Famed Renaissance woman resided on Kahala Avenue

Our shores have attracted many famous people, and one of the most interesting of those was Clare Boothe Luce.

Clare Boothe Luce was a woman ahead of her time. She was born in 1903 in New York and at a young age became editor of Vanity Fair and Vogue magazines. She wrote two books and four Broadway plays. One of the plays — “The Women” — earned her in excess of $2 million.

She was one of the first American women appointed U.S. ambassador (to Italy). She fought for the equal rights amendment when it was first proposed in 1920.

Her husband, Henry Luce, was the publisher of Time, Life, Fortune and Sports Illustrated magazines. They had met at the Waldorf hotel in New York, at a party for composer Cole Porter.

Luce was friends with Winston Churchill, George Bernard Shaw, Eleanor Roosevelt, the Reagans, Betty Friedan, Buckminster Fuller, Barbara Walters and Henry Kissinger.

She spent 14 years of her life in Honolulu, and I was surprised to find out that one local boy — former state Attorney General Michael Lilly — called her “Auntie Clare.”

“My grandfather Henry Walker Sr. was the president of Amfac, Hawaii’s largest sugar producer,” Lilly told me. “Henry Walker and his wife, Una, met the Luces, along with Mary Pickford and her husband, Buddy Rogers, on a Matson liner.

“The three couples took an immediate liking to one another,” Lilly said, “and the Luces, in particular, became lifelong friends of my grandparents.”

“On their many trips to Honolulu over the succeeding years, the Luces often stayed with my grandparents in Nuuanu or at their country home, Muliwai, in Laie.

“I remember vividly the Sunday parties at Muliwai as I grew up.

“Guests often included members of the president’s Cabinet, governors, princes, admirals, generals, actresses and television personalities such as William F. Buckley Jr.

“Harry, as Henry Luce was known, and Clare were a frequent addition to such Sunday soirees. Both were vigorously independent and articulate. They were charming, and utterly captivated any audience with their endless stories.

“Both were dominant personalities, and neither yielded much to the other in public.

“At the parties two groups inevitably formed — one around Harry at one end of the room and the other around Clare at the other. I always suspected there was an unstated competition between the two for the audience.

“Clare never missed much of what was going on around her. Even as she was deep in conversation, she would have an uncanny sense of her audience and surroundings. For example, as I would enter the living room, she would stop in midsentence to announce in her deliberate, cultured voice, ‘Well, Michael …’

“I would turn to see Clare, surrounded by admirers. She was captivatingly beautiful, even in her 80s, with her blond hair and flawless skin.

“‘Auntie Clare,’ I would reply as I crossed the room to plant a kiss on her cheek.

“Clare had an ability to look you squarely in the eyes, as if penetrating your very soul. It had the effect of making you feel as though you were the most important person in the world to her at that time and place.”

“‘Don’t you look marvelous, Michael. Please sit here by your Auntie Clare,’” she would say.

“Someone far more important than I — one time it was a four-star admiral — would be ushered aside as Clare held my hand and guided me next to her.

“‘Michael. Do tell me about yourself,’ Luce said. ‘What have you been up to? What are your goals?’

“I would try to meagerly answer her questions, ‘I’m interested in writing. … Someday I think I’ll go to law school. … After college I want to join the Navy. …’

“But I learned early on that her questions were really but a prelude to a story or some very sage advice.

“‘You have great promise, young man, and you must learn to jump into the fire with both feet,’ Luce advised.

“Once, during the mid-1960s, Richard Nixon was campaigning for the presidency and spoke at the Hilton Hawaiian Village Dome,” Lilly recalls. “Clare asked me to escort her to the — at that time extravagant — $100-a-plate Republican dinner.

“During Nixon’s speech he looked directly at us and announced that his ‘great friend and fellow Republican, Mrs. Clare Boothe Luce’ was in the audience. Everyone stood in applause. Clare slowly stood, smiled at the crowd and winked at me.

“Afterward, Clare elbowed her way through the throng to personally introduce me to Nixon. Although it was crowded and noisy, she shouted to Nixon, ‘I want you to meet this fine young man: Michael Lilly.’

“Nixon had seemed so much larger on television and during his speech. I was surprised that I looked down on him.

“Nixon shook my hand rather weakly, all the time with his eyes on Clare. If he even looked at me, I could not tell. On the way home Clare told me he would be president someday and to watch him.

“Over the years, I spent hours at Clare’s side, alternately answering her questions and listening as she recounted endless stories of her adventures, her hopes, her desires for a better future for this nation.

“For example, I learned firsthand of her experiences, under the guidance of a physician, with LSD (years before it was made illegal).

“‘It was fascinating,’ Luce recalled. ‘I recall the hallucinogenic effects as I looked into a mirror and my face became horribly distorted. But mentally it was very exciting. I do not, however, intend to repeat it.’”

Clare Boothe Luce bought a 2-acre home at 4995 Kahala Ave., after her husband’s death in 1967, where she entertained lavishly. She became a trustee of the Honolulu Museum of Art and donated more than $500,000 to it.

Luce died in 1987 at the age of 84. “She did it all with style and wit,” said the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. CBS News called her a Renaissance woman. “She was a woman of unconditional elegance and interest,” said the Washington Post.

* * *

Several of my readers asked how they might contact Pam Chambers, whose photo book of downtown Honolulu, “There and Back Again,” I wrote about last week. She can be reached at 377-5679.

Bob Sigall, author of the Companies We Keep books, looks through his collection of old photos to tell stories each Friday of Hawaii people, places and companies. Email him at Sigall@Yahoo.com.