Loretta Swit takes up role of feminist first lady

But there’s another side to Swit’s professional life – her work on stage and in film for more than four decades. Among her roles has been acting in the one-character play “Shirley Valentine,” about the life of a working-class woman from Liverpool, England.

“I did it in Toronto for three months,” Swit said in a phone interview from New York City. “It’s like visiting an old friend. I think once you start to establish yourself as being able to do a one-woman presentation, that word gets out.”

	If you go WHAT: “Eleanor: Her Secret Journey” with Loretta Swit WHEN: 3 p.m. March 24 WHERE: Popejoy Hall, UNM Center for the Arts HOW MUCH: $20, $29 and $39 in advance at ticket offices in the UNM Bookstore and the Pit, at select area Albertsons supermarkets, at www.unmtickets.com, by calling 925-5858 or toll-free 877-664-8661 or at the door

Word seems have gotten out because Swit recently added another one-woman show to her résumé. She is portraying former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt in the one-woman show “Eleanor: Her Secret Journey.” Swit will give her third performance as Eleanor on March 24 at Popejoy Hall.

Eleanor Roosevelt was hardly a shadow first lady to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

“She had a tremendous vision and a great understanding of the political situation in which women found themselves in those days. She was very powerful in getting women to go forward,” Swit said.

As first lady, she pushed for a larger role for women in the workplace.

“Today as women we enjoy the fruits of her labor,” Swit added.

Eleanor spoke her mind even if meant disagreeing with her husband the president.

On her own, she started an experimental community for families of unemployed miners in West Virginia and she advocated for the civil rights of African Americans and Japanese Americans long before the Civil Rights Movement.

“She had tremendous integrity, tremendous insight, sensitivity and wisdom,” Swit said.

Swit said that FDR respected and admired Eleanor and there was love when they married.

“But after she had five children, he strayed and it cut her, cut her deeply,” she said.

“And I do go into that. It’s very much part of what happened to them. This heartbreak. But she stuck by him, believed in him, believed in the good that he could do.”

Indeed, Swit said, Eleanor enhanced her husband’s power and strength as president with her own ability to be great, though she was too modest to paint herself that way.

“She was a great lady. Any actor would want to play Eleanor,” she said.

After FDR died, his successor, President Harry S. Truman, appointed Eleanor Roosevelt as a delegate to the United Nations General Assembly and months later she became the first chair of the UN Commission on Human Rights.