Grey Gardens is a 1975 American documentary film by Albert and David Maysles. The film depicts the everyday lives of two reclusive, formerly upper-class women, a mother and daughter both named Edith Beale, who lived in poverty at Grey Gardens, a derelict 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. Ellen Hovde and Muffie Meyer also directed, and Susan Froemke was the associate producer. The film's editors are credited as Hovde, Meyer and Froemke. In 2010, the film was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". In a 2014 Sight & Sound poll, film critics voted Grey Gardens the joint ninth best documentary film of all time.
, known as "Big Edie", and her daughter Edith Bouvier Beale, known as "Little Edie", were the aunt and the first cousin, respectively, of former US First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. The two women lived together at the Grey Gardens estate for decades with limited funds in increasing squalor and isolation. The house was designed in 1897 by Joseph Greenleaf Thorpe and purchased in 1923 by "Big Edie" and her husband Phelan Beale. After Phelan left his wife, "Big Edie" and "Little Edie" lived there for more than 50 years. The house was called Grey Gardens because of the color of the dunes, the cement garden walls, and the sea mist. Throughout the fall of 1971 and into 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 after a series of inspections by the Suffolk County Health Department. With the Beale women facing eviction and the razing of their house, 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 direct cinema technique left the women to tell their own stories.
Production
initially came into contact with the Beales after Lee Radziwill suggested they make a documentary on her childhood in East Hampton and took them with her on a trip to Grey Gardens. According to Ellen Hovde, the initial film was being funded by Radziwill; when the Maysles attempted to show her their early footage of the Beales to convince her that a documentary about them was a better idea, Radziwill confiscated their negatives and withdrew her funding. The Maysles brothers shot and recorded all the footage themselves. Ellen Hovde and Muffie Meyer received co-directing credit for their editing work.
Soundtrack
Edith Bouvier Beale – "Tea for Two"
Edith Bouvier Beale – "We Belong Together" from Music in the Air
Edith Bouvier Beale – "You and the Night and the Music"
Edith Bouvier Beale – "Night and Day"
Edith "Little Edie" Bouvier Beale – "People Will Say We're in Love"
"Big Edie" died in 1977 and "Little Edie" sold the house in 1979 for $220,000 to Sally Quinn and her husband, longtime Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee, who promised to restore the dilapidated structure. The couple subsequently restored the house and grounds. "Little Edie" died in Florida in 2002 at the age of 84. Jerry Torre, the teenage handyman shown in the documentary, was sought by the filmmakers for years afterward, and was found by chance in 2005 driving a New York City taxicab. A 2011 documentary, The Marble Faun of Grey Gardens by Jason Hay and Steve Pelizza, showed that he was then a sculptor at the Art Students League of New York. Lois Wright, one of the two birthday party guests in the film, hosted a public television show for 30 years in East Hampton from the early 1980s to December 2018. She wrote a book about her experiences at the house with the Beales. In 2006, Maysles made available previously unreleased footage for a special two-disc edition for the Criterion Collection. It included a new feature titled The Beales of Grey Gardens, which also received a limited theatrical release. In 2018, a prequel, That Summer, shot in 1972 and using 16mm footage, was released. Quinn and Bradlee resided in the restored Grey Gardens for 35 years until Bradlee's death in 2014, after which Quinn found the home "too sad" to occupy alone. For the next several years, the property was available to rent until Quinn ultimately sold it in 2017. Prior to the sale, Quinn was forced to sell the remaining furniture originally belonging to the Beales, citing a lack of space. Fashion designerLiz Lange is the current owner of Grey Gardens, and has extensively remodelled the house, including creating a basement in the existing crawlspace, which involved lifting the house on stilts. The gardens surrounding the property have also been remodelled.
Adaptations
Musical theatre
The documentary, and the women's story, were adapted as 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 re-opened on Broadway in November 2006 at the Walter Kerr Theatre, and was included in 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.
In 2008, "Little Edie & The Marble Faun" premiered as part of the Metropolitan Playhouse's Annual Author Festival. In a mashup between Grey Gardens and Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Marble Faun", the relationship between Little Edie, Big Edie, and Jerry was explored.
