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Manuscript/Mixed Material Clare Boothe Luce's scene description of her play The Women, ca. 1936.

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About this Item

Title

  • Clare Boothe Luce's scene description of her play The Women, ca. 1936.

Created / Published

  • ca. 1936

Headings

  • -  Motion pictures
  • -  Women
  • -  Legislators
  • -  Diplomats
  • -  Broadway (New York, N.Y.)
  • -  Dramatists
  • -  Luce, Clare Boothe (1903-1987)
  • -  cite>Life
  • -  cite> (Magazine)
  • -  Theater
  • -  cite>The Women
  • -  Manuscripts

Genre

  • Manuscripts

Notes

  • -  Reproduction number: A61 (color slide; page 1); LC-MSS-30759-1 (B&W negative; pages 1-3)
  • -  Clare Boothe Luce (1903-1987), who had successful careers as author, editor, playwright, journalist, congresswoman, and diplomat, married Henry Robinson Luce (1898-1967), publisher of Time and Fortune magazines, in 1935. The next year began a two-year run (657 performances) of her play, "The Women," at the Ethyl Barrymore Theater in New York City. In 1937 Random House published "The Women;" the following year, the first of numerous international productions was produced; and in 1939 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) released a film version starring Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, Rosalind Russell, Joan Fontaine, and others. An example of Luce's social criticism, the play satirized upper-class New York women and launched its author as a speaker on women's roles in the public sphere. This scene description, selected from the extensive production records for the play located in the Manuscript Division's Luce Papers, shows the dramatist's careful revisions. Here she sets up the first scene with a clear sense of characterization for a social range of women from Saks shop girl to countess.
  • -  Luce wrote the entire first draft of her daring forty-character play during a three-day stay at the Greenbrier resort in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. She had travelled there to resume playwriting after it became clear that her husband would not create a position for her on the staff of his new Life magazine. Her only other staged play, "Abide With Me," had opened two days before her marriage to Luce and failed after thirty-six performances. "The Women," on the other hand, was playing to capacity audiences a month after its opening, and within four months, it broke all sales records for a nonmusical Broadway production.
  • -  After the success of "The Women," Luce became a public champion of American democracy, a major Republican Party activist and speaker, and ambassador to Italy. She went on to write two more Broadway hits, which were also made into motion pictures. She also published a respected book on the fall of France and was a war correspondent for Life. Luce died in October of 1987 and is remembered as a beautiful, brilliant, daring, and outspoken personality in high society as well as international relations.

Source Collection

  • Clare Boothe Luce Papers

Repository

  • Manuscript Division

Online Format

  • pdf
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Cite This Item

Citations are generated automatically from bibliographic data as a convenience, and may not be complete or accurate.

Chicago citation style:

Clare Boothe Luce's scene description of her play The Women. 1936. Manuscript/Mixed Material. https://www.loc.gov/item/mcc.081/.

APA citation style:

(1936) Clare Boothe Luce's scene description of her play The Women. [Manuscript/Mixed Material] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/mcc.081/.

MLA citation style:

Clare Boothe Luce's scene description of her play The Women. 1936. Manuscript/Mixed Material. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/mcc.081/>.