The Girl Who Had It All
Marietta Peabody Tree was born into one of the most respected families in America, and she married her way into some of the most dazzling social circles in the world. The epitome of sophistication, she spent her days charming politicians and even working for them—but underneath the glamor lurked dark secrets and even darker deeds.
1. She Came From A Powerful Family
Born in 1917 in Massachusetts, Marietta Peabody Tree grew up in a strict household that expected the world of her. The Peabodys were an old Boston Brahmin family and, as such, Marietta’s mother Mary and her father Malcom—an Episcopal minister whose own father was the founder of the famed prep school Groton—insisted their daughter be perfect in every way.
But their home life was far from ideal.
2. Her Parents Were Cheap
Although they ran in wealthy circles and their name was gold, the Peabodys had long lost their own money. In order to make ends meet and raise their large family, Marietta’s parents were intensely frugal. This habit grew to bizarre proportions. Reportedly, her mother was once aghast when a houseguest asked her for two lumps of sugar.
All this had an unsettling effect on young Marietta.
3. She Learned To Fake It
The harsher realities of her private life, at least in comparison to her rich friends, combined with her family’s intense need to impress, turned Marietta into a little girl utterly dedicated to putting on a happy front no matter what was going on in her world.
If things were falling apart, she still knew how to turn her charm on. She even had a plan.
4. She Had Big Ambitions
After one too many social embarrassments—including being unable to go on expensive trips with friends and having to wear the same dress to multiple debutante balls—Marietta decided she was going to grow up and build a career in the Foreign Service. After all, she was becoming interested in politics, and the move would provide her with financial stability, not to mention an even higher echelon of society to circulate in.
But she got a rude awakening.
5. She Learned The Way Into Power
Marietta grew up in a time where, although there were increasing opportunities for girls, women were still mostly expected to be wives and mothers—and not much more. In line with this, she soon had her dreams of the Foreign Service crushed when she found out that the only way to be in it, for a woman anyway, was to marry into it. Well, Marietta could work with that too.
6. She Used Her Strengths
While the Peabodys were repressed by nature, Marietta honed her attractiveness like a weapon. As she grew into a bubbly, tall blonde, she had a natural charm with men and, much to her parents' horror, was an incorrigible flirt from a young age. Whenever she happened to appear at the all-boys institution of Groton, where her brothers attended, she created a scene—which was just how she liked it.
It wasn’t the only way she disappointed her parents.
7. She Was A Party Girl
Marietta excelled at athletics in her high school, but never took to academics. In order to avoid college after she graduated, she convinced her parents to send her on a grand tour of Europe, capped off by a finishing school in Florence. Around this time, she predicted her future would contain “Parties, people, and politics”.
She wasn’t wrong, but there was still a twist.
8. Her Father Forced Her Into School
Eventually, her strict father insisted that Marietta attend college, and she reluctantly enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania in 1936, following her romp around Europe. Although it didn’t last—she soon dropped out—she always did claim, "I'll never stop being grateful to my father for forcing me to go to college. It changed my life”. She wasn’t wrong.
9. She Ran With A Fast Crowd
During her brief attendance at the University of Pennsylvania, Marietta met Desmond FitzGerald, a prominent New York City lawyer who opened the door for Marietta to Manhattan’s elite. It was exactly the sophisticated world she craved, and her studies immediately took a backseat to partying with the scions of the Astor, Paley, and Warburg families.
Then she really sealed the deal.
10. Her Life Looked Perfect On The Outside
By the turn of the decade, Marietta and FitzGerald made it official, marrying in what was surely a talked-about high society wedding. Soon after, Marietta gave birth to a daughter, Frances FitzGerald, and the new trio continued on their charmed existence; Marietta would later describe these years as “a fever of happiness”.
But Marietta never could stay happy.
11. She Clashed With Her Husband
Not long after her wedding, Marietta came to a cold realization—and it was one that would haunt her throughout her life. While she was a staunch Democrat with liberal values, her husband was a dyed-in-the-wool Republican. While these conflicting views had lent a frisson to their courtship, they were now putting strain on their marriage.
So when America entered WWII in 1941, Marietta made a fateful decision.
12. She Looked For A Way Out
With her nascent marriage already crumbling (and her daughter still an infant), Marietta accepted a post at the British Ministry of Information. Desmond FitzGerald, meanwhile, didn’t stay home and worry about his wife: He was commissioned as an officer in the Army and sent as a liaison to the Republic Army of China.
With husband and wife frequently apart, it didn’t take long for Marietta’s naughty side to surface.
13. She Had A Hollywood Affair
In 1945, Marietta found herself passionately entangled with the notoriously volatile and amorous film director John Huston, father of Anjelica, who was 11 years her senior. Like Marietta, Huston was also married, albeit to his second of five wives, and he took her away from her usual world of Manhattan elites and into the sparkling realm of Hollywood.
Despite the illicit nature of their relationship, the pair weren’t exactly discreet.
14. She Was A Passionate Lover
Marietta and Huston flung themselves full force into their relationship, with both of them ignoring their familial bonds—including Marietta’s still-young daughter Frances—to indulge their pleasure. Apparently, they once were together so, well, furiously, that they broke a friend’s bed. Yet it wasn’t all lust.
15. She Was A Man-Eater
John Huston was rarely a man to stay put when it came to women, but Marietta seemed to capture him body and soul. Rumors around the time indicated that he was “head over heels” for the socialite. For her part, Marietta seemed to encourage this, and they even discussed marriage—but Huston was about to find out that his lover was more fickle than him.
16. She Sent Her Lover Packing
At the end of WWII, Desmond FitzGerald finally came back to New York from his own war-time travels, and Marietta sent John Huston back to California, ostensibly so she and FitzGerald could discuss their divorce terms at last and she could keep carrying on with Huston. Yet FitzGerald didn’t seem so ready to let his wife go.
17. She Went On A Last-Ditch Trip
Shortly after FitzGerald’s return, he and Marietta took a trip to Barbados, staying with the wealthy politician Ronald Tree, grandson of retail magnate Marshall Fields, and his wife Nancy. It was seemingly a Hail Mary to save their relationship, and on the surface a stay at the Trees’ opulent estate was a fool-proof way to reconnect. Until it turned into a disaster.
18. She Started Another Affair
As a wealthy, bisexual Anglo-American with ties to the British Parliament, Ronald Tree was immediately fascinating to Marietta. So, even though he was 20 years her senior—having almost a full decade on John Huston—Marietta used her time in Barbados to start an affair with her wealthy, urbane host. It was a breaking point.
19. She Made Scandalous Plans
In the face of Ronald Tree’s many assets—in every sense of the world—poor John Huston paled in comparison. Marietta appeared to all but forget the dashing director she had once broken beds with. Instead, she and Ronald Tree now plotted to divorce their spouses and marry each other. This time, they succeeded.
20. She Got What She Wanted
Evidently giving up the ghost, FitzGerald finally complied with the split and he and Marietta officially divorced in 1947. Tree did the same with his wife Nancy, and he and Marietta married soon after, in the same summer her divorce went through.
Except it wasn’t quite the society wedding Marietta might have hoped for.
21. Her Family Condemned Her
When Marietta told her parents the news of her upcoming divorce (and upcoming nuptials), their reaction was pure rage. The Peabodys didn’t have divorces, and they condemned Marietta’s loose choices in her life.
All the same, Marietta pressed on, even though it meant driving a wedge between herself and her family. Besides, she had consolations.
22. She Was The Mistress Of A Historical Estate
Ronald Tree’s home was the Ditchley Park estate in the English countryside, a magnificent pile that had hosted the likes of Winston Churchill and his wife Clementine—in fact, the home had been a hideout for Churchill in the depths of WWII. Marietta intended to settle herself into these illustrious surroundings and become the best English society wife she could be.
The trouble was, Marietta didn’t have great follow-through.
23. She Regretted Her Choices
Once the dust settled on her second marriage, Marietta Peabody Tree realized she had made the same mistake. Like Desmond FitzGerald, Ronald Tree was a staunch conservative, as was most of his social set, and once more Marietta found her liberal beliefs marked her as the odd man out, no matter how opulent the gathering. It wasn’t the only thing she grappled with.
24. She Had Another Child
In 1949, Marietta Peabody Tree gave birth to her second child, another daughter they named Penelope, and who would eventually grow into the It model of the 1960s. Yet despite this apparent omen of domestic bliss, Marietta was deeply unhappy: Conservative social circle aside, she was now bored to tears by the quiet English countryside life at Ditchley, and in desperate need of a change of scenery. She got it.
25. She Came Back To New York
Ronald Tree could see that his young wife was chomping at the bit at Ditchley and, besides that, new taxation laws in England were eating away at his inheritance funds. With little encouragement, then, Tree sold Ditchley and left for New York with Marietta, Penelope, and a butler in tow. Yet everywhere you go, there you are.
26. She Was A “Career Wife”
Later, Marietta Peabody Tree would speak with bittersweet perspective about her time being a “career wife” to Ronald Tree, which contained as much disappointment as it did glamour. Once, she detailed how, after she and Tree had to spend August in Albany working in politics—“the month we usually went to Florence”—her husband sat her down at the end of the month and told her “don’t let this happen again”.
Perhaps it’s no wonder, then, that she was ravenous for something else.
27. She Got Deeper Into Politics
Being back in New York reawakened something in Marietta Peabody Tree, and soon she was using Ronald Tree’s significant funds to establish a salon in the city where she could circulate with some of the East Coast’s best and brightest socialites and politicians—particularly of the Democratic bent. Like so much she did, Marietta’s pet project soon turned scandalous.
28. She Met A Powerful Man
Marietta Peabody Tree was now smack dab in the middle of American politics, and she became an especially passionate supporter of the Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson, who himself was the grandson of the 23rd vice president of the US. With his sterling pedigree and experience in politics, many people backed Stevenson—but none were as…passionate as Marietta.
29. She Snuck Around
In 1952—the very year of the presidential election—Marietta and Stevenson launched into an affair together. As usual, Marietta was committed to keeping up a respectable facade for the rest of the world, and the couple came up with the code names Mr and Mrs Johnson or Mr and Mrs Richardson for each other, and would meet at friends’ houses to conduct their business in secret. It didn’t change Stevenson’s fate.
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30. Her Lover Lost It
In the end, the tryst between Marietta Peabody Tree and the would-be president was kept top secret, but it was hardly a good luck charm. When the votes rolled in on election day, the results were crushing. Stevenson lost by a landslide to the Republican candidate Dwight Eisenhower. Nonetheless, they carried on. They even had help.
31. She Had An Open Marriage
Perhaps thanks to his bisexuality, Marietta’s husband Ronald Tree was relatively even-keeled about the affair, which he was aware of, and even invited Stevenson to stay with them from time to time. By then, in any case, the Trees were largely but amicably estranged, and would become even more so as the years went on. But not everything was so rosy.
32. Her Lover Liked To Make Her Jealous
Stevenson was an inveterate ladies’ man before he and Marietta Peabody Tree met, and he didn’t change his habits after they started their tryst. The politician particularly liked to exchange love letters with his various women, and he would keep the notes in his bedside table even with Marietta there. More than that, he also liked to prod at Marietta’s jealousy by telling her about his pursuits.
33. She Watched Him Lose Again
In 1956, Marietta Peabody Tree and Adlai Stevenson were still going strong, albeit behind closed doors, and Stevenson was once more running against Eisenhower for the Oval Office. Well, heartbreak struck twice: Eisenhower defeated Stevenson in another landslide victory, shutting down his hopes for the Presidential office once and for all. Which is about when things went sideways for their love, too.
34. He Drifted From Her
After his second crushing defeat, Marietta and Stevenson stayed in touch, but Stevenson’s eyes seemed to wander more than ever. He also had something of a type—powerful women in politics—and his dalliances were with dynamos like philanthropist Mary Lasker, publisher Alicia Patterson Guggenheim, and socialite Brooke Astor, to whom he even proposed.
You can be sure, though, that Marietta wasn’t crying into her pillow every night.
35. Her Ex Came Back
Around this time, an old ghost walked into the life of Marietta Peabody Tree. Director John Huston contacted her once more, asking her to be a part of his upcoming film The Misfits, starring Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe, and Montgomery Clift. His motives weren’t pure, either: According to friends, Marietta was still the only woman Huston had ever loved, likely because she was the one who left him.
Well, Marietta both disappointed and delighted him.
36. She Acted Alongside Marilyn Monroe
Despite his continued ardor over her, Marietta turned down a second go with Huston, but she did say yes to a part in the movie. Not that she was particularly grateful about it: After seeing herself on the big screen, she said, “I was simply horrible”. Besides a part in the 1988 movie Mr North, directed by John Huston’s son Danny, she never acted in a film again.
Then in 1961, Marietta got some good news at last:
37. She Got A Big Promotion
When John F Kennedy became President, there was finally a Democrat in the White House. More than that, it led directly to a promotion for Marietta Peabody Tree: Kennedy named her the US representative to the UN’s Commission on Human Rights, a position that enabled her to work directly under her (continuing) lover Adlai Stevenson, who was the head of the American delegation.
Yet it wasn’t the dream position it might seem.
38. She Thought Kennedy Was Shallow
Although Marietta had an ally in Kennedy, she had harsh words about him. Speaking of him later, she criticized Kennedy for his dismissive views on women—for although he “enjoyed them and was extremely interested in them,” she said, “he simply enjoyed their beauty and charms without particularly their intellectual…counsel”.
Nonetheless, Marietta worked in the UN role until 1964—which meant she had a front seat to national tragedy.
39. She Didn’t Believe The News
When Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, Marietta’s reaction was telling. She was in the middle of a delegate lunch when her daughter Penelope came down stairs and said, “I’ve just heard on the radio that the President has been shot”. But Marietta Peabody Tree, whose whole life was putting on a brave face, couldn’t even countenance the news.
“I quite blocked it out,” she remembered. So much so that she went and had the lunch anyway before realizing the truth. Even when it did hit, she only became more “Marietta”.
40. She Was Good In A Crisis
Marietta admitted she was “predominantly [in] shock” at Kennedy’s funeral, but this didn’t stop her from taking control. The UN delegates arrived dressed in rented morning coats and stiff collars, and the get-up of one of them in particular, diplomat U Thant, was especially ill-fitted, with his collar climbing up his neck. She recalled, “as part of my duties…I kept pushing the collar down—like a governess—all during the day”.
But she could hardly be so stoic about the next tragedy.
41. She Lost Her Great Love
In 1965, despite their detours away from each other, Marietta Peabody Tree and Adlai Stevenson were still seeing each other regularly. Then tragedy struck. One July day while they were walking in London, Stevenson suffered a massive and ultimately fatal heart attack, perishing that day at the age of 65. His last moments haunted Marietta forever.
42. She Watched A Man Die
Thinking of Stevenson's final seconds with her, Marietta recalled that she had been walking briskly ahead of the politician to get to the park when he called out to her to stop walking so fast. When she turned around, “he’d gone white, gray really” before falling onto the pavement, his hand brushing hers as he tumbled.
In her diary that night, she wrote simply and heartbreakingly: “Adlai is dead. We were together”.
43. Her Life Was In Tatters
Stevenson’s sudden end sent a shock through Marietta’s entire life—and when she looked around and took stock, all she could feel was alarm. She and Ronald Tree were estranged, yes, but more than that, her relationship with her daughters Frances and Penelope, never close, had become frigid as the girls grew up.
She felt at sea, and loss wasn’t done with her yet.
44. She Became A Widow
Ronald Tree and Marietta Peabody Tree had long stopped being romantic partners, but they always maintained an affection for each other. So Marietta was heartbroken when, in 1976, Tree had a stroke and perished, leaving her well and truly alone for the first time in decades. To add insult to injury, Tree passed on July 14, the exact same day as Stevenson had a decade earlier.
There was more bad news.
45. She Had To Sell Her Assets
Ronald Tree’s fortune had steadily declined over the years, and after his passing Marietta was forced to sell off much of their property to stay afloat. Perhaps more painfully, she had to cut back on the endless rounds of parties and openings she usually attended and retreat into an insufferably quiet life.
Still, Marietta Peabody Tree always knew how to survive, and she wasn’t held back for long.
46. She Found A New Scandalous Love Interest
Only just hitting her 60s when she became a widow, Marietta Peabody Tree was still an intensely attractive woman, and now that she was single she had more suitors than she could handle. But Marietta always did make the same mistakes. Though she could have had almost anyone, she chose the married English architect Richard Llewelyn Davies as her next beau.
It couldn’t end well, and it didn’t.
47. She Lost Everything Again
For years, Marietta and Davies were joined at the hip, and Marietta Peabody Tree even helped to finance Davies’ business, likely in the hope that he would leave his wife and make an honest woman out of her. Instead, she got news that took her breath away: He, too, perished suddenly a handful of years into their liaison, leaving her with more debts to take care of.
But if it was karma coming for Marietta, she wasn’t interested.
48. She Still Had It
After Davies’ passing, Marietta Peabody Tree supported herself by calling in investments and working on the boards of various powerful companies, among them CBS and Pan Am. It launched her once more into the world of the very rich, and she spent her later years in the 1980s flashing about with the nouveau riche Trumps and Steinbergs.
But what goes up must come down.
49. She Fought Until The End
When Marietta Peabody Tree was 72, she hit the final bad break of her career: Doctors diagnosed her with breast cancer. A force of nature as ever, she clung on for a couple more years before passing at the age of 74 in 1991.
But there’s one secret about the “Golden Girl of the Democratic Party” that people tend to forget.
50. She Wasn’t A Feminist
For all her success in the male-dominated world of politics, and for all her liberal values, Marietta Peabody Tree never quite left her identity as a “career wife”. When the feminist movement surged in the 1960s, she staunchly refused to support it, and even refused to sign three resolutions surrounding women’s rights. Golden Girl indeed.
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