ABSTRACT
In this chapter, Republican Clare Boothe Luce serves two terms representing Connecticut’s Fourth District in the US House of Representatives and continues her multifaceted career as author, playwright, and partisan political figure. In the House, Luce battled the sexism of her colleagues to gain fame as an outspoken critic of the Roosevelt administration, a reputation that concealed a surprisingly progressive voting record. As the first female member of the Military Affairs Committee, Luce visited the European battlefronts, including liberated Nazi concentration camps, toward the end of World War II. Devastated by the death of her daughter Ann in early 1944, Luce eventually experienced a profound spiritual crisis that resulted in her conversion to Catholicism, under the guidance of Monsignor Fulton J. Sheen. Postwar, Luce remained a fiercely partisan Republican politico and her anticommunist activities, such as membership in the “China Lobby,” came to the fore as the Cold War against the USSR deepened. She produced many speeches and articles, but she failed to write a memoir or successful play. In 1952, Luce’s McCarthyite attacks on the Democrats in support of Republican presidential nominee Dwight Eisenhower led him, after his decisive victory, to name her his ambassador to Italy.
