Original Publication- New York Woman Magazine – March 1, 1987
Regal poise. Perfect posture. A voice that cannot be acquired but must be bread though several generations. Too sparkling to be dowager but so very grande dame. Marietta Tree, sixty nine, quintessential New York aristocrat, nearly six feet tall, still powerfully alluring to men, has been part of, and privy to, many of the events that have influenced this century’s history.
There have been two rich husbands, two famous daughters, a celebrated affair with John Huston (“She was the most beautiful and desirable woman I had ever known”), a castle to keep, another posh estate in the Caribbean, and a stint as the first female with the rank of ambassador to the U.S. mission to the United Nations – serving there with her dear and close friend, Adlai Stevenson who died while out walking with her in London in 1965. Throughout her life she has never ceased to champion civil and human rights, and has never restricted herself to “safe” charities. Today it takes fifteen lines in her biography to list her numerous boards and associations. Who would say that Marietta Peabody FitzGerald Tree has not lived up the goal she once reported to Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.: “I decided early that my ideal was to be a combination of Carole Lombard and Eleanor Roosevelt.”
To truly understand Marietta Tree, one must understand that she sees no dichotomy between beauty and brains, between the instincts of the socialite and the social reformer, between the role of figurehead and power broker. Prevented initially by her sex from seeking political office, (“It would have been out of the question – few husbands would have tolerated it”), she learned early that she could effect change by means of her wealth and wiles. Now after forty years of throwing the weight of her considerable assets behind the ideas she believes in, she has left a legacy to the city that many a politician would envy, and she has done it without threatening any of them. Says former mayor Robert Wagner, “She’s so attractive, she’s able – not only with her ability but also with her charm – to get people to do a lot more than one could who is not nearly so attractive.” Adds Michael Clark, executive director of the Citizens Committee for New York City, which Marietta Tree chairs, “She has an enormous amount of presence and a very gracious style, which is crucial because it becomes impossible to say no to her on some level.”
Certainly, had she been born a male Boston Peabody (her paternal grandfather was rector of Groton School and her father an Episcopal bishop), her brains, bloodlines, and connections would probably have guaranteed her a preordained place as a “wise man” counselor to presidents. Instead, liker her contemporaries Susan Mary Alsop and Pamela Harriman she surely heard most of the wise men’s information whispered at the Establishment’s dinner parties.
Newswoman Diane Sawyer, a Tree admirer, says, “She grew up at a time when it was utterly unheard of to be both significant and attractive.” Now Tree often reserves her most impressive skills for her own dinners, which tend to be dazzling arrays: she dazzles, they array. “Some of the most interesting seminars I’ve ever heard,” is the way Sawyer describes those gatherings known to the select as “dinner at Marietta’s.” “It’s the round table, and the fearlessness with which she encourages people to talk about things they are most raw or inflamed about . . .” says Sawyer.
The cause that currently engages Tree’s own passion, intellect, and energy – the Citizens Committee for New York City – began as the brainchild of Jacob Javits in 1975. Founded at the height of the city’s fiscal crisis, the blue-chip group awards small cash grants to some 6,000 active neighborhood block associations for everything from planting gardens to buying refrigeration equipment for soup kitchens. “All of us think of New York as such a tragic place,” Tree says from the red sitting room of her drop-dead elegant apartment near the East River. On this day she complements the room’s red color scheme by wearing red tights over legs that are even better than Pat Buckley’s. “But so many people have lived on their blocks for twenty or thirty years. They’ve grown up on their block, so there’s a good deal of stability.”
The committee is neither civic plaything nor social avenue for Tree: she not only organizes – practically singlehandedly – the annual dinner, which nets over $350,000, she also rounds up millionaire donors and social workers in mini vans, and buses them through the city’s varied neighborhoods. “She hates being labeled a socialite,” says Michael Clark, who labels her “the kind of ‘chair’ most organizers pray for.” In fact, her commitment to the committee’s goals reflects an enduring concern for society’s underdogs. “The future is trumpet for his firm, now Llewelyn Davies-Sahni, Inc. She learned finance from scratch (“I thought all you did was get space and hire a secretary, and we’d be off to the races. I never heard of the words cash flow, for instance”) and learned it well enough so that she was ready to become a business asset to old friend Bill Paley in 1973.
Paley, under pressure to name a woman to the CBS board, found Marietta Tree to be a handy choice. Fourteen years later, Tree is still the only woman on the CBS board, having made something of a career of this status. (She’s also the only woman on the boards of Pan Am, The United States Trust Co., International Income Property, Inc., and Llewelyn Davies-Sahni, Inc.) A staunch Paley loyalist, she’s reluctant to see that her lone presence on the board supports the rumors of sexual discrimination that have swirled around CBS for years (currently, a discrimination suit is pending against CBS’s Washington bureau.) Committed from the beginning to “finding out if women were on an equally good career path with men,” Tree refuses to believe evidence to the contrary. “You can say CBS is a model employer,” she insists.
“She’s not an uppity woman” is the way one observer close to the workings of the CBS board explains her quiescence. “Frankie’s brilliant, Marietta’s admirable,” explains another man who knows both mother and daughter. “Marietta’s energy, her tenacity to keep up at her age, with all that money, is amazing.”
Indeed. Despite her beauty and her wealth, she has – from a culture that doesn’t dictate it and a society that doesn’t demand it – stayed the course for forty years, trying to make the city she calls “the most exciting in the world” live up to her expectations. For example, why do we thrill to the magic of thousands of colored lights on New York’s bridges at night? Because back in 1963 Marietta Tree took one look at some models of the city’s bridges to be used in the 1964 World’s Fair and said, “Why don’t we have garlands of lights over the tops of our bridges?” Presto! Zippo! Let there be light. Now, in the evenings, Marietta Tree can glance out her windows and across her garden to a smashing view of the 59th Street Bridge and say – not without satisfaction – “I am able to enjoy some of the bread I have cast upon the waters.”
This article is typed from the original material. Please excuse any errors that have escaped final proofreading.
No Comments