Grey Gardens

Grey Gardens
Directed by	Albert Maysles David Maysles Ellen Hovde Muffie Meyer
Produced by	Albert Maysles David Maysles Susan Froemke
Starring	Edith "Big Edie" Ewing Bouvier Beale Edith "Little Edie" Bouvier Beale
Cinematography	Albert Maysles David Maysles
Editing by	Susan Froemke Ellen Hovde Muffie Meyer
Distributed by	The Criterion Collection (region 1 DVD)
Release date(s)	USA 27 September 1975 (premiere at NYFF) USA 19 February 1976 (limited release)
Running time	100 min.
Country	United States
Language	English
Followed by	The Beales of Grey Gardens Grey Gardens (HBO film)

Grey Gardens is a 1975 documentary film by Albert and David Maysles, with Susan Froemke, Ellen Hovde, and Muffie Meyer. The film depicts the everyday lives of the two Edith Beales, a reclusive socialite mother and daughter of the same name who lived at Grey Gardens, a decrepit mansion at 3 West End Road in the wealthy Georgica Pond neighborhood of East Hampton, New York. The film was screened at the 1976 Cannes Film Festival, but was not entered into the main competition.^[1]

Grey Gardens

Edith "Big Edie" Ewing Bouvier Beale and her daughter Edith "Little Edie" Bouvier Beale were the aunt and first cousin of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis. The two women lived together at Grey Gardens for decades with limited funds, resulting in squalor and almost total isolation.

The house was designed by Joseph Greenleaf Thorpe in 1897, and purchased in 1923 by Phelan Beale and Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale. After Phelan left his wife, Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale and her daughter Edith Bouvier Beale lived there for decades more, over 50 years in total for each woman. The house was called Grey Gardens because of the color of the dunes, the cement garden walls, and the sea mist.^[2]

In the fall of 1971 and throughout 1972, their living conditions—their house was infested by fleas, inhabited by numerous cats and raccoons, deprived of running water, and filled with garbage and decay—were exposed as the result of an article in the National Enquirer and a cover story in New York Magazine^[3] after a series of inspections (which the Beales called "raids") by the Suffolk County Health Department. With the Beale women facing eviction and the razing of their home, in the summer of 1972 Jacqueline Onassis and her sister Lee Radziwill provided the necessary funds to stabilize and repair the dilapidated house so that it would meet Village codes.

Albert and David Maysles became interested in their story and received permission to film a documentary about the women, which was released in 1976 to wide critical acclaim. Their cinema vérité technique left the women to tell their own stories.

Aftermath

"Big Edie" died in 1977 and "Little Edie" sold the house in 1979 to former Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee and his wife Sally Quinn. "Little Edie" died in 2002 at the age of 84.

According to a 2003 article in Town & Country, after their purchase, Bradlee and Quinn completely restored (the sale agreement forbids razing the house) the house and grounds.

Jerry Torre, the handyman shown in the documentary, was sought by the filmmakers for years afterward, and was found by chance driving a New York City taxicab.^[4] Lois Wright, one of the two birthday party guests in the film, has hosted a public television show in East Hampton since the 1980s. She wrote a book about her experiences at the house with the Beales.^[5]

In 2006, Albert Maysles made available previously unreleased footage for a special 2-disc edition for the Criterion Collection. It included a new feature titled The Beales of Grey Gardens, which also received a limited theatrical release.

Walter Newkirk, a longtime friend of Little Edie, released an interview he did with her during his college days. A CD of the interview titled Little Edie Live! A Visit To Grey Gardens is currently available.^[6] It was followed with a scrapbook memoir of the friendship he shared with her over several decades. The book is titled memoraBEALEia (2008).^[7]

Adaptations

• The documentary was adapted into a full-length musical, Grey Gardens, with book by Doug Wright, music by Scott Frankel and lyrics by Michael Korie. Starring Christine Ebersole and Mary Louise Wilson, the show premiered at Playwrights Horizons in New York City in February 2006. The musical reopened on Broadway in November 2006 at the Walter Kerr Theatre, and was acclaimed on more than 25 "Best of 2006" lists in newspapers and magazines. The production won a Tony Award for Best Costume Design, and Ebersole and Wilson each won Tony Awards for their performances. The Broadway production closed on July 29, 2007. It was the first musical on Broadway ever to be adapted from a documentary.

• A Few Small Repairs by David Robson, a play loosely based on the women of Grey Gardens, premiered to good reviews in Philadelphia in March 2007; it was subsequently performed in the summer of 2009 at the annual Pick 'n' Mix Festival in Belfast, Northern Ireland by Skewiff Theatre Company.

• Little Edie & The Marble Faun by David Lally, was a play written for The Metropolitan Playhouse's Annual Author Fest, "Hawthornucopia", which ran from January 14-27, 2008 in New York, NY. The play was inspired by the documentary and Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Marble Faun.

• Grey Gardens, an HBO film starring Jessica Lange and Drew Barrymore as the Edies, with Jeanne Tripplehorn as Jacqueline Kennedy, and Daniel Baldwin as Julius Krug. Directed and co-written (with Patricia Rozema) by filmmaker Michael Sucsy, filming began on October 22, 2007 in Toronto.^[8] It flashes back and forth between Little Edie's life as a young woman and the actual filming/premiere of the 1975 documentary. It first aired on HBO on April 18, 2009 and won six Primetime Emmys.^[9]

References in other works

• Musician Rufus Wainwright wrote a song titled "Grey Gardens", which appears on his 2001 album Poses. The song's narrative is partly composed of references to both the 1975 documentary Grey Gardens, and to Thomas Mann's novella Death in Venice (or to Luchino Visconti's film of the same title).

• At the beginning of Gilmore Girls, season 3, episode 9 ("A Deep-Fried Korean Thanksgiving"), the Gilmore girls are watching the film. They comment that Edith and Edie could be them.

• In the second season of the Showtime series The L Word, Mark and Jenny mention the film upon first meeting. Mark is an aspiring director of documentaries and names Grey Gardens as one of his favorite films.

• Canadian indie pop group Stars sample dialogue from the film in the song "The Woods" on their 2003 release Heart.

• In the Rugrats episode "The Case of the Missing Rugrat," Tommy is accidentally taken from Grandpa Lou and is put under the care of two sisters named Emma and Clarice in their crumbling estate called Grey Gardens, in an episode that also references Sunset Boulevard and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?.

• In an episode of Will & Grace, Grey Gardens is referenced.

• The film is mentioned by character Michael Tolliver in Armistead Maupin's 1978 novel Tales of the City, as well as in the 1992 miniseries based on the book.

• In the September 5, 2007 installment of the newspaper comic Sally Forth, Sally's mother describes staying with her other daughter as being "like Grey Gardens without the Bouvier fortune."

• The October 2007 issue of Harper's Bazaar paid homage to Grey Gardens in a piece that featured Mary-Kate Olsen and Lauren Hutton.^[10]

• On The Big Gay Sketch Show, in Episode #9, Season 2, guest star Christine Ebersole, Kate McKinnon, Julie Goldman and others parody the dilapidation of Grey Gardens in a skit entitled: "Extreme Sears Makeover: Home Edition: Grey Gardens".

• On the August 3, 2009 episode of the American soap opera One Life to Live, recently dumped socialites Blair Cramer and Dorian Lord imagine themselves years in the future as takeoffs of the Beales.

References

External links

• Grey Gardens official website
• Grey Gardens Online Information Database
• Grey Gardens at the Internet Movie Database
• Grey Gardens at Allmovie
• Grey Gardens at Rotten Tomatoes
• Criterion Collection essay by Hilton Als
• Article on Albert Maysles
• "Hawthornucopia" at The Metropolitan Playhouse's Annual Author Fest

• Grey Gardens is at coordinates 40°56′15″N 72°12′58″W / 40.93759°N 72.21610°W / 40.93759; -72.21610 (Grey Gardens)Coordinates: 40°56′15″N 72°12′58″W / 40.93759°N 72.21610°W / 40.93759; -72.21610 (Grey Gardens)