Clare's Influence On Conde Nast

The divorce seemed only to add fuel to her stomach’s fire for ambition. As a friend, Arlene Francis notes, at age 26, “Clare wanted to be a queen.” Henceforth, she devoted her life to what she coined a “rage for fame.” She began her career as a caption writer at Vogue, and within three years, worked her way up to managing editor of Vanity Fair. During this time, she observed that writers were not hard to come by, but what was needed was photography. Consequently, she developed an idea for a magazine focused on photography in which she hoped to call Life. She explained her dream to the manager of Vanity Fair, Conde Nast to which he responded, “There is [already] a magazine called Life.” “Of course there is,” Clare replied. “I’ve found out you

Her first distinctively political act was a speech she gave at Carnegie Hall rebuking Dorothy Thompson for endorsing Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Prompted by the opposing candidate of FDR, she went on to give many more lectures and speeches. Eventually, she ran for Congress in the Fourth District of Connecticut and ended up winning the election in both 1942 and 1944. The area she ran in was predominantly Democratic, so it was quite impressive that she, as a Republican, pulled through with the majority vote. It may have helped that her platform was centrally focused on winning the war and, concerning her political stance, she claims to have been “an East Coast liberal who hated Soviet

As she heavily pondered, she noted, “…while I knew I could remember, if I chose, the essential beliefs of every other ‘ism’ I had studied or tried to live by, I could not remember the most important thing about the religion I myself had invented: I could not remember whether the God of that faith was supposed to be personally interested in his creatures.” Unable at first to find an answer within herself, she collapsed in tears, and then prayed the only prayer she knew by heart, the “Our Father.” After praying, she continued to wander the room and noticed an unopened letter from a Jesuit priest named Father Edward Wiatrak lying on her