Abstract
This film is about conscience and politics. If history teaches values, then in Frances Perkins' life, we learn of a time when, as she said, "People cared to change the way things were."
This is the story of a woman whose anguish over the misery of workers in the emerging industrial world of her youth, led her to give up the comforts of home and family, turn from teaching to settlement house work, ultimately becoming one of the outstanding social reformers in the twentieth century. It is a film not only about an individual but about her contemporaries, about how the movement for social justice took hold of and fired the imagination of Frances Perkins and the men and women around her. It is about a woman who denied she had any ambition, yet was torn between her obligations to husband and child and her devotion to public service.
Frances Perkins was a superb storyteller with a remarkable memory.In You May Call Her Madam Secretary, Broadway and film actress Frances Sternhagen presents Perkins' character on camera using the words from her Oral History, on record at Columbia University, and from lectures, letters and writings. Whole conversations with FDR, Al Smith and others of her era are retold here as she remembered them. "Women have got the vote, I think they ought to be in government, I think you should be in government." - Governor Al Smith, 1919, naming Frances Perkins to the New York State Industrial Board.
You May Call Her Madam Secretary traces the rise of social conscience in this country: from the outrage that followed the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire in 1911, still the worst industrial fire in U.S. history, to the revolutionary legislation of the New Deal: Social Security, unemployment insurance, the minimum wage and maximum hours of work, the end to child labor. This is a film about the complex Frances Perkins, a New Deal "radical," a believer in state's rights, a driving force behind those reforms which shapes our society.
This is the story of a woman whose anguish over the misery of workers in the emerging industrial world of her youth, led her to give up the comforts of home and family, turn from teaching to settlement house work, ultimately becoming one of the outstanding social reformers in the twentieth century. It is a film not only about an individual but about her contemporaries, about how the movement for social justice took hold of and fired the imagination of Frances Perkins and the men and women around her. It is about a woman who denied she had any ambition, yet was torn between her obligations to husband and child and her devotion to public service.
Frances Perkins was a superb storyteller with a remarkable memory.In You May Call Her Madam Secretary, Broadway and film actress Frances Sternhagen presents Perkins' character on camera using the words from her Oral History, on record at Columbia University, and from lectures, letters and writings. Whole conversations with FDR, Al Smith and others of her era are retold here as she remembered them. "Women have got the vote, I think they ought to be in government, I think you should be in government." - Governor Al Smith, 1919, naming Frances Perkins to the New York State Industrial Board.
You May Call Her Madam Secretary traces the rise of social conscience in this country: from the outrage that followed the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire in 1911, still the worst industrial fire in U.S. history, to the revolutionary legislation of the New Deal: Social Security, unemployment insurance, the minimum wage and maximum hours of work, the end to child labor. This is a film about the complex Frances Perkins, a New Deal "radical," a believer in state's rights, a driving force behind those reforms which shapes our society.
Collection
Subject
Contributors
Duration
00:57:52 (HH:MM:SS)
Language:
English
Target or Intended Audience
adult/continuing education, higher education, high school (grades 10-12), college
Copyright Holder
| Name | Vineyard Video Productions |
| Role | producer |
| Telephone | 508-693-3584 |
| Address | P.O. Box 806, 74 Elias Lane West Tisbury, MA 02575 |
| [email protected] |
Copyright Date
1987-01-01
Rights Declaration:
This video is protected by copyright. You are free to view it but not download or remix it. Please contact the licensing institution for further information about how you may use this video.
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