Conversations with Clare Booth Luce; 3; Author and Playwright

The following program is distributed by NET, the Public Television Network. In the beginning was the word, those lines from St. John's Gospel refer to a personality or other mystical meanings that also suggest the importance of the words in our culture and of language. It's a pleasure again to have Mrs. Claire Bethel Booth-Luce on this conversation this afternoon because Mrs. Luce has dealt with words as

author, playwright, dramatist, and as columnist and otherwise. You are telling us in a recent conversation Mrs. Luce about one of your books, The Quality of Leadership, to which Sir Winston Churchill had a very interesting reaction. I was telling you that Sir Winston was visiting Italy when I was ambassador there and asked me to come to Sicily and spend a weekend. And when he asked me what I'd recently been writing, I told him a little monograph called The Quality of Greatness. He was most interested in what I thought the qualities of greatness consisted in, so I enumerated before him. All the virtues and so on. And when I finished he said, well it seems to be my dear child, you've left out one of the most important ingredients of success. Well I said, what's that Sir Winston? He said luck. And then he went on to mention that he had been

exactly the same Winston Churchill before. He was called to the Prime Minister ship when England fell under attack. Been the same man that day as he had been before. But the events, the great events gave him an opportunity to display his two inward qualities. And so I do think great leaders need a little bit of luck. The old saying goes, the pen is matter than the sword. And we do live by words. You have contributed some words to usage. I remember global only. There may be many others too. But as one who has dealt with words and contributed words in writing and another means speech

to our culture, what are the satisfaction that an author derives from his creations? Well I don't know. I don't think they're very great. I've known many authors. I've known almost none myself included, who were infrequently pained by the criticisms of their books. Many authors are deeply disappointed and discouraged that they don't get on the best-seller list that their books don't sell very well. And then many more deeply disappointed because their message, whatever they think it is, has been misinterpreted. Most of the writers I know, right because they can't help themselves. It's like being pregnant. There it is and

you can do nothing about it except produce it, so to speak. Rembrandt is supposed to have said regarding his paintings towards the end of his life, vanity, vanity, all his vanity. Is there anything of this in the author? Yes. Now I myself am an amateur, a very amateur painter, only began a year or so ago. I must say, please understand, I'm a very poor painter, but I've taken much more pleasure in painting than I ever did in writing. Despite the fact that I've been the most fortunate writer, I've had three very big Broadway hits and a number of well-received books, so I have no complaints on the score of the public, but I never enjoyed writing.

You didn't feel that you were engaged in a missionary enterprise when you were writing. I remember reading the introduction to your play, at least the book edition of your play, missed the boys goodbye, in which you say that you again felt, so you felt this before, you again felt you had missed the mark in which you were attempting to portray in that play, and you went on to say something that you were concerned at that time, this is about 1940, about an incipient fascism in America. Now what were you trying to do in the kiss the boys goodbye? Well, the kiss the boys goodbye was the story of a determined little southern bell who ties to star in a great spectacular southern epic motion picture. And of course, the idea had been suggested to me by the long search for Scarlett O'Hara

of Vivian Lee who played Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with Wind. My play was more or less of a satire on the over romanticizing of the South and the Civil War. Well, in those days no author would dream of having his play printed without writing a rather pompous forward in which he pointed out the deep and profound underlying ideas he had. And so I wrote a kind of a spoof introduction to my own play in which I said this play was to be understood as a parable of the coming of fascism to America which it most certainly would do beginning in the South. Maybe that preface doesn't strike people as so silly

after the recent Wallace campaign. But in any event, the purpose of the play was no more or less than to satirize this rather silly search for a great star when they already had the star picked from the beginning. And they're over romanticizing of a post-bellum South. That's all I had in mind. I believe in the play, your heroine, the southern bell, was Mary Lou Bethany by name. Cindy Lou Bethany. That's right. Cindy Lou Bethany. And then the actress who was predestined to have the part was Mara Stanhope, if I recall correctly. Now reading that recently, I gained the impression that if the casual American, the average American college student or homemaker or a worker were to read that play today, the sympathies

might really lie with Cindy Lou Bethany rather than Mara Stanhope and the Connecticut Society for Trade in the Play. Do you have any feeling on that? Oh, well, yes. It was my deliberate intention in writing that play to show how a sweet little flower of the South could knock the pins right out from under a bunch of sophisticated. In the play, as you remember, she doesn't get the part, but she gets the handsome young millionaire. But that play was, of course, made into a musical. I think it's been forgotten all except the title. Kiss the boys goodbye with her other title. Yes, it's a nice title. But another play I wrote that was suggested also by a public event was called Margin for Error. Have you read it?

I have read it, and I remember the movie. I have not seen it portrayed on the stage. Well, Margin for Error was suggested to me by an item I saw in the newspapers shortly before the war began. I mean, the Second World War. And it said that Mel Laguardia had appointed a Jewish policeman to safeguard the life of the German consul in New York. And of course, by this time you can imagine how hated Germans were in New York in the light of what Hitler was doing to the Jews in Germany. But the idea of a policeman, a Jewish policeman, being responsible for the safety of a man whom with all his heart, he must have hated him despised. It struck me as very interesting in any event. I wrote a murder mystery. It

made a murder mystery out of it. And made the hero whose name was a mole Finkelstein in the play was the hero. Really Moses, Finkelstein? Moses Finkelstein, but Moses Finkelstein was played by a more or less unknown Jewish actor called Sam Levine, who has since become a great star. Of course, the players, all the players I have ever written, were full of young people who became great stars. Of course, the one was really fantastic because there were about 30 women in it, a play called The Women, almost every woman in the play went on to become a well-known moving-picture actress or a well-known Broadway star. And didn't Otto Preminger play on Margin Forever? Otto Preminger, I'm afraid I made his reputation.

Otto Preminger was the director and at a certain point in the play, the very nice German actor who was playing the console, couldn't master his lines. He was a German refugee. But he couldn't manage his lines. Mr. Preminger read the part of the German console and I turned to him and said, Otto, go ahead, play it. You're wonderful. You're an absolute Nazi, which was an odd thing to say to a Jewish refugee. Well, at any rate he did and he made some reputation in the play and then he took the play to Hollywood. He made a movie of it with another young Jewish actor whose name I no longer remember, but it was since Milton

Burrell who became also a very well-known character on television and in the theatre. So most of his plays have changed people's lives. The other night I ran into Ross Russell at a party and Ross Russell said to me, you know, you absolutely changed my life and she went on to tell me that she had been in Hollywood, a glamour girl, you know, a young romantic type and she wasn't getting any younger and began to see that that someday would end unless she could change her whole personality. And when the women was done in Hollywood, in the movie pictures, she fought for the part of the rather catty woman called Sylvia

and she managed to get that part away from Ilka Chase who had done it in New York and this was her great hit as a comedian and from then on and ever since she has specialized in parts in which she's been a comedian. She had, of course, only recently enormous success in the theatre and anti-main. So she thought that that part in the women really changed her life as a matter of fact. The women is a fascinating play for this reason that it is one of the one hundredths of one percent of all the plays ever written that's been performed more than a hundred times. That's including Shakespeare. Plays are not very

durable as you know Dr. Derm. They really don't last but the women has been playing for thirty years somewhere in every city somewhere around the world. And we did some statistics on it not long ago which showed that over two hundred thousand women have played a part in the women at some point or other in the last thirty years matter of fact. This is now because we're in Phoenix. They did the women here in the amateur company perhaps was it three years ago and a charming woman who had never been on the stage before called Sally Goldwater who is a sister-in-law of Senator Goldwater showed up very rather reluctantly to act in this community play and she read for various parts and was given the part of

Sylvia. Now I came later after the play was in rehearsal. The play was then produced in all my experience. I have never seen a more naturally gifted comedian than Sally Goldwater. I mean one you know in amateur theaters amateur actresses they're very charming they're very pretty they learn their lines they do fairly well but they're very few of them that you ever say have that person bothered to go on Broadway he or she would have been a great actor. Well I'm told that since then I've changed Sally Goldwater's life because she's since become most interested in the theater. It seems to me you've said something

quite important about the work of the writer and author in describing these plays that it hasn't been done purely for to make a living it's more than vanity is in the case of the Rembrandt Statement for the artist but there's a social message there is an effort to portray society for better human understanding of its own status and it also has effects on the life of individuals such as Ross Russell discovering herself or Sally Goldwater discovering perhaps a new talent with which she had been in doubt. Now I'd like to press you a little bit further just what does an author have in mind when she sits down or he sits down to produce a play or drama can you can you put your finger on that inscrutable thing plainly one writes because one has the desire to communicate I have had this particular

experience I have suffered this particular Greece grief I have known this particular joy I think that this or that is dreadful or wonderful or beautiful or whatever and then you wish to share that I mean the desire to share one's experiences is very familiar to everyone which of us has ever seen a sunset without wanting to share it last night I was in my room for example and I looked out the window and there was this extraordinary double rainbow over the mountains after the storm and I jumped out of my room to look for someone to come and look at it with me so the impulse I think that makes you right or paint or play

or play the piano whatever it may be is the desire to communicate with others what is in your own mind and thought in heart and now I talked once to my publishers a very brilliant man called Michael Bessie and I said to him what do you look for when you're looking for an author you know when you're looking among young people to find an author well he said I always look first for vitality because it needs a great deal of vitality to keep on producing any kind of writing he said then I look for ego good writer has to be a bit of a egoist because he has to say to himself what he has to say is important enough to waste

other people's time with it and then he has to have isolation I mean he has to be in a circumstance where he can be alone and I've never heard a better definition myself of what is required of a good writer than that he should have enough vitality which is why writers as they grow older begin to fall off that he should that one should have enough ego to say my words are important my statement is worth listening to again as one grows older one's ego begins to weaken as one comes to learn all the other statements that have been made about life that are so much better than what one can hope to do himself and then

of course there's the question of being alone and so age and fame tend to ruin writers painters musicians everyone because of the loss of vitality and also because they're not let alone enough you have to have a room of your own that no one wants to intrude and it's very hard as you get more famous it is indeed what then makes the difference between what we might call script such as a radio script for radios show we had billions of words I'm sure in the 20s the 30s and the early 40s expended in scripts for radio all the way from soap operas to some rather interesting presentations from time to time between

those scripts and what we might call a scripture are durable writing which which endures and has some what are the qualities would determine the difference I don't know I think that's like asking what is what makes a poem great what makes a piece of music great is a chance luck back to Churchill one doesn't oh no I don't think there's luck in it every writer thinks when he's writing that what he's writing is great but it must stand the test of thousands of other minds before it can be deemed to be great and it's very hard to say why one play is great and another one is not or even why one play which isn't great runs and

the far better play closes now as I say my play the women has been running without and for 30 years and is now being made a musical I don't think it's a very great play I think it's amusing it speaks to the condition of many women they identify the characters they know somebody like that in the neighborhood but far better plays than that have closed in a few days one doesn't really know what makes the work of a great I couldn't possibly tell you why for example Michael Angelo's Sistine Chapel takes your breath away I just say it does it's a fact I don't I can't explain it do you have anything in literature that

takes your breath away in the in the comparable sense that you return to for comfort or joy or satisfaction in your own reading well I do very often a return to the poets and I find myself going back to the great books as a matter of fact you were speaking in one of our last conversations of Tacitus and when I got home after that I was fortunate enough to find in one of the great books on the shelf some of the writings of Tacitus and I sat down having read it since I was very very young and found it most interesting I I do read the New Testament and I think perhaps if you say what makes it so great maybe there is a clue that I have found while talking and that is the prismatic character of scriptural

words they seem to be so simple but in the light of one's experience in the course of a lifetime these same words have different meanings so they're like a they're like a prism which is always showing you some new side of your own heart and of course of our blessed Lord's heart it's a prismatic quality you can't get to the bottom of the meaning it's inexhaustible you see perhaps that's the important thing about literature. New dimensions in that sense well if you had a nice place where you could be alone and undisturbed for a few days what would you write today Mr. Loose?

Well you know I don't have that isolation and haven't had it for some years that is necessary for writing I hope to have it soon I have to see which I say subjects in mind ideas that are in the process of gestating I think most writers will refuse to discuss their ideas for fear of aborting them I find that whenever I tell someone the plot of a play I never I very seldom ever write it so I can't tell you what I have in mind. That's an important trade secret which you must preserve it all means well I must say that I share with you the the sense of prismatic depth and dimension that you find in the great literature the New Testament I particularly like Luke Acts read in succession as the work

of one author which ties together and the story of the good Samaritan for example as told in the book of Luke brings out so many dimensions for our times when we understand what the Samaritan meant in the world at the time of Jesus he was the underdog the frowned upon person it's like talking about the good communists today are the goodness of that the other who is not understood so I want to say as we conclude this conversation and

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