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. ..

overbearing and kind of intolerable to people with her undisguised ambition and her ruthlessness and yet she does come across also as a kind of tragic figure who struggled in her relationships and her marriage to lewis was very moving in a way. these two powerful people who cannot find solace in each other and yet are profoundly attached. there's a great photograph in your book of clare gazing up at

henrik luce and you can see how much in love they are but they were so driven each in their own way that they couldn't finally find happiness with each other. >> guest: very damaged people i think. for him she always had to have the man in her life who gave up everything for. they have high regard for themselves in one day but in another way they don't think much of themselves. once they made the conquest they start to have self doubt about whether they deserve it. that of course is a classic case of what happens to them. he had two small children and it was a stroke of lightning. he just fell for her immediately. 1-woman in my life and i have to

be with him. we see how it goes for a year or so. he was too smart for is that. you have to sort out your personal affairs and when you are free you can come to me. he visited and said i am going to go ahead with it. so it happened. but of course he put her on such a pedicels that after the first few years of marriage she had trouble sexually but after the first two years he couldn't make after her at all. he put her on such a pedestal. my husband once quipped when it is hard to make love on up pedicel. so anyway, that was the end of their intimacy. two years of marriage. they stayed together 30 years in the end. someone said why should four people be miserable?

just as well they stay together. >> host: i don't want to discuss what richard ullman discussed as the anatomical convolutions. she had just such a powerful aphrodisiac. it is hard to picture really what went into that when she falls in love, in italy and end up -- this was a great movie. >> got some interest already. it would make a great movie actually. the thing about the congress too

is it was lifelong. everyman no matter what her age was, she was a skeptic, she learned this at her mother's knee she learned her mother was like that i remember i gave her 82 birthday party for her in washington and one of the guests was richard cohen, the washington post columnist, a young man in his 40s. at the end of the evening they were sitting side by side on a couch and she lifted up her head and started to stroke his hair and beard, stroking his face. and crushes it. never wanted to jump into bed with an 8-year-old before. i thought -- >> host: he wouldn't mind at this but he is not so picky.

>> guest: oh deer. >> host: i know you are being -- that kind of -- what was it like to actually -- when you were with her work was it -- i am very curious when you are writing a biography about someone who you have access, you radiate this kind of intensity or is it just an old lady? >> she was always off one way or another. either she was funny, she was being very intellectual or she was being very sympathetic or she was very intense. the same thing happened when she was not feeling so good and she had deep depression.

one of the things that happened is depression. i remember right at the end of her life getting a phone call and she said i have a terrible attack of the dismals. very low in the mind. why? what is it? it is saturday night. i haven't any bones. g-8 it. i said ideally what kind of bold would you like at this stage of your life? she said homosexual admiral would be good. coming with the uniform and all the metals. i would put out. >> host: sounds like she wasn't. did you -- these are now trained

questions. did you leave these meetings with her somewhat drained by the emotional experience of simply being with her? >> guest: i was frustrated. i would go with my notes on wendell willkie. i am going to talk about this today. mike -- clerc had other things on her mind. to come and play all his princeton songs in his cups and things like that. you could never -- she was so strong wills. there was no way she would talk about wendell willkie she didn't that day. you had to go with the flow, you had to change the agenda and think of some questions about the first marriage or whatever was on her mind. >> host: that is interesting. what are you here to talk about?

>> guest: he did that when he tried to change the subject. >> host: as he was. that is what they did. a description about how this works. i was debating whether to mention it at all. there was a question, didn't answer a question. what is it that her depression had consequences you won't tell us about? >> guest: i don't have all the goodies before -- i tell you one nice little thing. she always said later as part of an experiment, in 1959 dave taco bell sd was going to be a really good drug for use with

psychotics, prisoners violent prisoners, depressives, they wanted to try it out on various kinds of people. they are prisoners and psychotics but i intelligent people and artistic people those particular skills. she had all latest gadgets, she never just wanted to live in part. dr. sidney cohen was running the hospital in california. and administered to clare and

recorded how she reacted to the drug, took 100 milligrams talked-about the flowers are freezing. she saw the natural world in hearts. she had good trips usually any way. many years ago by she takes a few years off and on and then it is made illegal in 1965-66 and doesn't take it anymore so bumps into abbie hoffman in an elevator one of the republican national conventions in miami. and she met him in the elevator and read about this, there was the new york times reporter, this is how i know this story because she wrote it all down.

as a matter of fact i have taken lsd and did you have good trips? yes i did but only took it once. just once. i am glad you had a good trip and bite than the elevator reached the floor see you in nevada. >> i forgot about the activities or identities of mary stoner in the 50s. it was sort of funny. and my last question there was something psychedelic about clare's memories and

appointments. microphone. staring at her. >> guest: and it was additive and at one point she was just going under, and i see what was the word what was the word? they use a word in lsd, i can't tell the story. constituted i really prefer to see constituted because after that i pointed to the ambassador to brazil and was conserved by the senate but she made such a wicked crack about one of her

most vicious interrogators that the senate hearings. wayne morse, democratic senator was independent by the then in oregon and gave a second tough time when people were reported after about it, but the problem goes back many years when the center was kicked in the head by a horse and this was one wisecrack too many you can't go. senator morris is far from the latin affairs committee, you will never get anything from brazil. they need a lot of aid, a lot of stuff. had to resign. she had to resign the appointment and she brought all kinds of air-conditioning equipment, the 7 months of the year, the same temperature in august and new york and got the

air-conditioned car and all the air conditioners for the trip and even has always stationery printed and everything but it wasn't to be and it turned out that harry had already begun a major affair at that time. she had gone, she would have lost him because absence didn't make the heart grow fonder in that case, it just freedom up to see the mistress more easily. >> host: let me ask you my last totally unfair question. >> guest: retirement. >> host: who gets to retire? edlund is working on edison now and we will keep doing this, we don't know how to do anything else. >> guest: you don't live your own life. i was interviewing her friends

and traveling with her i was living her life for many years and my friends will tell you this, i neglected my friends and family and didn't see my sister for three years this was an all consuming thing if you do it properly and -- >> only a third of the time. slight comparison. >> guest: only wrote. you don't have a visit, extracurricular life. >> not after a fashion. in some way took her off course in life, courses in life. so anyway this concludes the of formal portion of our program. i hope -- we can entertain some questions from the audience.

okay. >> guest: there goes the microphone. >> host: the microphone comes to you. i get to pick? okay. >> that was wonderful. as a mother and nurse assistant do you think she could have been a sociopath, being a narcissist, that goes together. >> guest: goes together? >> host: this is and payne whitney. >> guest: talking of payne whitney you just touched on some think, her doctor felt she should be committed to payne whitney at some point. the time marilyn monroe went there at that time and she fortunately -- the very next day when she was about to commit her, she got a call from

eisenhower and converted to catholicism so send her to rome to represent him at the pope's funeral and two weeks later, had to go back to the coronation of the new pope. that saved her at that point on the verge of going her depression was so acute that she went to the bottom many times and the daughter the one daughter she had of course being a rich young the woman about tell, got the job on vanity fair in two years was managing editor, couldn't take care of the child so the child was sent away to school in the country and she went to rosemary hall in connecticut and went to what is it? fox in 3 jen yet and ended up at stanford university and i won't

tell you what happened to the daughter because it is another thing that is a big part of the book. she regretted of course because the daughter did die young she regretted the time she hadn't spent with her. the childhood was not there she didn't see her really growing up. all she left was her mother, but she was a working mother and as i say, the two volumes together is an inspirational tale in many ways how much one person can do it how to live your life to the hills, do everything you can because death is waiting for us all but it is also a cautionary tale because nobody has the ball in the end, no matter how they seem to have it all land in her case she missed the most valuable thing of all which was time with her own offspring and that was taken from her.

>> thank you for this in light noon discussion. i am on the faculty, i wonder if you could assess and 11's place in history what did she do that was important and lasting and going from the sublime to the ridiculous, what was it that particularly fascinated you about her? you spend a great deal of time with her. what was that that was so compelling about her? >> guest: her tumor was the most compelling thing. no matter, she always had that

saving grace. that for me was everything, she was the renaissance woman in a way because she did so many things extremely well. three it's all made into movies all successful. if the war had come along she went off to be war correspondent and in the concentration camp and seeing the terrible things she saw and she went back to play writing in these comedies couldn't do it because she had seen too much, the world was deadly serious. probably the thing she thought was her chief gift was up playwright. she could no longer do and particularly after she converted to catholicism because then she couldn't write this nasty stuff about women that she wrote and

she said i didn't reach the top of any free and that is true. she wasn't tennessee williams and probably wasn't the best congressman who ever lived, probably one of the best ambassadors and the only one to get a major foreign posts. there had been other ambassadors, luxembourg or more way, not a major person like rome and did it brilliantly and everybody said so everybody was heartbroken when she left. that was probably her chief accolade although she wouldn't have said that and i think she did do it so well. what did she do with her money? she left $50 million and to encourage women in your own fields like play writing or diplomacy, they haven't gone as far as the they could but she

was smarter than i was, she said women haven't gone as far as they can go in mathematics and science. she left the bulk of her fortune, 13 scholarships for women in the arts -- in the mathematics and sciences. that money every year there is a scholarship for a woman who excels in that field and one of those two fields and they get scholarships aided ministered by two people, she was counting that way too and she put the clare boothe luce foundation and the umbrella of the henry luce foundation. they besetting up another organization with all those salaries, i have a pine coffin and she was really in the ghetto and the way she thought about money, was very tricky that way.

the other people, these scholarships, was the heritage foundation's those they both interview the candidates not just one. it is a marvelous legacy for her. >> the girl to be chosen to do her biography, i can't imagine anyone who could have done it better. i was wondering was quality about you, do you think she enjoyed the most since she spent so much time with her and seems the kind of woman that would be with somebody she really

enjoyed? why do you think she allow you to put her under the microscope? to create a legacy or would you answer? >> if she liked me is because i am so different from her. and i aspire to many things. if i can do one thing, all so she wanted -- and all of this she was courageous so she kept every scrap of paper, many didn't show her in a good light but she let me see absolutely everything and she knew i would be fair and balanced. i won't make her an ogre because i didn't have that in tension. every human being has different facets.

we are not all good. she knew that. she wanted the truth told. she was courageous in that way very courageous. >> difficult as it is to beat a biographer, as difficult as it is to be a biographer what do you think will happen to biographers 30 years from now, the subject of today don't write letters alone diaries, there won't be trunks of letters, will they have to go there infinite idiotic e-mails and twitters fills with nonsense? what will they do? >> guest: i am not a twitter person myself but those things are not saved, are they? we printout business letters but those people are not preserving their life in that way unless they're keeping diaries which i doubt so really i think it is going to be a dying art if it is

an art at all, biography. >> i am trying to write something about it. it is an art. i try hard not to be nostalgic. we lived in a period of biography, i think the repositories of documents and records that have always constituted the evidence wheat used in biography, will simply not exist in that form. two letters, journals, manuscripts, up when you write your book or article you don't

address any more. it will be different and people will be seeing differently and we will watch the video in a very different way and that in turn will affect the way we think about personality. what are the traits and qualities that show forth in the best light going forward? you have to be visually visually appealing. >> guest: just finished a book on the autobiography so he probably addressed many of these subjects you are interested in and my husband pointed out, i haven't read times yet but he read something about the arts and humanities they are not

being studied. the study of english and english literature used to be the number one chalets not even in the top 70. so if you don't have those skills you are not learning skills about how to write at all. it is going to be a dying art. >> if i could make the last point, my prerogative while we are still here writing these long biographies, actually will be the last generation to do so. you captured a very complex life

of a difficult person and managed to do this not only with all the skills of a biographer or a narrative and documentation but with the thing the biographer needs is empathy. i read your book with great -- i saw great sympathy for her. all these difficulties. she was very difficult but you have done -- i congratulate you. [applause] >> left out the best part. we are going upstairs to buy one of these books or both of these boats and find out.

[inaudible conversations] >> interested in american history? watch american history television on c-span3 every weekend. 48 hours of people and the events the document the american story. visit c-span.org/history for more information. you are watching booktv. next an interview with cable about her book glass. looks at a long history of the prosperity gospel in the united states and profiles prosperity gospel preachers like p. d. j. expand joyce myers. this interview was recorded at the washington duke inn in jerome n.c.. it is part of booktv's college series. ..

it truly a kind of wonders mentality that god is. >> so when you say thing, does it mean well if you follow this way? >> show. are surprisingly true. pentecostals material. face of the body was god's home. is one of the most kind of