The Peabodys of Boston have been in this country for three and a half centuries. In that time they have produced clipper ship captains and China traders, missionaries to the Wild West and diplomats, bishops, governors and tycoons. But when Washington filmmaker Pamela Peabody, 46, looked at the family she had married into, she decided that its most remarkable members were the women.
The current line begins with Mary Peabody, 89, the clan matriarch. A feisty liberal, she was jailed in St. Augustine, Fla. for trying to desegregate a lunch counter in 1964 when her son Endicott was governor of Massachusetts. Marietta Tree, 63, Mary's daughter, was America's first woman ambassador to the U.N. and a colleague of Adlai Stevenson's who was with him when he died. Marietta's daughter, Frances Fitzgerald, 39, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author whose Fire in the Lake was widely judged to be the best book written on Vietnam.
Understandably, Pamela Peabody turned her camera on her women in-laws; the resulting film, The Female Line, will be seen on PBS stations starting this week. The broadcast will undoubtedly revive memories of the family feud that erupted when the film was first shown privately in Washington last year. "It's a hatchet job," sniped one family friend. "And to think the only reason the three women agreed to the film is that Pam is the underachiever in the family and they were trying to be kind to her."
A former museum and broadcasting executive, Pamela is married to Mary's son Mike. Few families would consider her a failure; few families similarly would appreciate her unsparing portrait of one of its members—in this case her sister-in-law, Marietta. The former diplomat is seen espousing civil rights while being served by a black butler in her Barbados mansion, and declaiming liberal ideology from the backseat of a limousine. "I thought the portrayal of my mother was a little unfair," Fitzgerald complains. "She doesn't even own a limousine—it was rented. And there were black guests at that dinner—why didn't they show them?" Even venerable Mary Peabody was less than pleased by her role in the film. "I kept wishing that old hag would get off the screen," she sighs.
Pam interviewed each of the three women alone and filmed mainly at the family compound in Northeast Harbor, Maine. After that she spliced together their answers to a series of questions about steamy topics ranging from Middle East policy to sex and abortion. The only major disagreement emerges between Mary, who is pro-Arab, and Marietta, a supporter of Israel; even then, there is no hint of acrimony between the women. "The family has a New England reserve about arguments," Pam observes. "Mike and I fight all the time because we've had years of therapy. But Mrs. Peabody's generation avoided arguments. She lived through her husband [the late Malcolm Peabody was Episcopal bishop of Central New York]. She was a model minister's wife."
Pam insists that she never intended to reflect badly on her relatives. "I love the Peabody family," she stresses. "And I don't see why Marietta should have to apologize for wanting to be surrounded by beautiful things and having money. She isn't a superficial person. Besides, where would the Democratic party be without rich people to help fund the worthwhile candidates?"
In any case, the film that will be shown this season is changed from the original. Clips of Marietta with Steven-son and Eleanor Roosevelt have been added to underscore her seriousness as a political figure. Cutaway shots of black guests at that Barbados dinner party—as well as footage of Marietta with black colleagues at the U.N.—have been spliced in. "We all felt Marietta had been pictured a little one-sidedly," even Pam's husband, Mike, allows. "I helped Pammy change it. It's a real family treasure now. Other families won't be able to go back in 30 years and see something like this."
For the moment at least all is relatively calm among the Peabodys. Mike and Pam and their sons, Payson, 16, and Carter, 14, spent part of the summer with the three women at Northeast Harbor. "Marietta is gracious and understanding," Pam says. "She told me that in two weeks nobody will remember this." That much, at least, may be true. Some who have seen the new version of the film complain that it is talky, somewhat pretentious and much too long. They tend to agree with young Carter Peabody's cheeky assessment of the whole flap: "I don't see why people would want to hear what my grandmother, aunt and cousin have to say about the problems of the world."
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
