THE DEMOCRATS GOLDEN GIRL

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75-00001R000200060048-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 5
• Document Creation Date: November 11, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 17, 1999
• Sequence Number: 48
• Publication Date: October 22, 1950
• Content Type: NSPR

SATURDAY EVEirj,
Posr
36
Marietta in the movies. Clark Gable (just behind her),
acting as part-time talent scout, chose her for
a small part in his new film, The Misfits.
Marietta Tree has beauty, money
and powerful connections. She belongs to
the upper classes, but cultivates
the masses too. She is
The
Democrats'
Golden
Girl
By INEZ ROBB'
Three days after the Democratic National
Convention closed in Los Angeles, a
green-eyed blonde kissed Clark Gable
with enthusiasm-how else?-at the railroad
station in Reno.
It's nice work, and to the surprise of no one
who knows her, Marietta Tree got it. Mari-
etta, the living doll of the Democratic Party's
hierarchy, had stopped in Reno on her way
home from the Democratic convention at the
invitation of an old friend, Johii Hustuii, one
of Hollywood's elite. Huston was directing The
Misfits, a film play written by Arthur Miller
for his wife, Marilyn Monroe. The movie also
stars Gable, Montgomery Clift, Thelma Ritter
and Eli Wallach.
Marietta, who presides over one of the few
genuine political salons ever organized in this
-country, arrived in Reno while Huston and
Gable were scouting the territory for a local
woman to play the opening scene with Gable.
The search ended when Gable suddenly pointed
a finger at tall, slim, patrician Mrs. Tree and
said, "You!"
Huston did a double take and said, "Of
course !"
The guest, confronted with an opportunity
to buss Gable in her movie debut, said "Yes."
Once the scene was shot, Marietta was on her
way home to New York. When Huston saw
the rushes, he phoned Marietta. She had been
spectacular in the brief scene, and he wanted
more. He finally convinced her he had written
a second scene just for her, and she returned to
Reno to play it.
CPYRGHT
OCT 2 2 igg0 STATINTL
App (6bWRelease 1999109107 : CIA-RDP7 -O
The second scene was as good as the first.
Thus the world will eventually see in the mov-
ies a woman who is an aristocratic beauty, wife
of a multimillionaire, a member of interna-
tional society and mistress of a New York town
house in which Democratic history has been
made continuously since 1952.
Marietta returned to New York from Reno
just in time to repack her bags and fly with her
husband to Barbados, where they have a year-
round residence. She was hardly inside Heron
Bay, the Barbados home, when the phone
rang. The call was from Anthony B. Akers,
New York City lawyer, who had just been
appointed executive director of the Citizens
for Kennedy-Johnson Committee. The first
reaction of Akers was to call Marietta, who
had comanaged his own attempts to win a
seat in the House of Representatives.
"I asked her to work as my assistant in a top-
level role," Akers said later. "She said `yes' at
once, as I knew she would. Marietta is, a
wonderful girl, a wonderful Democrat and a
wonderful organizer. I count on her as my
good right arm."
For the last eight years the party hierarchy
has come to count more and more on Marietta.
In that time she has worked hard, brilliantly
and often anonymously for the party. A con-
vinced liberal, to the left of her friend and
political idol, Adlai Ewing Stevenson, she is
known as an inspired organizer and fund raiser.
Although she is well known to leaders of her
party, she is not nearly as widely known-in or
out of the party-as Mme, Frances Perkins, or
Anna Rosenberg, or Mrs. India Edwards, the
fiery woman who was vice-chairman of the
Democratic National Committee in the Tru-
man Administration; or as Mrs. Katie Louch-
heim, who succeeded Mrs. Edwards; or
Margaret Price, who has recently succeeded
Mrs. Louchheim.
Marietta Tree's name is not to be found in
Who's Who. Her only national role in the party
to which she devotes so much time is as a
member of the Advisory Council of the Demo-
cratic National Committee. On this com-
mittee is an assortment of top Democrats,
ranging from Presidential candidate Kennedy
through Jake Arvey to Gov. Foster Furcolo,
Paul M. Butler, Gov. Orville L. Freeman, ex-
Gov. W. Averell Harriman, Sen. Hubert H.
Humphrey, Sen. Estes Kefauver, Gov. David
L. Lawrence, ex-Sen. Herbert H. Lehman,
Adlai Stevenson, Sen. Stuart Symington, ex-
Pres. Harry S. Truman, Gov. G. Mennen
Williams and Paul Ziffren-which is a heap
of chiefs.
Marietta is a member of the Advisory Coun-
cil's civil rights committee, of which Mrs.
Eleanor Roosevelt is chairman, and she was a
member of the drafting committee that
framed the civil-rights plank in the Democratic
platform.
Granted that Marietta exerts leverage on
the party through the Advisory Council, it is
not at this point that she is of greatest value
to the Democrats. Even her role as State
Committeewoman from the Ninth Assembly
District, dominated by the largest reform
1939: Marietta on the day she married lawyer
Desmond FitzGer Kept apart by war-and later by
ho itical views-the couple eventually separated.
Approved For Release 1999109107 : CIA-RDP75-00001 R000200060048-8
 CPYRGHT
Approved For Release 1999109107 : CIA-RDP75-00001 R000200060048-8
Marietta with Gov. G. Mennen Williams at this year's Democratic Conven-
tion. An ultraliberal, she is a member of the party's Advisory Council and
belongs to the committee that framed the Democrats' civil-rights plank.
group in New York City, is less noteworthy
than her gift for creating a political salon.
Marietta's greatest contribution to her party
is a spacious home in which the elite and the
beat of the Democratic Party meet to exchange
ideas launch trial balloons and stimulate ac-
ti~r~ii wing room, the focus of one of
the most exquisite private homes in New
York, can accommodate as many as 200 of the
faithfulsuffocation point.. reTMarietta
brings together presidential possibilities and
precinct workers from coast to coast. Here she
mixes obscure candidates for city and state
Here she stumps with William Heuvel (center), candidate for Congress from
New York's 17th District. The last candidate she supported here lost the election.
offices with rich Democrats who give large
sums to support their party. At Marietta's
ingatherings the benefactors and the candi-
dates on the lower thresholds are mutually
surprised and` pleased to meet one another.
It is through this political salon that
Marietta does most for her party. It has seen
the national political debut of Democrats from
every, Section of the nation. Many candidates
melt there for the first time such?party chiefs
and salon regulars as Stevenson, Harriman,
et al, as well as the "Harvard Consistory" of
Democratic advisers. The Consistory is headed
1947: Marietta (right) after winning a Reno
divorce from FitzGerald. At left, her friend,
Mrs. William S. Paley (now Mrs. Walter
Hirshon), was divorced the same day.
"It beats the back rooms by a
block," says one friend in describ-
ing the political salon she main-
tains in her elegant town house.
by John Kenneth Galbraith, distinguished
economist and author, and Arthur M. Schles-
inger Jr., the Pulitzer-prize historian. Schles-
inger is a family friend of the Trees and is re-
garded as Marietta's court chamberlain.
The salon started more or less accidentally
in 1952 with a party for Adlai Stevenson when
he came to New York as Democratic presi-
dential candidate to address a rally in Madi-
son Square Garden. Stevenson's staff and
principal advisers, including Schlesinger, were
present that night in the flower-filled Tree
home. (Continued on Page 84)
"Marietta gives the party status," says her old friend, Adlai
Stevenson. He is shown here with the Trees-Marietta,
Ronald and Penelope-at their house in the West Indies.
 84
Approved For Release 1999109107 : CIA-RDP75-00001 ROOA2???6OO48z8 E V E N I N G P 0 S T
"Father wilt be home soon." For a 6Wxl? fun-color print of this original photo by Walter Chandoha,
send 25~ in coin to Cat Pietvres, Dept. EP-$0, Box 6586, Chicago 77, Illinois. Offer good only ,' U.S.A.
they never miss their daily meal of
PUSS'n BOOTS
Because health and balanced nourishment go hand in hand,
cats fed Puss 'n Boots every day do more than just "keep the
doctor away." They glow with beauty and well-being ... with
a difference you can see in energy and happy disposition.
Give your cat her choice:
New Meat Flavor, for cats who like
meat; Original Fish Formula, for cats
who like fish-each containing all the
good nutrition for which Puss 'n Boots
has been famous for over 25 years.
Coast Fisheries Division of The Quaker Oats Company, Chicago 54, III.
CPYRGHT
The Democrats' Golden Girl
(Continued from Page 37)
In presiding over the salon, Marietta
was doing what came naturally. She spent
much of her youth in one of the most dis-
tinguished salons in Boston, that of her
maternal grandmother, the late Mrs.
Henry Parkman. Among her blessings
Marietta can count two grandparents of
extraordinary gifts and strong character.
The more famous of the two is Marietta's
paternal grandfather, the late Dr. Endi-
cott Peabody of the Boston Peabodys,
founder and headmaster of Groton, the
distinguished preparatory school for boys
at Groton, Massachusetts. Mary Endicott
Peabody, as Marietta was christened,
visited the school frequently to stay for
long periods with her grandparents.
William McCormick Blair Jr., law
partner and confidant of Adlai Stevenson,
remembers that the whole student body
was in love with the headmaster's grand-
daughter. Blair, who was a student at
Groton in Marietta's day, had known her
since they were toddlers spending the
summer in Northeast Harbor, Maine,
with their parents.
"I remember making a fool of myself,
at thirteen, letting the other boys know
that Marietta and I were old friends,"
Blair recalls. "She caused a great uproar
at the school. She was getting prettier
every year-and the boys, older."
Doctor Peabody believed that "the de-
velopment of character" was the prime
purpose of education. Then he preached
that such character was best dedicated to
public service. His system produced,
among many notables, Franklin Delano
Roosevelt. It also produced in Marietta
what Schlesinger describes as "her mis-
sionary zeal" for the betterment of man,
whether he likes it or not.
If Marietta's grandmother Parkman is
not as famous outside Boston as Doctor
Peabody, it is because there is no justice.
She is still remembered there as a Newark,
New Jersey, belle of towering intellect,
who took ten years to make up her mind
to marry Henry Parkman, banker, Boston
Brahmin and prime matrimonial catch.
For her own pleasure Mrs. Parkman
translated the Greek Bible into Russian.
The salon which she created in her Com-
monwealth Avenue brownstone rivaled
that of her dear friend, the famous Mrs.
Jack (Isabella Stewart) Gardner. In time
Mrs. Parkman became one of the found-
ers of Radcliffe College, in which Frances
FitzGerald, nineteen, the eldest daughter
of her favorite grandchild, Marietta, is
now enrolled.
Marietta was born not only to the man-
ner but the manse, knowing by hereditary
right "everyone who is anyone" in her
family's aristocratic Boston-Northeast
Harbor, Maine, circle. Her grandfather's
only son, the Rt. Rev. Malcolm Peabody,
now an Overseer of Harvard and retired
Protestant Episcopal Bishop of Central
New York, married the eldest Parkman
daughter, Mary. Their first child, born
forty-three years ago, is that pride and joy
of the Democratic party's hierarchs,
Marietta Peabody Tree.
With such a background it is no wonder
that Marietta has come to seek through
politics (1) the perfectibility of men, and
(2) their complete equality, unmindful of
race, creed or color.
Long before Marietta found her voca-
tion in politics she was working in the
interracial field. Early in 1943 Marietta
became a director of Sydenham Hospital.
In December, 1942, this old New York
institution, on the edge of Harlem, be-
came the city's first interracial hospital.
Civil rights have been a lifelong mission
to which Marietta gives consecrated
service, as do her four brothers. She re-
cently resigned as a director of the Na-
tional Urban League to give more time
to the City of New York Commission on
Intergroup (race) Relations, to which
Mayor Robert Wagner appointed her.
Marietta is a convert to the Democratic
Party, and converts, they say, are the most
fervent believers. In her first political
venture she harangued fellow students at
St. Timothy's, a fashionable boarding
school now at Stevenson, Maryland, in
behalf of Herbert Hoover; that was in
1932. None of the students was old
enough to vote, but it made no difference
to her.
She carried her Republican sympathies
with her when she was sent, in 1935, to La
Petite Ecole Florentine in Florence, Italy,
to be "finished." But at the end of her
year in Italy Marietta refused to consider
herself "finished." She had definitely set-
tled on politics as a life interest, and in
preparation wanted to go to college. This
enthusiasm was not shared by her father,
the Rev. Dr. Peabody, who was faced
with the expensive duty of sending four
sons through prep school and college.
The father, then rector of St. Paul's
Episcopal Church in the Chestnut Hill
section of Philadelphia, made a bargain
with his daughter. He would pay her
tuition at the University of Pennsylvania
if she would (Continued on Page 88)
THE SATURDAY EVENING POST
"The dog is coming along nicely."
Approved For Release 1999109107 : CIA-RDP75-00001 R000200060048-8
 88
R (Continued from Page 84) earn all her
other expenses. If Marietta still looks and
carries herself like a model, small wonder;
during the three years she attended Penn,
majoring in political science, she worked
as a model in that Philadelphia institution,
John Wanamaker's.
Romance and marriage cut short her
university career at the end of her junior
year. On September 2, 1939, Marietta was
married to a tall,
handsome young lawyer, son o a promi-
nent New York-Palm Beach family, and
a Republican. The knot was tied in the
Church of St. Mary's by the Sea in North-
east Harbor. The wedding was described
in chorus by Eastern society editors as
"one of the most brilliant social events of
he year."
The newlyweds took a fashionable
Sutton Place apartment in New York. Old
friends remember the young FitzGeralds
as the handsomest couple in town. But
Europe was already engulfed by war, in
which the FitzGerald marriage finally
foundered. FitzGerald, alarmed by the
Nazi menace, quickly joined the Army.
From that time until months after the war
ended Marietta scarcely saw him.
When their daughter Frances was old
enough to be left with a nurse, FitzGerald
was in Burma; Marietta, alone and rest-
less, took ajob with an old friend, Nelson
Rockefeller, then head of the Office of
Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs.
She worked in New York, looking after
State Department guests, taking Inter-
American wives on shopping tours.
In 1944 she went to work on Life maga-
zine, chiefly as a researcher for John K.
Jessup, the editorial writer.
"It was a fascinating experience, and I
adored the job," she says of her two years
there. "It turned into a marvelous educa-
tion. I had to know by heart the voting
records of almost every United States sen-
ator and of the heads of all the important
committees in the House. It was then,
after memorizing those senatorial and
House voting records that I became a
passionate Democrat."
It was a fascinating experience for Life,
too, as Jessup recalls Marietta's stint
there.
"She was a sweet, candid and outgoing
person, and she earned her pay," he says.
"She was very bright, very handsome and
always dining out in well-connected areas.
She was a Park Avenue type, not a work-
ing girl type, but she was completely at
home in both worlds. When Marietta
worked here, Henry Luce was always
sticking his head in my door and saying,
`I dined out again last night with that
researcher of yours."
Although Marietta had become a
"passionate Democrat" by 1946, when
FitzGerald returned from the war and she
qm c e, s e a a en no active role in
the party's work. Moreover she soon
found herself preoccupied with a rapidly
disintegrating marriage.
The war had parted the young Fitz-
Geralds for almost six years. They were
strangers when they met again in 1946.
FitzGerald, still a conservative and a Re-
publican, returned to a wife who, in his
absence, had become a militant liberal
and a Democrat. Their sympathies were
estranged, and soon they were too.
During the war years Marietta had met
in the homes of mutual friends the singular
and fascinating Anglo-American, Arthur
Ronald Lambert Field Tree, who is now
her husband. He was then shuttling be-
tween London, Washington and New
York on missions for His Majesty's
Government.
Tree, almost twenty years older than
Marietta, is the descendant of two of Chi-
cago's most distinguished and pioneer
families. Born in England and a natural-
CPYRGHT
Approved For Release 1999109107 : CIA-RDP75-00001O~~QQfQQ4$-3 V E N I N G P 0 S T
ized British subject, he was a Conserva-
tive Member of Parliament for thirteen
years. He is an old friend of Winston
Churchill, who visited the Trees in their
Barbados home last winter.
Both of Tree's parents were Americans.
His Chicago grandfathers were Judge
Lambert Tree and the original Marshall
Field. The judge was active in the Demo-
cratic Party in his day, and a friend of the
original Adlai Ewing Stevenson, grand-
father of the current Adlai, and Vice
President during Grover Cleveland's sec-
ond term.
Despite stiff opposition from Marietta's
family, th FitzGerald marriage ended in
a Reno divor in Ju, ly, 947. Three
mon tis ~ earlier Tree's first wife, a Lang-
horne of Virginia, a niece of Lady Nancy
Astor and the mother of Tree's two grown
sons, had divorced him. A week after
Marietta received her Reno decree she
and Tree were married in the town hall at
Huntington, Long Island.
They sailed immediately for England
and Dytchley Park, Tree's country house
near Oxford. The magnificence of this
mansion was, in Marietta's words, "over-
whelming; it was a beautiful and glorious
home." It had been a second home, dur-
ing the war, to Churchill. And now the
American beauty found herself playing
hostess to leading political figures in
Britain and many from the Continent.
Tree had lost his seat in Parliament by a
mere 100 votes, in the Labor landslide of
1945. He knew everyone of political and
social importance in his adopted land,
and he held open house at Dytchley.
By the end of 1948 it was obvious that
Tree could no longer afford to live in
England. Between British and American
taxes his income was swallowed whole.
The source of Tree's income, estimated
at $240,000 annually in 1950, is a multi-
million-dollar trust, principally in Chi-
cago real estate, created by his grand-
father Lambert. So the decision was to sell
Dytchley and return to live in the United
States.
The curtain went down on the Dytchley
period with a gesture worthy of the great
house. The Trees gave a final dinner and
supper dance in the mansion that "might
have followed a scenario by Oscar
Wilde," says Marietta's brother, Sam,
who was present. "I'm sure all the dukes
of England were present, as well as Queen
Elizabeth [then a princess], Prince Philip
and Princess Margaret."
The Trees were back in New York by
December 2, 1949, when their only child,
a daughter christened Penelope, was
born. They soon acquired a handsome
double house in East 79th Street, which
Tree transformed into a miniature Dytch-
ley, with art treasures collected over a
span of thirty years.
Marietta, who collects only causes,
people and politics, was glad to let her
husband take charge of the new home
while she doted on the baby, got her older
daughter settled in school, and began to
pick up old contacts in interracial work.
It was not until the spring of 1952 that
Marietta finally plunged into party poli-
tics. For months before the Democratic
convention in Chicago she was an unpaid
volunteer of unknown status at Demo-
cratic State Committee headquarters in
New York. She proved quick and reliable
in research; she could turn out literate
speeches for any candidate in need of
ghostly help. When the big wheels of the
State Committee packed for Chicago,
they felt sorry that Marietta couldn't be
taken along.
George Daly, public relations director
of the committee, told her, "We simply
can't wangle another hotel room." Never
mind,. said Marietta; she was going to the
convention anyway.
When she said she already had a place
to stay, Daly asked for the address; he felt
the committee should at least keep in
touch with her, try to get her tickets for
the convention and buy her a meal. When
pressed, Marietta said that Marshall
Field-then one of the party's financial
bulwarks-had put his Chicago apart-
ment at her disposal.
Daly rang up Earl Brown, Negro mem-
ber of the Council of the City of New
York and an assistant editor of Life.
"Earl," said Daly, "who the hell is this
girl?"
It was Brown to whom Marietta had
gone in the spring of 1952, saying, "I
would like to work in politics. Should I
go with the regulars or with an inde-
pendent group?" Brown told her she
could do more from the inside than from
the outside, "no matter how much the in-
side needs reform." He then sent her to
Daly without identifying her, except to
say, "Here is a very competent person
who wants work and no pay."
Brown's amused explanation to Daly,
and events at the Chicago convention,
convinced Daly and his cohorts that they
had been entertaining an angel unaware.
She knew everyone and his uncle; more to
the point, she knew everyone and his
uncle on a first-name basis, including two
prime contenders for the nomination,
W. Averell Harriman and Adlai Steven-
son, then governor of Illinois.
Marietta returned from the convention
to go with "Volunteers for Stevenson."
The New York Democrats immediately
talked of her as vice-chairman of the
Democratic State Committee, but she
would have none of it.
What she needed and wanted in politics
was experience. That was just about what
Democrats got out of the '52 campaign.
By the 1954 elections Marietta was co-
manager of the Congressional campaign
of Anthony B. Akers, Democratic candi-
date for the House from New York's
Seventeenth (Silk Stocking) Congressional
District. In his behalf she addressed en-
velopes, directed volunteers, rang door-
bells and stumped the district.
At 10:30 P.M. on election night in 1954,
as returns began to come in, Marietta
quietly let herself out of the Fifth Avenue
apartment of Lewis W. Douglas, former
ambassador to the Court of St. James's.
She was skipping out on the most posh
party in New York that night and leaving
protocol in shards. Mr. and Mrs. Douglas
were entertaining the creme de la creme of
the city in honor of Her Majesty, Queen
Mother Elizabeth. By all the rules, no one
may leave any gathering before royalty
departs.
But the guest making her getaway had
received permission to leave early. Mari-
etta was the only woman in New York
that night to whom it could possibly seem
more important to be with political
cronies at the Democratic headquarters of
her Congressional candidate than to bask
in the presence of the Queen Mother. "It
was the natural thing to do," she ex-
plained later in a Back Bay accent. "At a
time like that one wants to be with one's
pals."
As Marietta left the apartment house,
the family chauffeur and Rolls-Royce
were waiting at the curb. She stepped in,
pulled down the shades and directed the
chauffeur to reverse the rear-view mirror.
Then, with a dexterity worthy of a quick-
change artist, she managed to wriggle out
of her white lace Balmain ball gown and
into a good, basic black. A few moments
later, looking neat and cheerful, she was
at the Blackstone Hotel, Akers's head-
quarters, and involved in the sad task of
counting out her candidate. The Silk
Stocking district, on schedule, had elected
Akers's Republican opponent, Frederic
R. Coudert Jr.
If the Akers campaign failed, it did
produce as a valuable by-product: prac-
tical political experience for Marietta. By
1954 she was an active and valued mem-
ber of the Lexington Democratic Club, in
the Ninth Assembly District. This is the
oldest and largest Democratic reform club
in the city, viewed by the nonpartisan
Citizens Union as representing "all that is
best in politics." Here was an ideal po-
litical haven for an idealistic woman
working her way up in politics from the
precinct level. Marietta soon succeeded
Dorothy Schiff, owner of the New York
Post, as New (Continued on Page 90)
Approved For Release 1999109107 : CIA-RDP75-00001 R000200060048-8
 r---------------------------------____---I
'
CREAM OF CORN SOUP
Combine can Libby's Cream
; milk, #303 hea
it s richer in natural cor cream), corn n (t 11 tsp salt. Cook over ling
water
1 water o0 onion, ix i cup each flour an Cook 15
slice f to smoo oth paste. raiMix to corn mixture.
Add 2 tbsp: butter,
to sm.
. b
1/4 min., staring pepper and occasionally paprika. Top with slices
tsp, each o Olives. 6 servings.
of Libby's Stuffed -~
PEPPER-ASPIC SALAD-Open 46-oz. can Libby's Tomato Juice. (That's
the one that's truly tomato rich!) Soften 3 envelopes unflavored gela-
tin in % cup of the cold juice. Heat remaining juice; do not boil. Add
3 tbsp. grated onion, 3 tsp. salt and the softened gelatin, stirring until
it dissolves. Cut 3 green peppers in half lengthwise; scoop out; fill
with slightly thickened aspic. Chill until firm; top with cottage cheese
or deviled egg halves.
BEEF STEW 'N BISCUITS-Cut packaged biscuits in half. Dip tops into
melted butter mixed with caraway seeds or oregano. Bake buttered
side up in 475? F. oven 5 to 7 min., or until lightly browned. Mean-
while, heat Libby's Beef Stew to bubbling; then top with herb bis-
cuits. Libby's is the stew with lots of lean beef; it's most like homemade!
r~
----- ------------- j
FRUIT COCKTAIL CREAM PUFFS-Drain N2%can Libby's Fruit Cocktail.
(You'll love the delightfully fresh taste of each of its five fruits!)
Reserve syrup and heat to boiling. Thicken with paste of 2 tbsp.
each cornstarch and water. Simmer 15 min.; remove from heat. Add
1 tsp. grated lemon peel. Fold in fruit cocktail; chill. Serve over ice
cream-filled cream puffs.
,:_ ii6qa TamOUS foods .. , trusted everyr/here
I
Fi-om Mary Ha/e Martin
Lih bys f /ome Economist..
-vvvvI THEVSATURDAY EVENING POST
(Continued from Page 88) York State
Committeewoman from the Ninth. She
has held the job ever since by dint of
constant canvassing and hard work.
In 1955 Marietta headed up "Volun-
teers for Stevenson" in New York. In the
campaign a year later she won the ad-
miration of the professionals for the
powerhouse organization she built around
volunteers at Stevenson headquarters.
But Adlai was not the only Stevenson who
pre-empted her time in 1956. Among the
volunteers at headquarters was a pretty
girl, Helen Stevenson, a remote cousin of
the Democratic presidential candidate.
Her eventual marriage to Gov. Robert B.
Meyner of New Jersey was credited at the
time to Marietta's matchmaking.
During the second Stevenson campaign
the Tree drawing room was more than
ever the meeting ground of Democrats of
all degrees of opinion, candidacy, finan-
cial solvency and social background. The
party eggheads loved it as their home
away from home.
In Marietta's drawing room . Demo-
crats can always find stimulation from
such top newsmen as Turner Catledge
and Lester Markel, managing editor and
Sunday editor, respectively, of The New
York Times; James Wechsler, editor of
the New York Post; and Alicia Patterson
Guggenheim, editor of Newsday.
Writers, columnists, commentators, TV
executives, intellectuals and the lively arts
are represented by such salon regulars as
Ed Murrow, Doris Fleeson, Eric Sevareid,
James Reston, Alistair Cooke, Ed Mor-
gan, Larry Lesueur, Theodore White,
Louis G. Cowan, Robert E. Kintner,
Moss Hart, Kitty Carlisle, Irene Selznick,
Roger L. Stevens, Frank Altschul, Mary
Lasker, David Lilienthal, Alan Jay
Lerner, Earl Brown and even such Re-
publicans as Harry and Clare Boothe
Luce.
Party meetings that might ordinarily at-
tract ten Democrats produced sixty when
they were held in the Tree home after
Marietta became active in party politics.
"It beat the back rooms by a block,"
says Earl Brown, who remembers with
relish one of the early gatherings. "We
were trying to raise money for something.
I remember the tickets to this party at
Marietta's house cost twenty dollars, but
people crowded in from the Lower East
Side, Harlem and all over. The catering
and the champagne were by Twenty-One.
When Governor Harriman and I wanted
to talk privately, the only place we could
find was in the house's sub-subbasement.
"I shall never forget the sight of the
Trees' English butler, Collins, dying by
stately inches at the thought of what that
mass of Democrats could do to the house,
or of Ronnie Tree, stiff, perspiring and
apprehensive. And all the time Marietta
was sashaying around as if it were a picnic
in Central Park."
There are those who assay Marietta's
good looks, her successful marriage, her
two adoring children, her lavish homes,
her Rolls-Royce, her political know-how
and her salon, and sigh, "All this and
Collins too!" Collins, who has been with
Tree for thirty years, is a commanding
example of the British butler. He is, in
fact, the secret ingredient that enables
Marietta, who is a perfectionist deter-
mined to be the model wife, mother and
civic servant, to make an educated stab at
all three tasks.
It is Collins who runs the town house
with effortless aplomb. "He is one of the
jewels of the modern world," says Mari-
etta. Whether there are two or 200 for
dinner, he arranges all faultlessly. Besides,
he is one of Marietta's political triumphs.
Collins may have arrived in the United
States a monarchist, but today he is a
true-blue Democrat who no longer
blanches when the house is jumpin' with
the party faithful.
When Akers ran for Congress again in
1958, Marietta was once more comanager
of his campaign. That time the Silk Stock-
ing District rejected him for Republican
John V. Lindsay. Marietta was now vice-
chairman of the New York Committee for
Special Democratic Projects, a group that
raises the major share of funds for support
of the Advisory Council of the Demo-
cratic National Committee. She had also
achieved the status of a Kentucky colonel.
This fall Marietta is devoting her time,
talent and salon to the election of John F.
Kennedy to the White House. No one
doubts that her political heart belongs to
Stevenson, and the even more liberal wing
of the party represented by Sen. Hubert
H. Humphrey; neither does anyone ques-
tion her loyalty to the party.
"She is always for the party rather than
the personality," says her friend, Alicia
Patterson Guggenheim.
"Marietta," says Adlai Stevenson,
"gives the party status and prestige. When
you find someone closely identified with
the intellectual and aristocratic communi-
ties who is also a positive, active, working
Democrat, it tends to encourage everyone
in the party."
"In politics she's a warm, sweet breath
of fresh air," says Joseph Baird of the
Baird Chemical Corporation, who works
with Marietta to raise money for the
SURPRISE IDEAS...
from soup to dessert. ..with
6'FAMOUS FOODS
Libby, McNeill & Libby, Chicago 4, Illinois
--------------------------
FAMOUS H
SPECTACULAR
OCTO8ER 20.29
CPYRGHT
I elevision is a 1!ruly remark-
able invention. The same set
that puts you and your wife to
sleep keeps the neighbors awake.
HAROLD COFFIN
party. "She really believes that politics is
the art of survival."
In Marietta's own opinion, a Puritaq
conscience spurs her activity. "I work in
the political field because I believe that
everyone in a democracy has duties as well
as rights. I think it terribly important that
all the citizens in a democracy fully par-
ticipate in government.
"In politics I can labor for a peaceful
world for all children, a world that will
give a better break to everyone. I am im-
pelled by a feeling that I have so many
blessings I must somehow try to pay for
them in hard work for the community
and in gratitude for being an American.
I? have to try and pay my debt to God."
Marietta's oldest daughter, Frances,
has already gone canvassing with her
mother. As for Marietta's husband, still a
British subject, he is "delighted for her to
have this interest in politics. Of course,
I'm completely divorced from politics
now, but I find that English Conservatives
and American Democrats are indistin-
guishable in their aims."
The usual rewards of politics do not in-
terest Marietta. She does not want to be
an ambassador, a senator or a cabinet
officer. The boys in the back room believe
she might be pleased to be a nationa
committeewoman, or a member of thf
American delegation to the United Na-
tions. Rewarded or not, she will work just
as hard for Kennedy's election as she did
for Stevenson's in '52 and '56, convinced
that salvation for the nation and the
world lies along Democratic Party paths.
And win or lose, the Democrats will still
have a dedicated worker who is also beau-
tiful, brainy, rich, gay, mistress of a
salon-and soon to be seen in a movie,
kissing Clark Gable.
What other political party can make
that claim? 'rH E E ND
--I
Approved For Release 1999109107 : CIA-RDP75-00001 R000200060048-8