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Catholic Hagiographer Did LSD
It inspired a musical currently playing at NYC’s Lincoln Center
Clare Boothe Luce. Brainy and beautiful. Married mega-publisher Henry Luce in 1935. Converted to Catholicism in 1946, then put together one of the greatest collections of short saint biographies ever.
James Lapine, the director and librettist best known for supplying the books for the Stephen Sondheim musicals Into the Woods and Sunday in the Park with George, conceived of [Flying Over Sunset] after learning that Cary Grant, Clare Boothe Luce, and Aldous Huxley had all, at one time or another, tried LSD in the 1950s, before it was made illegal in 1968. . .
Lapine imagines the three connecting and agreeing to share a drug trip together at Luce’s Malibu beach house. Both Huxley and Luce knew Gerald Heard (Robert Sella), a gay English writer who became something of a spiritual guide to Eastern mysticism among Hollywood types and also encouraged friends to free their minds with LSD.
“Ah,” I told myself. “That was during her, ahem, looser years, before she converted.”
Apparently not. According to Wikipedia, who said she and Henry tried it under careful supervision and made use of it “at least several times” in the 1960s.
