Grey Gardens

I have a confession to make. I'm a little obsessed with Grey Gardens, and the story of Edith Bouvier Beale and her daughter 'Little' Edie. I went to see the musical on Tuesday night, which was just okay. It's the performances of Christine Ebersole and Mary Louise Wilson and the second act that make the show.

The first act which tries to explain how these two women ended up in their co-dependent dysfunctional relationship that was captured by the Mayles' in their landmark documentary (which I saw last night) is flat, and the music is uninspiring. The setting is ostensibly an engagement party for 'Little' Edie to Joe Kennedy jr. (Supposedly the were engaged and it was announced in the Times, but I had never heard of it before and I would think that Kennedy biographers over the years would have mentioned it). The act ends with Big Edie implying to Joe that 'Little Edie' was fast sending him running screaming into the night (his political career you know). 'Little' Edie then makes a break for it, taking off for New York City. The whole first act, at least for me, was big cliche. Overbearing mother ruins daughter's happiness, too self-absorbed in her own career to pay attention to daughter. Oh, and they have little Jackie and Lee Bouvier running around to make the point that Jackie grew up to have the life that was supposed to be 'Little' Edie's.

The second act is where the story starts with the two women living in squalor in their East Hampton mansion, bickering, signing with 'Little' Edie modeling her bizarre fashion sense which looks frighteningly fashion forward. Seriously the outfits are kind of weird but they work on her. The show and the documentary shine a microscope on the eccentricities of the upper classes. If the Beales had been poor or middle class, we would have just called them crazy.

Neither the film or the musical answer the questions that one wants answered. Like what were Big Edie's sons doing this whole time their mother and sister were living in basically one room with 57 cats and several raccoons? What were the Beale's living on? I can't imagine that Edith Bouvier Beale was collecting social security, and I know that her father apparently cut her out of the will because of her singing ambitions. Despite the squalor they still managed to find money for good and for a gardener.

I know that Jackie and her sister (or Ari Onassis) paid something like $25,000 to have the house cleaned and fixed up after the town of East Hampton called the Board of Health. So why didn't they pay for a housekeeper or to fix the place up even more? I mean they are holes in the attic where these raccoons are living. Exterminator? The most horrifying scene in the movie is where Little Edie is feeding the raccoons Wonder Bread and Purina cat chow.

Watching the film was horrifying yet poignant. You felt for these women yet at the same time you were impatient with them. You want to know what happened to them, what led them to pulling back from the outside world so much that they were both living in one room in a huge house with a hot plate and a fridgerator. You admire their sense of humor, but you can see that they both live some strange dysfunctional world. It's clear from watching the documentary that they love having the audience, someone else to listen to them apart from each other.

After the film last night, there was some speculation as to their psychological make-up, were they classic narcissitic personalities? Was little Edie crazy? And more importantly were they being exploited in the film or was it that other way around? It's clear from comments the women made after the film was made that they clearly knew what they were doing, and relished the attention, as women who have been admired all their lives for their beauty and charm, and would expect nothing less from a film.

I found a blog Grey Gardens News that gives a little bit more information about the two women, the various films, and the musical. The movie has become a cult classic with people throwing Grey Gardens parties where they dress up like Little Edie. And fashion designers have been taking their cute from her style. I think that Little Edie would have really gotten a kick out that.

Big Edie passed away shortly after the film was made but Little Edie lived on until 2002, finally moving to New York and then finally down south to Bal Harbour where she passed away.

If you haven't seen Grey Gardens I can't highly recomend it enough. It will haunt you.

Thanks for reading,

EKM