Rage for Fame: The Ascent of Clare Boothe Luce.

• Author: Watters, Susan

Reagan pals tell a story about the night Nancy Reagan invited Clare Boothe Luce to dinner in the White House family quarters. Table talk came to a halt when the President, halfway through relating a dream, froze in embarrassment. Luce, then in her eighties, put her arm on the table, leaned toward the former matinee idol, and in a husky voice whispered, "I'd love to hear your fantasies." So much for the other women in the room.

Throughout her illustrious life as a vamp, successful playwright, ambassador, congresswoman, fashion plate, and arch conservative, Luce always got the better of any woman she befriended. So maybe it is not so surprising that even in death, Luce has managed to outwit, outshine, and undercut her biographer, Sylvia Jukes Morris, author of Rage for Fame: The Ascent of Clare Boothe Luce.

Take Morris's efforts to nail Luce down on the simple matter of her birth date -- a predictable obstacle when tackling women of a certain age. For most biographers, a subject who lies about her age is a challenge to be confronted. Morris sees it as a justification to whine. After announcing that the date of Luce's illegitimate birth was March 10, 1903, Morris sniffs that the child, "for inscrutable reasons," was encouraged to celebrate birthdays a month later. She then complains of confronting the 82-year-old Luce with the discrepancy and being greeted with evasiveness and vague digressions about Easter Sunday, Good Friday, and the astrological signs of Aries and Pisces.

One might scrape up some empathy for the high-handed treatment Morris is said to have suffered at the hands of Madame Luce were it not for the fact that she clearly asked for it. Despite her stated belief that subjects ought to "choose their biographers," Morris set her sights on Luce, and enlisted historian Daniel Boorstein and former Reagan staffer Selwa Roosevelt to help plead her case. Luce, who was feeling lonely and somewhat snubbed by the conservative renaissance, reluctantly agreed. Morris subsequently spent six years and a good deal of her own money following Luce to Hawaii, London, and Washington, nursing her while she was ill and occasionally bringing her breakfast in bed.

After years of deferring to Luce in exchange for scraps of information, Morris apparently feels it's her turn to have a say. She tries her best to be catty throughout the book, and at times she even succeeds in evincing a certain feline wit -- as in her devastating description of Luce...