Clara Clemens - Later Life

Later Life

On April 23, 1926, she played the title role in a dramatization of Joan of Arc written by her father at Walter Hampden's theater. This adaptation and her performance were not very well received by critics. It was again produced in 1927, opening on April 12 and for a series of special morning and afternoon performances at the Edyth Totten Theatre.

Gabrilowitsch was conductor of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra from 1918 until 1935, when he fell ill. He entered the Henry Ford Hospital on March 25, 1935, where he stayed until September 28, 1935, at which point he was released to his home to convalesce. He subsequently died at his home on September 14, 1936, aged 58.

On May 11, 1944, Clara and Jacques Samossoud, a Russian born symphony conductor 20 years her junior, were married in her Hollywood home. She died at age eighty-eight in San Diego, California.

Clara explored eastern religions for a few years, and then eventually became a Christian Scientist, although there is some question as to her seriousness and commitment to it. She authored a book on the subject: Awake to a Perfect Day, published by Citadel Press, NYC, 1956 After originally objecting to the release of her father's Letters from the Earth in 1939, she changed her stance shortly before her death in 1962 and allowed them to be published. She also published biographies of both her father (My Father, Mark Twain in 1931) and of her first husband (My Husband: Gabrilowitsch in 1938).