussions of their marital state, and she said i was born on the upper west side probably illegitimate. of course, no big deal today. they all do it now. [laughter] but in those days it was quite a

blot, it seemed. so, in fact, her father was a brilliant man, a wonderful violinist who hoped to have a career as a violinist in the concert platform. but in those days if you had a name like boothe, it wasn't going to wash. you had to have a foreign-sounding name in order to succeed. so he went into the piano manufacturing business, and he had a kind of steinway-like shop in new york city. and then people stopped buying pianos for a period, and he went out of business, and he had the take to the road as a soft drink salesman. and that's why they moved so much, from new york to memphis, to tennessee and then to chicago. and then there was, first, there was another child too, and clare was the second born. her bear was born -- brother was born one year before in 1902, and she was born in 1903.

but she inherited her father's smarts. she inherited her mother's absolutely fabulous looks. her mother was actually more beautiful than she was. and she had street smarts. she was born on the lower west side in the meat-packing district, and from the very immigrants. and clare always thought her participant -- parents were -- [inaudible] but the census forms said they were bavarian lutherans, and her father was the son of a watchtist minister been watchtist minister. but there was no money. so since clare was very much a woman on the make, she soon left mr. luce, went back to new york, too many lovers, rich lovers and eventually was able to put clare through quite decent schools.

there was never enough for college, so clare left school at 16, and then the next challenge for her mother was to get her married to somebody wealthy. so she started off, she well knew with really wrong values which were inculcated be -- by her mother. and at the end of her life, she said to me mother poisoned my life. by that she meant she gave her those wrong values. clare always had to be rich. money was the most important thing. after she her first alimony -- half a million dollars which was quite a lot in 1929 -- she didn't really need any money. she could have lived in a very nice new york apartment with the daughter from that marriage and raised her, but she always wanted more. so i think it's a characteristic of the narcissistic personality that it's nothing is ever enough. you always have to have more of

everything, more wealth, more fame, more love, more of everything. she was quite ip satiable. and -- insatiable. and she was like that until she died. that never changed. >> talk about this idea of the narcissistic personality. as completely fascinated by her mental struggles, not only did she have what maureen dowd in her review called the cascading calamities, i believe, but she also struggled against -- i was trying to sort it out myself. you don't really say much about bipolarity which is what i think she really had. her capacity to reinvent herself perpetually year after year -- >> yes. >> -- was amazing in itself. then she had depression which she called the dismals, and she clearly -- and substance abuse including lsd, i guess, if you

call lsd substance abuse. maybe -- the way you write it, it's fun. [laughter] >> i think that's what a lot of lsd takers will tell you, is they had good trips. yes, the bipolar thing i hadn't thought of because i was always slightly wary of these terms which become fashionable all of a sudden. for instance, princess diana was a borderline personality, whatever that means. other people are bipolar. but a doctor called me up and said, what is it with this woman, is she bipolar or what? so you had the same feeling. >> my wife's a psychiatrist, so we talked -- >> you talked about it? >> yeah. every biography we read it's what was the diagnosis. [laughter] >> part of our work. [laughter] in this case when you think of it, that she could have been a

playwright, a screenwriter, a politician, i loved that. she said, she quits politics after fighting her way into an actual seat in congress. politics is for second rate minds. >> refuge. >> oh, the refuge. >> so that's not good enough. and then all the other amazing things she did including being a scuba diver and -- >> [inaudible] >> i forgot the mosaicist part. and was a surfer. >> yep. >> but this is a kind of, this is uncanny. this is not each within the realm -- even within the realm of by polarity as we know it -- bipolarity as i we know it. >> no. >> and i wonder what you think, of course, she had extraordinary talent of every kind, but what was it that drove her from one thing to another?

is it, was it what you described as this insatiability? >> it's two things. she had an incredible intellect. she was always the most brilliant person in any room. and henry luce always thought he was the most brilliant person in the room until he married her -- [laughter] had to concede. and he wrote in a letter to her once, i'm so amazed i'm in a room with you, there are scientists, politicians, there are doctors, there are playwrights, there are directors, there are movie people, and he said you always appear the all of them, and i find myself ip wardly bowing to you -- inwardly bowing to you. so he was always supportive of her in every way. but because she didn't have what she called, she used to call it the american express card, she didn't have the college degree, she was always afraid she was going to get found out in any job that she tackled. one day they're going to find out i'm not qualified to do

this. so she would move on before. and she had candidly admitted this to me. but, of course, she was capable. and that was proven particularly when she became ambassador to rome. because as you know in those days, particularly the '50s, they were extremely chauvinistic, the italians. and they thought it was an actual insult that president eisenhower appointed a woman ambassador to their country. it was an insult. and also to the diplomats themselves who worked in the embassy, they were all career diplomats. they were very resentful that none of them got the job, and they were highly qualified for it, and then this woman is going to come and be their boss. so when she went and shook hands with all of the top embassy people, she just got this sense they didn't want her. but it took her all of one week to win them over, because immediately they saw she just

had come so well prepared. and they, one of them i interviewed, the chief of staff there, and he said that the turning point was that the first time she went to meet with the italian premier, prime minister, she came back, and after an hour and a half meeting and gave them verbatim everything that was discussed word for word. and they thought this is a bit too much, she's making it up. she's a playwright, after all, she's inventing -- [laughter] so they went over and got the transcripts from the italian foreign office, and they had taken notes, of course. so they had the content of the meeting. and it was word for word. so she just had total recall. apart from everything else. she never forgot anything. and another example of that, you mentioned scuba diving. when she first went to learn scuba diving -- she always took

best teachers. she always got the best person. so in bermuda she got the very, very best teacher. and he at first took her into the aquarium to see all of the creatures that she would encounter in the deep. and all the see athem inmies, all the vegetation, the large fish, the angel fish, everything, bare dude das even -- baracudas. and he said her face was absolutely impassive. i had the feeling she was totally bored, and she wasn't interested in this instruction. so he quickly changed the subject and went and did the first diving lesson. but then after she went down the first time and she came back up, she recounted every single thing with latin names of everything she'd seen down there. and he had thought she hadn't taken anything in, but she took absolutely everything in and remembered all the proper names. for the creatures, sorry. >> that reminds me of another

example of her intellectual power when she answered this article in the atlantic by the princeton philosophy professor, and she had to -- it was an essay about nihilism, and she was aa nowed at the conclusions -- annoyed at the conclusions he came to. i guess she didn't like nihilism. but she -- i wrote this down on my little phone here. it was, yeah, it was man against darkness. >> yes. ..

to people with her ambitions and ruthlessness. and if she does come across also has a kind of tragic figures whose troubled in her relationships and her marriage was very moving in a way. these two powerful people who cannot find solace in each other and yet are profoundly attached, a power couple of that era. they're is a great fun refing your book of cleared gazing at the when henry, and you can see how much.

but there were so driven to their own way that they could not finally find happiness with each other. >> there were about always had to have a man in her life to give up everything for her. stay at this high regard for themselves in one way, but in another where they don't think much of themselves. once gm made a conquest then they start to have self doubts about whether they deserve the love of this person. that, of course, is a classic case for what happened. when they first met he was married with two small children. it was a stroke of lightning for him. he just fell for her immediately one woman in my life and i have to be within. at first he thought he wanted to have her as his mistress.

see how it goes for yourself. she was too smart for that. she said, i'm going to go abroad. you have to sort out your personal affairs. you're freak and come to me. she went to the french riviera. the visitor there. i'm going to go ahead of the. and so what happened. of course he perron such a pedestal that after those two years of marriage she always had trouble sexually, but after the first two years he couldn't make love to run all. he put her on such a pedestal. my husband one squid, it's hard to make love on a pedestal. at any rate, that was really the end of them intimacy. they stayed together over 30 years in the end. and then somebody said once, why should all be will be miserable? just as well they stayed together.

>> well, i don't want to be overly -- to discuss what richard ullman described as the anatomical convolution of the relationship. but she had such a powerful aphrodisiac a fact on man it is hard to picture really what went into that. when she falls in love. in sub -- this is a great movie. [laughter] >> let you in on a secret. once avengers already. >> it would make a great movie. >> absolutely. >> the thing about the conquest is it was a lifelong. every man, no matter what her age was, she was seductive p.m.

she just learned it her mother was like that. i remembered my gave her 80th birthday party for her in washington. in one of the gas was richard cohen, the "washington post" columnist who was a young man in his '40's. that point. and at the end of the evening they were sitting side by side and accounts. at the end of the evening they were sitting side by side on a couch, and she lifted up her hand and started to stroke his hair and beard. [laughter] and she said she is 80 years old and a never wanted to jump into bed. never did that before. >> he's not here, and he wouldn't mind this, but he's not so picky.

[laughter] i know what you mean. and that kind of -- what was it like to, actually, did you feel this when you were with her, or was it -- this is one of the things i'm very curious about. when you're writing a biography about someone to whom you actually have access, did she radiate this kind of intensity, or is she just the old lady sitting there? >> no. she was always on one way or another, and either she was funny, she was being very huge rouse, being very intellectual, very thick or always very intense -- sympathetic. and the same thing happened when she was not feeling so good. she had deep depressions. i won't tell you the ultimate things that happened as a result

of those depressions, but i remember right at the end, near the end of her life getting a phone call. it was a saturday, and she said i've got a terrible attack of the dismals. i said, what is it? she said, well, i'm very low in the mind. i said, why, what is it? she said, well, it's saturday night, and i haven't any bowls. she's 80. so i said, well, what kind of a bowl would you like at this statement of your life? she said, well, homosexual admiral would be good. [laughter] ..

we will talk about this. but she had other things on her mind. she wanted to talk about the marriage to come and play all his princeton glee club songs and things like the who is so you could never -- she was so strong willed. there was no way that she would talk of a window if she did not want to buy is a you had to go with the flow. you have to just change your agenda and try and think of some questions to ask her about the first marriage or ever was on her mind.. >> used to say, what are you here to talk abt >> that's interesting. what are you here to talk about?

>> and he tried to change the subjectct. >> you would just start talking about what he wanted to talk about. that is what they did. the description of how that works. well, so i was debating whether to mention it at all, but -- oh, wait. actually, there was a question. he did not answer a question . about her depression had consequences you will tell us about. what kind of -- [laughter] >> i don't want them to have all of the goodies before. >> okay. by the book. but i will tell you what nice little thing. she always said later as part of an experiment. in 1959 they really thought that lsd was going to be a really good drug for use with psychotics, prisoners,

violent criminals, with the presses, just ordinary depressed people. and they wanted to try it out on various kinds of people, not only the prisoners and psychotics, but also on highly intelligent people and artistic people to see if it enhanced the particular skill. and clear, of course, was game for this because she always wanted to the latest thing. even on her deathbed as she was reading the latest quantum physics and chemistry. yet all the latest gadgets. she never ever just wanted to live in the past. so she became part of this experiment. she did not work at first with dr. sidney cohen who was running the experiment for the veterans hospital in california, but he had a friend, and who was actually an english philosopher. and he was allowed to administer to clare so long as he recorded how she reacted to the drug. they would say, took

100 milligrams at half past 12. it started to talk about this -- ocala the flowers are breathing. saw the natural world enhanced. she had always good trips anyway usually. so many years go by. she takes in quite a few years off and on. then, of course, it is made illegal in about 1955, 56. she does not take it anymore. she bumps into abbie hoffman in an elevator at a convention, the republican national convention in miami and she met him in the elevator. out of the blue whether he had read about this, i don't know. there was a new york times reporter in the elevator. this is one of the story. have you ever taken lsd. why, yes. as a matter of fact i have.

well, did you have a good trip? yes, i did. but i only took it the once. just the ones. he said, well, i am glad you had a good trip. and by then the elevator has reached the ground floor. well, see you in nevada. and goes off. [laughter] >> i forgot that among her activities or identities was being a preliminary stoner. [laughter] and then ask you my last question. something psychedelic about memory. [inaudible question] >> yes. yes. >> microphone. >> microphone. staring at her.

old oyster-eyed, and headed away more. >> and they said something. at one point she was just going under. she was only just taking the milligrams. what was the word? what is the word now? she is -- they use a word in el st. i have forgotten it. i can't tell the story because i can't remember the word now. but she said constituted. yes, constituted. she said, i really prefer to be this constituted. he had really cleared her pitch. she was actually confirmed by the senate. but she made such a wicked crack about one of her most really vicious interrogators

of the senate hearings, a democratic senator. she was independent by then from oregon. he gave her such a tough time that when people reported after about it and she said, well, of course it goes back many years when the senator was kicked in the head by a horse. [laughter] >> and it was one wisecrack too many. perry said, you can't cope. he is head of the latin affairs committee. you will never get anything from brazil at all. and they need a lot of stuff. so he advised her that she had to resign. she resigned the appointment. by then to she sold her apartment in new york, bought all kinds of equipment because she found out that brazil for seven months of the year was the same temperature as august in new york. she get the air-conditioned car and of the air conditioners for the trip.

she even had oliver stationery printed everything. but it was not to be. and i don't think she regretted it because it turned out that harry had already begun a major affair at that time, and if she had gone i think she would have left him. because absence did not make the heart grow fonder in that case. it just freedom of to see the misters more easily. >> my last totally unfair question. what next? retirement. working on edison now. it just keep doing this. we don't know how to do anything else. >> with the trouble is it takes so long and you don't have your own life for all those years. i was interviewing her friends, staying in her house, traveling with her, living her life for many to

one many years. my friends will tell you this. and neglect my friends, family. i did not see my sister for three years. this is an all consuming thing. and you have the same exact thing. >> yes, but i took only one-third of the time. >> he did it in one volume. >> mine is slight compared to your work. >> she led nine lives. he just wrote. he didn't have a visit -- vivid extracurricular life, did he? >> not after a fashion, no. in his own way. he just took a lot of courses. courses in life. so anyway, this concludes the formal portion of our problem. in the hope that we can entertain some questions from the audience. oh, okay. >> you have to go to the microphone. >> the microphone comes

right to you. >> all right. >> i get to pick? okay. >> hi. that was wonderful. as a mother and an narcissus to, how was she as a mother? also, do you think she could have been as sociopath being a narcissist? coming, that goes together. >> is goes together, but -- >> this is not payne whitney . >> talking of pain whitney. >> her doctor said that she should be committed at some point. about the time marilyn monroe went there, i think. around that time. and she, fortunately -- i beg your pardon, fortunately the very next day when he was about to commit her and she got a call from eisenhower. the pope had died. then she converted to catholicism.

he sent her to rome to represent him at the pope's funeral. two weeks later she had to go back for the coronation of the new pope, john the 23rd. so that saved her at that point. she was on the verge of going. heard depressions were so acute that she really went to the bottom many times. and the one daughter that she had, of course, being a rich, young not woman about town in those days in the 30's, got the job on vanity fair, in two years was managing editor, she could not take care of the child. the child wasn't the way the schools in the country. she went to rosemary hall in connecticut. then fox grove in virginia. and eventually ended up at stanford university. and i will tell you what happened to the dollar because that is another thing that is a big part of

the book. but she regretted the above course because the daughter did die young, she regretted the time she had not spent with her, all the childhood was not there for her. she did not see her really growing up. but she was a working mother. as i say, this biography, the two volumes together, it is an inspirational tale in many ways about how much one person can do and how to live your life up to the hilton do everything that you can because death is waiting for assault. it is also a cautionary tale because nobody has it all in the end, no matter how many seem to have it all. in our case you missed the most valuable thing of all. it was taken from her.

>> thank you very much for the enlightening discussion. my name is viejo fallon. i am on the faculty at hunter. wonder whether you could assess the place in history. she did a lot of things. what do you think she did that was important and lasting? and then, going from the sublime to the ridiculous, what was it that particularly fascinated you about her? he spent a great deal of time with her. what was it that was so compelling to you about her? >> her humor, i think, was the most compelling thing. so original. it was always there. and so that no matter how much of mostar she was being she always had that saving grace of humor and saw humor and other people. and then so that, for me, was everything.

not everything but, of course, her intellect as well. i think she was a renaissance woman in a way because she she did so many things. three broadway hits all made into movies, all successful spirit of the war had not come along and if she had not then been in the concentration camps and seen all the terrible things that she had saw, when she came back and wanted to go back to playwriting the satirical, witty comedies and could not do it because she had seen too much by then the world was not funny anymore. it was deadly serious. it is probably the thing that she thought was her chief gift, playwright. she could no longer do. particularly after she converted to catholicism because then she could not write this nasty stuff about women that she wrote and the satire. so -- and she said, well, i

did not reach the top of any treaty. that is true. she was not tennessee williams. he probably was not the best carver's woman that ever lived. i think she was probably one of the best ambassadors, certainly the only one to get a major foreign post until then. there have been other ambassadors, but luxembourg or norway, but not a major post like rome. she did it brilliantly, and everyone said so. everyone was heartbroken when she left. i think that is probably her chief acrylate, although she would not have said that. the thing in death that think she did so well, she asked me what she should do with her money. she lets go of $59. and i said, well, encourage women in their own field like playwrighting or in diplomacy prevailed not gone as far as they did. she was smarter than i was.

she said, women have not gone as far as they can go in mathematics and sciences. she left the bulk of her fortune to 13 scholarships for women in the arts -- sorry, in the mathematics and sciences. that money every year, scholarship for a woman who excels in that field, one of those two fields. they get scholarships. it is administered actually by two people. she put her clare boothe luce foundation under the umbrella of another foundation that was already in place. they had all the staff. it saved setting up another foundation where you have all those salaries duplicated. she was canny that way, thrifty. the pine coffin when she died of all of that. she was still really in the ghetto. the way she thought about money, she was thrifty in that way. and so the other people

should get part of the administering of the scholarships was the heritage foundation. so they both interviewed for candidates. it is not just one. both of them have to approve every year 13 women. i think that is a marvelous legacy for her. yes. >> okay. yes. >> we will let you. [inaudible question] >> chosen to do her biography. i can't imagine anyone that could have done it better. i was wondering, what quality about you do you think that she enjoyed the most since he spent so much time with there and she seems like the kind of a woman that only be with somebody and she really enjoyed. and do you think that she allowed you to put her under a microscope?

was it to create a legacy or -- i will let you answer. >> says. welcome way she liked me, i think it's because i'm so different from her. and it i aspire to many different things. i'm happy if i can do one. but also, i think she wanted the story told once and for all because she was courageous. and so she kept every scrap of paper, many that did not show are in a good light. but she let me see absolutely everything. she knew that i would try to be fair, i think a man balanced. i am not going to make her st. but also not end of course. because i did not have that intention. i think every human being has different facets. we're not of good. there is good and bad in all of us.

she knew that. i think she wanted the truth told police she was courageous in that way. >> as difficult as it is to be a biographer of -- as difficult as it is to be a biographer, what do you think the happen to biographers 30 years from now, the subjects of today don't write letters let alone diaries. there will be trucks of letters. will they have to go through infinite idiotic e-mails said twitters filled with nonsense? what will they do? >> i am not a twitter person myself. and not into all of that. at think those things are not saved, are they? i know we printout business letters. but most people are not preserving their life in that way unless they're keeping diaries, which i also doubt. so really i think it is going to be a dying art if it is an art at all, biography.

>> has a great question, actually it is an art. a biography is certainly an art. but not only -- and that's try very hard not to be nostalgic, but i am anyway. everything is over i think the the repository of documentss that have always constituted the evidence that we use in writing biographies will simply not exist in that forum. it is true perry letters, journals, made his group's. when you write your book or article you don't have that anymore.

so i guess what will happen is that it will be different and people will be seen it differently and that we will watch them through video and record them in very different ways. that, in turn, will affect the way we think about personality. what are the traits of qualities that show in the best light. you have to be telegenic or visually adapt and appealing >> turkey. no change is writing, just finished actually a book on the art of biography. he is probably addressed many of the subject you're interested in. my husband today pointed out -- and have not read the time judge, but he had read something about the art and the humanitiest ..studied it causes a more.

the study of english and english literature used to be the number one choice of colleges. it is now not even in the top 70. >> that is because it was easy. >> and so if you don't have those skills you're not learning the skills about how right at all, let alone biographies or inaugurals. it is going to be a dying art. >> time will tell. if i can say, make the last point, have the last word if i can take the part of of the interview. still here writing these long bare face and actually will be, i suspect. we have accomplished something very great. he really have can shed a life, a very complex life of a difficult person and managed to do this with not only all