Claire Luce was an American actress who rose to fame having starred alongside Fred Astaire on Broadway in the musical Gay Divorce (1932), and through an early film career which included working with Humphrey Bogart and Spencer Tracy in Up the River (1930). Luce first performed in the Park in 1941 when she played Katherina in The Taming of the Shrew, that summer she also played Katherine in Henry V, both times alongside a young Irish actor named Patrick Kinsella. Luce and Kinsella later fell in love and were sadly separated when he joined the war effort. During his time as a flier for the RAF, Kinsella wrote regular love letters to Luce until his death in 1944. In 1965, Luce published their correspondence in her book "Letters from Patrick - Letters of Life and Love from an R. A. F. Pilot-Bombardier to the American Actress, Claire Luce".