shareholders and generate profits and they have their responsibilities and their fiduciary responsibilities as corporations and they are not the library of congress. google books has a lot of utility but it could be shutdown at any moment if it isn't prompt profitable enough. we use this analogy but don't know how to bolster them and create things we want the int internet to be. it is more of a shopping mall than a digital town square. >> host: you write about the companies that are commercial

enterprises that are designed to make revenue and not facilitate creativity and the people that work there are private employees not public servants. you also write, astra taylor, in order to find the world you are looking for other options would be to demand that radio and television broad casters play te rate for technology or maybe thy technology compatible. >> guest: there is an idea that the tool kits of the pre-internet age like you know the idea of public broadcasting and public media and the idea of grants to fund things or i don't know the national endowment for the arts or all of these things

seem like they are obsolete because we leave in a digital age. and the internet is somehow technilogically behind regulations and i did go through basic examples and there are lots i don't talk about in the book but public sub-saharsidies and the public isn't reaping the rewards. they are going into private hands at a disporportianate rate. we give it to wireless companies who pay less than the market rate and it is a complicated issue.

but should there be more robust demand for public service and requirements of exchange. there are subsidies for internet infrastructure and broadbrand and there are subsidies for copy write which has been extended. and there is an argument once you extend copy write for dec e decades the government is granting a monopoly and it is a subsidy. we need to take these examples into account and look at the way that the public is not reaping the rewards and meanwhile, we

are told, you know, journalism is in crisis and there is no money and advertising is the only rational way to do thing. so i am trying to challenge the underpinning and economic logic we take for granted to show that there is lots of money flowing behind the scenes and there are other ways we can organize the entire system and there are precedents for it. they are in the past and if we look at other countries doing things in different ways. >> host: and astra taylor, what is your background? you were unschooled until you were 13 years old. i have a note saying that. >> guest: i was unschooled in athens, georgia. it is a radical version of home schooling where the idea is human beings are naturally curious and if left to their own devices they will find out what

they are interested in. when i was 13, i decided i should try public school and see how everybody else did it. it was quite a cultural shock. >> host: are you glad you did it? >> guest: i am glad i did it. it was a real education. maybe not of the kind that we think of as being conventional school education. but certainly expanded by horizon. you can see the after effects of being unschooled in this project. school was an institution for me that we would imagine could be different and not taken for granted and not something we had to go to. you can see that in this book and in my reflections on the entire media system. why do things have to be organized this way?

why do we have to accept things are going in one direction when these are manmade institutions and we can change them and make them into the something better. >> host: here is the book: "the people's platform: taking back power and culture in the digital age" astra taylor is the author. this is c-span. >> sylvia jukes morris recounts the late of the late conservative commonitator clare boothe luce who was elected to congress in 1942. this program last about an hour. >> i am the senior i am the senior director of the program and chief operating officer here at roosevelt house.

it is my great pleasure to welcome you to "price of fame: the honorable clare boothe luce" by sylvia jukes morris. price of fame is the second in her masterful volume on clare boothe luce was published 17 years ago. and both books are models of her art. researched and sophisticated and fair minded and compulsively readable. we are gathered in the former home of franklin and elenor roosevelt where i think it is safe to assume clare boothe luce wasn't a social visitor. her relationship with the roosevelts was what one might say complicated. she supported fdr earlier on but soon became one of his most

outspoken critics and once accusing him of being the only american president who lied us into a war because he didn't have the nerve to lead us into it. he was in competition with ms. roosevelt for most poplar woman into the u.s. she had overcome the disadvantage of her childhood and was successful in multiple careers. luce may have disagreed with much of ms. roosevelts policy but she was recommended that truman ask her to be his running mate. she wrote that ms. luce would be an able ambassador who would

represent us well. price of fame goes into the detail about luce's ship with the roosevelt and so many figures of the 20th century. and of course her stormy marriage to mr. luce. sylvia jukes morris makes an appearance in a wonderful account of how she became clare boothe luce biography. it is a great privilege to have her here tonight. born in england and her husband is a writer as well who i am proud to have here with us. she is the author of a book on edith roosevelt, another-person who had a complicated relationship with the resident

of the house. our moderator is james atlas. he is finding editor of the viking press and the author of life of an american poet which was nominated for a national book award. in addition to his memoir he has written for the "the new york times" and vanity affair. so please welcome the two in what promises to be a fascinating conversation. thank you. [applause] >> first of all, my printer broke just before coming here with all of my notes so i had to put them on my phone.

and this is this generation that doesn't under how anything works. it is all in my head. the first sentence i was going to say i have known clare for decades and what is wrong with this sentence. i could not stop doing it. it is always clare this or clar, that and i realized it is because sylvia did her job and managed to convince the reader she was her subject and that is the goal of what we biographers

do; become the character. you are close to the record although others have succeeded you and your husband edward. in page numbers, since we are just doing the stats here, only a few biographers with five volumes like henry james have exceeded this many. but one of the most amazing things about this book is that it doesn't feel long. as dr. johnson said of mill ashton's paradise lost none would have wished it longer. i could have stood a few more pages. it told a tremendous work of

scholarship and art. clare boothe luce isn't someone who one feels the subject large enough and didn't warrant a book this size but the subject was and did warrant a book this size. as a professional biographer i read the footnote and acknowledgme acknowledgment. and you did a magnificent job on that part. 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 wanted to say one more thing about sylvia who i have known for many decades. she called me a couple weeks ago and said it was important to talk. i thought it would have to do with the logistics of the operation here. but instead she said i want to be sure that we talk about you and your biographies and i have no trouble doing this but this wasn't the occasion or moment and i went to give further evidence of her generosity. that is the beginning or the end where this chapter is. >> well first of all, you

finished your book and now you are like all bioographers which is what is next. one of the topics suggested was edward wilson. he looked at the archives and saw it was meaty but he knew he wrote about himself. and he spent five years thinking about if he was going to do this knowing it would take ten years to write about it and he decided he didn't have the taste and didn't like wilson enough. so that fell through. and then paul who had the same background and they were alive and able to meet and so on. this is a long way of saying in a way sometimes you are not

relate today to a topic and it isn't one that suits you. i finished the book on edith roosevelt and was looking for another thing. i am a magazine clipper of people that interest me. i keep articles on people that interested me. and something fell from the file to the floor. it 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 reopening of her most famous play the women on broadway in 1973. i realized i kept it for good reason. this was a fastinating person. nine years old and understood marry pickered on broadway.

starred at the age of 13, or not starred but friend of the star in an edison movie filmed in new jersey. he married her first multi-million air at the age of 20 and having had a child with him she had divorced and married henry luce. i began to think about this subject and various people in the next couple weeks called me up and all brought up the name of clare boothe luce. the first was the midday radio show and my husband was going on promote his first roosevelt book, i think. we went into the studio and there is howard jarvis and he

came up to me and i never met him and he said next book you will write is about clare boothe luce. i was taken back because i had not mentioned this to my husband. a got a letter from the library of congress and the man said he was a fan of the book and would like to meet me and i went and he had what are you going to do next? and i said clare boothe luce is an interesting women and he said i am spending christmas with her. i will put in a good word for you. and then a week later i got another call from washington and i was invite today a dinner

party and she said ally -- al alister horn -- and clare boothe luce are coming. so i go to washington and she doesn't know i have this in mind, ms. roosevelt, but she seated me at clare boothe luce table and said she will not take any interest in you. she will only focus on the men. she didn't speak to anybody but alister until the very end and she had what do you do young lady and i said i am a writer and she said oh, you are much too young. at the end of the evening, i am standing at the top of the stairs waiting to leave.

she came up and i thought she mistook me from the hostess but no, she kissed me good night and swept out. i was flabbergasted. so then i worked up my courage and wrote her the first of several letters asking if i could do her biography. she was unsure at first but we had a dinner party and met there and she said she didn't think she could have her story told because she said i never really succeeded at anything. my own expectations, she said, i never reached the top of any particular tree not like sandra day o'connor has done. and i said you were a broadway

playwrite and congress person and ambassador. and at that point she put a napkin over her head and said how about it? and she just sighed deeply and we went up stairs to coffee and she sat down next to edmond, sighed and looked at the ceiling and stretched out her arm and patted edmond on the knee and said what are we going to do about your bride? and so where got up and said you two talking about me and my future and i said i have no future it seems. and yes, you have. i want you to meet me secretary and you can have a chat with her and we will make a decision. and i said this woman is going to have to decide, the secretary. and i was in washington doing

research already and got a call at the hotel saying it was ms. luce and i called and she said go ahead. and i said what should i do next? and she said well it seems to me you are doing it already. and so i had to go ahead and of course i didn't know what i was in for because her collection of papers in congress is larger than most presidential ones. over a thousand boxes. and that wasn't all of it. all of the important documents, the diaries and love letters were at her house in hawaii and i knew i would have to go there. i made the trip to hawaii and spent a few weeks. i never thought to see a photo copy machine in the house and i was having to wait for that

stuff to be shipped to the library of congress before i could get to the meet of the story. it wasn't until after her death and i spent the last seven years of her life interviewing and doing research in between and at the end she was supposed to ship -- when she sold the house in hawaii she was going to ship the papers to library of congress and it never arrived. so the last couple years of her life she wanted to conceal that and it wasn't until after her death i got a call from a wa warehouse in washington where her furniture was stored and there was a big trunk labelled

library of congress but it was misshipped to the warehouse. so it took seb' years to get to the papers. this is why biographies take so long because it is never plain sailing as you think it will be. >> i was very interested in her as temperament and personality. her life was obviously huge and dramatic but it begins with this kind of dry and more lower middle class but she went to chicago and beginning to find her way and it must have been something driving her, some brilliance that you were drawn to. it wasn't the story it was the person. >> it is what she overcame

really. she was the daughter, and i went everywhere trying to find letters from her parents but never found them. i found a letter that talked about you are probably legitimate. in those days it was quite an awful think. in fact, her father was a brilliant man, a wonderful vile violinist. and if you had a name like booze it would not wash. you had to have a foreign sounding name in order to succeed. so he went into piano

manufacturing business and then people stopped buying pianos for a period and he went out of business and had to take the road as a sales man and that is why they moved so much from new york to memphis and there was another child, too. clare was the second born. her brother was born one year before. and 1902 and she was born in 1903. but she inherited her father's smarts and inherited her mother's fabulous looks. her mother was more beautiful than she was. and she had street smarts and was born on the lower side in the meat packing district from immigrants and they also thought her parents were catholic.

at least her mother but the forms proved they were lutherans. bavarian lutherans and her father was the son of a baptist minister. but there was no money. clare's mother was a woman on the make very much. she soon left him in chicago, came back to new york, took l e lovers and was able to put clare through two decent schools but there wasn't enough for college. then the next challenge for her mother was to get her married to someone wealthy. she started off with strong values when were in stistilled her mother. at the end of her life she said my mother poisoned by life and she meant she gave her values

she could never shake. clare always had to be rich. after marrying the first husband and getting ally alimony she didn't really need money but she wanted more always. so i think is a characteristic of the narcissistic personality that nothing is enough. you always need more wealth, more fame, more love, more everything. she was like that until she died. >> let's talk about the idea of the narcissistic personality. fascinated by her mental statea

cascadeing calamities but she struggedal with -- struggled with being bipolar and depression and what she called the abyssmaland substance abuse if you call lsd a substance abuse. you write it is just fun. >> i think that is what a lot of lsd people tell you if they had good trips. i wasn't aware of the terms like bipolar. and princess diana because

border line personality. but a doctor called me up and said what is it with this woman is she bipolar? you got the same feeling? >> reporter: my wife is a psychologist so every bioography becomes what is the diginosis. when you think of it in her case she could have been a play write, a screen writer, an ambassador, a politician -- she quits politics after fighting her way into a seat in congress and says she has a second rate mind. >> refugee of second class mind. ... 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 she was always afraid she would get found out in any job 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 in those days, the '50s, they were extremely shaw vannistic. they thought it was an insult that president eisenhower appointed a woman ambassador to theirs country. it was an insult.

and also to the diplomats themes who 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 hand with all of the tom embess people, she -- embassy people she got the response, they account want her. but it took one week to win them over because immediately they saw she just had come so well prepared. and they want -- one of them, i interviewerred the chief of staff there, and he said that the turning point was that the first time she went to meet with the 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 she is making it up. she is inventing this, she is a pray writhe so they went over and got the crypts from the italian foreign office, and they had taken notes, of course, so they that 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. another example of that, you mentioned scuba diving. she always took the best teacher, so in bermuda she got the very, very best teacher, and he took her into the aquarium to see all of the creatures she would encounter in the deep. and all the sea aenemy anies, vegetation, angel fish, everything, barracudas, and he said her face was absolutely impassesive. i had the feeling she was

totally bored and wasn't interested. so i changed the subject and we went and did our first diving lesson. then after she went down the first time and came back up, she recounted every single thing with the latin names of everything she'd seen down there, and he had thought she hadn't taken anything it, but she took absolutely everything in. and remembered all the proper names. for the creatures. >> host: that reminds me of another example of her intellectual power when she answered the article in the atlantic by the princeton philosophy professor, and she had to -- it was an essay about -- she was annoyed at the conclusions that he came to, nihilism, and she -- i wrote this down, it was -- man against

dartmouth, and so she drafted this reply, and reading the marks and ingles and all these other intellectual figures and wrote a very persuasive short book about it. it amazed me. a side of her that was -- even with "haven't fair" and it didn't -- the book is really a tragic book. i to the she comes across as incredibly overbearing and kind of just intolerable to people with her undisguised amibition, and her ruthlessness, and she comes off as a tragic figure who

struggled in her relationship and her marriage to luce was moving. two powerful people who cannot find solace in each other and yet are profoundly aattached, a power couple. there's a great photograph in your book of clare gazing up at henry luce, and you can see how much loving they are, but they were so driven, each in their own way, they couldn't finally find happiness with each other. >> guest: yes, both damaged people, i think. he, for him, of course, she also had to have a man in her life give up everything for her. narcissist again. they had this high regard for themes in one way but in another way don't think much of

themself. so once they made the conquest, then they start to have self-doubts about whether they deserve the love of this person. and that, of course, i classic case of what happened with them. when they first met he was married, had two small children, and it was a -- a stroke of lightning. he just fell for her immediately and said, you are the one woman in my life and i have to be with you. and at ferret he wanted to have her as his miss industry, see how it -- mistress. but she was too smart. she said i'm going abroad and you have to sort out your personal affairs and then when you're free, you can come to me. so she went to to french riviera, and it happened. and he put her on such a ped school, after the first two

years -- he had trouble sexually, and after two years, he couldn't perform at all. my husband said, it's hard to make love on a pedestal. so anyway, that was the end of their intimacy. two years of marriage, but they stayed together over 30 years in the end. and then as somebody said once, why should four people be miserable. well, they stayed together. >> host: i don't want to be overly -- to discuss what right-hand almond describes as the anatomical convolutions of their relationship but they were -- she had a -- such a powerful aphrodisiac affect on men. it's hard to picture really what went into that, when she falls

in love with luce in italy and ends up in his -- this is a great movie. >> guest: tell you a secret? got some interest already. it would make a great movie, actually. the thing about the conquest, too, it was life-long. every man, no matter what her age was, she was seductive. she just learned this from her mother -- at her mother's knee. she her mother was like that you could call them advanced in the old days, but clare -- i. i gave her 80th birthday party for her in washington, and one of the guests was richards cohen, the "washington post" columnist, who was a young man in his 40s at that point. and 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. and she is 80 years old. never wanted to jump into bed with an 80-year-old before. >> host: well, he is not here. he wouldn't mind this but he is not so picky. [laughter] >> guest: oh, dear. >> host: 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 thing i'm curious about. when you're writing a biography about someone to whom you actually have access, disshed radiate this intensity or just

-- >> guest: she was always on, one way or another. either she was funny, humorous, intellectual, or she was being very sympathetic, or always very intense, and the same thing happened when she was nose feeling so good. -- she was not feeling so good. she had deep depression. won't tell you the ultimate things that happened as a result of those depressions, but i remember right tend, near the end of her life, getting a phone call on a saturday, and she said, i've got a terrible attack of the dismals. i said, what is it? she said, i'm very low in the mind. i said, why? she said, it's saturday night. and i haven't any beaus. she is 80. i said what kind of beau would you like at this stage? she said, well, homosexual

admiral would be good, because they come with the uniform and all the medals and everything. but at the end of the evening i wouldn't have to put out. [laughter] >> host: sounds like she wasn't -- did you leave -- these are now collections. did you leave these meetings with her somewhat drained by the emotional experience of simply being with her? >> guest: i was frustrated a lot because i would go there with all my notes on win dale wilky and the campaign of 1940 and talk about this, but clare had other things on her mind. she wanted to talk about the marriage to george brokaw, a drunk, and used to come and play all his princeton tea cup songs, and things like that.

so, you didn't -- you could never -- she was so strong-willed. no way she would talk about wendell wilk if she didn't want to that day so you lad to go with the flow. you had to change your agenda and try and think of some questions to ask her about the first marriage, or whatever was on her mind. >> host: that's interesting. used to say, what are you here to talk about? for decades. but -- >> guest: would he do that, would he try to change the subject? >> host: just wasn't what he wanted to talk about. that's what they did. a very good description of how this works. well, sylvia, i was debating whether to ask this question at all, but -- oh, wait. didn't answer the question. what is it about -- that her depressions had consequences you won't tell us about? >> well, read the book.

i don't want them to have all the goodies or the badies -- >> host: okay, buy the book. >> guest: it's -- i tell you one nice little thing. she did take -- she always said later as part of an experiment, because in 1959, they really thought that lsd would be a really good drug for use with psychotics, with prisoners, violent criminals, with depresssives, ordered depressed people, and they wanted to try it out on various kind of people, not only the prisoners and the psychotics but also on highly intelligent people, and artistic people, to see if it harmed their skills and clare, of course, was game for this because she always wanted to do the latest thing. even on her death bed she was reading the late is quantum physics in chemistry. always had the latest gadgets.

never wanted to live in the past. so she became part of this experiment. she didn't actually work at first with dr. sidney cohen who was running the experiment at the veterans hospital in carr, but he had a friend, a man called jerald hurt, an english fifer, and he was allowed to administer it to clare so long as he recorded how she reacted to the drug. so they would say took 100-milligrams, clare starts to talk about -- oh, the flowers are amazing. she saw all the natural world. she had always good trips, usually, anyway. and so there was many years go by, she takes it for quite a few years off and on. and then, of course, it's made illegal in 1965, '66 and she doesn't take it anymore, but she

bumped into abby hoffman in an elevator at her -- one of the conventions, republican national convention in miami. and she met him in the elevator, and he said house of blue, where he read about this i don't know. it i was a "new york times" reporter in the elevator, and this is how i know this story because she wrote it down. he said, have you ever taken lsd, and she says, well, yes, as a matter of fact i have. and he said, well, did you have good trips? well, yes, i did, but i only took it but ones, she said, just once. and he said, well, i'm glad you had good trips. and then by then the elevator has reached the ground floor and he says, well, see you in nirvana. and got off. >> host: i forgot to -- among her activities or identities was maybe being a stoner, a preliminary stoner, in the

'50s -- sylvia's book is very funny. just read this one sentence and then ask you my last question. there was something psychedelic about clare's memory -- [inaudible] >> guest: yes. >> host: microphone. staring at her old oyster-eyed, coffin-headed wayne morris. >> guest: that was an image she had of him. and they said something, at one point she was just going under, only just taken the milligrams, and she said, oh, i see -- what was the word -- this -- lost the word now -- they use a word in

lsd, con -- i've forgotten it. i can't tell the story because i can't remember the word. but she said, -- constituted. yes, constituted, and she said what i really prefer to see is disconstitution because he had really she was actually confirmed by the senate as ambassador to brazil but she made a wicked track about a vicious interrogator at the senate hearing, wayne morris, an independent, from oregon. he gave her such a tough time when people reported after about it, she said, well, of course, the trouble goes back many years when senator morris was kicked in the head by a horse, and it was one wisecrack too man. hari said you can't go. senator morris is head of the

latin affairs committee. you'll never get anything for brazil at all, and they need a lot of aid. they need a lot of stuff. so he advised her she had to resign. so she resigned the appointment, and by then she had sold her apartment in new york, she bought all kinds of air conditioning equipment because she found out that brazil was the seven months of the year the same temperature as august in new york. and so she got the air conditioned car and all the air conditioners for the trip, and she even had all her stationery printed and everything, and but it wasn't to be. i don't think she was ready because it turned out harry had begun his major affair and if she had gone she would have lost him, because absence didn't make the heart grow fonder. it just freed him up to see the mistress more easily. >> host: so let me just ask you my last totally unfair question.

what next? >> guest: what next? retirement. >> host: never get to retire. edmond is working on edison now. just keep doing this. we don't know how to do anything else. >> guest: no. but problem is it takes so long and you don't live your own life for all those years. i was interviewing her friends, i was staying in her houses. i was traveling with her. was living her life for many, many years, and my friends will tell you this, neglect my friends, my family, i didn't see my sister for three years. this is all-consuming thing if you do it properly, and you had the same exactly with bellow. >> but i took only a third of the time. >> guest: you did it in one volume. >> guest: she led nine lives.

bellow only wrote. he took a lot of courses in life, courses in life. so, anyway, this concludes the formal portion of our program, and i hope we can entertain some questions from the audience. oh, okay. >> guest: you have to go to the microphone. >> the microphone comes right to you. >> you pick them. >> i get to pick? okay. >> that was wonderful. as a mother and a narcissist, how was she as a mother and also do you think she could have been a sociopath? being a narcissist -- that goes together. >> goes together, does it? >> this isn't payne whitney. >> well, talking of payne whit

in the, you just touched on something with payne whitney. her doctor felt she could be committed to payne whitney at some point. about the time marilyn monroe went there, around that time, and she fortunately she got -- i beg your pardon -- fortunately the very next day when he was about to commit her, she got a call from eisenhower, the pope had died, and by then she converted to catholicism so he sent her to rome to represent him at the pope's funeral, and then two weeks later she had to go back for the core nation of the new pope, john xxiii so that saved her from peen payne whit in the because she was on the verge of going because she went to the bottom many time, and the one daughter she had with mr. brokaw, of course being her rich, young, woman about town in

those days in the '30s, got the job on vanityity fair in two years was managing editor, she couldn't take care of the child so the child was sent away to school in the country, and she went to rosemead hall in connecticut and fox grove in virginia, and eventually ended up at stanford university. and i won't tell you what happened to the daughter because that's another thing that is a big part of the book. but she regret, of course, because the daughter did die young. she regretted the time she hadn't spent with her, all the childhood was not there for her. she didn't see her really growing up. all she left her was a mother, too, a lot -- she left her with her mother, too a lot, but she was a working mother, and as i say, clare luce, the two volumes together, it's an inspirational tale in many ways, about how

much one person can do and how to live your life to the -- up to the hilt, do everything you can because death is waiting for us all. it's also a cautionary tale because nobody has it all in the end. no matter how many seem to have it all in her case, she missed the most valuable thing of all, which was time with her only offspring. it was taken from her. >> thank you very much for this enlightening discussion. my name is virginia and i'm on the faculty at hunter. i wonder whether you could assess clare boothe luce's place in history. she dade 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? you spent a great deal of time with her. >> yes. >> what was it that was so compelling about her. >> the humor was the most compelling thing. so original, and always there. and so that i -- no matter how monstrous she was being, she always had that saving grace of humor, and she saw humor in other people, and so that for me was -- not everything, but of course her intellect as well, and i think she was a rein renaissance woman in a way because she did so many things and did most extremely well. three broadway hits all made into movies, all successful, and if the war hadn't come along and he had bon off to be a war correspondent and hadn't then been in the concentration camps and seen all the terrible things she saw, she came back and wanted to go back to playwriting

and couldn't do it because she had seen to much. the word was not funny. the world was deadly serious. so i think it's probably the thing she thought was her chief gift, was playwright. she could no longer do, and particularly after she converted to catholicism, then she couldn't write this nasty stuff about women that she wrote. these satires. so -- she said, i didn't reach the top of any tree. that's what she first said to me. and that is true. she wasn't tennessee williams or arthur miller, and she probably wasn't the best congresswoman that ever lived. i think she was probably one of the best ambassadors, certainly, and the only one to get a major foreign post up to then. there had been other ambassadors, but to lux. burg or norway but not a major post like rome but chev did it brilliantsly and everybody was

heartbroken when she left. i think that's probably her chief accolade, although she wouldn't have said that. the thing in death i think she did do so well, she asked me what she should do with her money. she left over $50 million. and i said, well, encourage women in your own field, like playwrighting or in diplomacy, the hadn't gone as far as they could. but she was smarter than i was. she said women haven't 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 and science -- sorry -- in mathematics and science. that money, every year, is a scholarship for a woman who excels in the field, and one of those two fields, and they get a scholarship. it's administered by two people. she was canny that way, too.

she put her clare boothe luce foundation enough the umbrella of the henry luce foundation because it was already in place, they had the staff. saved setting up another organization where you have salaries duplicated. so she was canny. i had a pine coffin when she died, all of that. still really in the ghetto the way she thought about money. she was very -- the other people she gave, along with the scholarship, was the heritage foundation. they both interview the candidates, not just one. both of them have to approve every year 13 women. i think it's marvelous, marvelous legacy for her. >> thrilled you were chosen to

do her biography. i can't imagine anyone who could have done it better, about i was wondering, what quality about you do you think that she enjoyed the most since you spent so much time with her and she seemed like the kind of woman that would only be with somebody that she really enjoyed, and why do you think that she allowed you to put her under a microscope? was it to create a legacy or -- i'll let you answer. >> yes. well, if she liked me it's because i'm so different from her. and i ato many different things. i'm happy if if can do one thing. but also, i think she wanted the story told, warts and all, as they say, because she was courageous, and so she kept every scrap of