Grey Garden

So mine and Peters last month OBSESSION was Edie Beale from the 1976 documentary film 'Grey Gardens' and this obsession has continued onto this month as well!!! As me and Petey find it very very very difficult to go a week without watching the film and quote a line a day from the film to each other around the office!! LOOOOL (Sad I know but it gets us through Monday - Friday)

"My mother wanted me to come out in a kimono we had quite a fight"
(My fav line out of the entire film!!!)

Grey Gardens is a 1976 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.



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.

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 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 direct cinema technique left the women to tell their own stories.

The film is totally fabulous the fashion is amazing and unique, Little Edie suffered from Alopecia and wears the most fabulous head scarfs with wonderful brooches!!!

The film is so fabulous that John Galliano Spring/Summer Ready to wear 2008 collection was based on Little Edie and Big Edie.













A re-make of the film was made in 2009 starring Drew Barrymore as little Edie.



"I'll be down in a minute I gotta put some lipstick on!!!"

Love Alice