Playwright, editor, and politician Clare Boothe Luce (1903-1987) was born in New York City and gained fame as a writer and editor for Vanity Fair and Vogue.

"A rage for fame attends both great and small," she wrote in her high school yearbook.

An understudy for Mary Pickford on Broadway at age 10, the beautiful and bright Luce passionately pursued success, never taking no for an answer. Men loved her. The ambitious lady's second husband, influential Henry Luce, was the noted editor and founder of Time, Life, and Fortune magazines.

About success she once said, "Because I am a woman, I must make unusual efforts to succeed. If I fail, no one will say, 'She doesn't have what it takes;' They will say, 'Women don't have what it takes.'"

So, she succeeded. A World War II war correspondent, she converted to Catholicism in 1946. She was elected as a Conneticut Republican to the U.S. House of Representatives (1943-1947) where she supported the G.I Bill and became an anti-Communist advocate.

"Politicians talk themselves red, white, and blue in the face," she observed with characteristic wit. Biographer Alden Hatch described her as "tough as a Marine sergeant, but almost quixotically kind to unfortunates."

President Dwight Eisenhower appointed Luce ambassador to Italy in 1953 and she served on the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board under Presidents Nixon, Ford, and Reagan.

She said, "Courage is the ladder on which all the other virtues mount."

Love works best when worked.