1975
D: Ellen Hovde, Albert Maysles, David Maysles, Muffie Meyer
C: Edith Bouvier Beale, Edith ‘Little Edie’ Bouvier Beale, Jack Helmuth, Brooks Hyers, Albert Maysles, David Maysles, Norman Vincent Peale, Jerry Torre, Lois Wright
Cinematography: Albert Maysles & David Maysles
Editing: Susan Froemke, Ellen Hovde & Muffie Meyer
Runtime: 100 min
Country: USA
Language: English
Color: Color
Sound Mix: Mono
Certification: PG
In the early 1970’s socialite Lee Radziwell commissioned the Maysle brothers to shoot a documentary on her life. During some preliminary research they discovered the Beales, close relatives of both Lee and her sister Jacqueline Onassis. “Big Edie” Beale and “Little Edie” Beale, Jackie O’s aunt and first cousin, respectively, were living in seclusive squalor in a rat- and raccoon-infested, crumbling 28-room mansion in East Hampton, New York named Grey Gardens. Over the years, both mother and daughter had become increasingly cut off from the world, living on a meager $300 a month (in one of the richest neighborhoods in the world, no less), and supplementing this allowance by selling off family valuables. The eccentric duo came within a hair’s breadth of eviction because the local board of health, after a series of raids provoked by reprehending neighbors, threatened to demolish their mansion. Fortunately family ties never unbind, as Jackie’s hubby came to the rescue with a $25,000 check for the cleanup and renovation of the property.
This is just backstory, covered by the Maysles in the first five minutes by way of newspaper cutouts. The Maysles don’t conduct any interviews with the Beales’ neighbors, Jackie O, or Lee Radziwell (who, by the way, canceled that commission upon their discovery of her family secret). They spent just six weeks with the Beales, recording frequent spats between mother and daughter and reminiscences of society life and failed romances. The focus is largely trained on “Little Edie,” who in younger years was a beautiful model wooed by some of the richest men in the world. The only people we see besides the two heroines are a young handyman named Jerry Torre whom “Little Edie” nicknames, after the Hawthorne novel, The Golden Faun (at one point, not knowing the Faun is gay, she complains to her mother about his intentions); and a couple bewildered-looking people who come to Grey Gardens to celebrate “Big Edie’s” birthday. But mostly it’s just mother and daughter, lazing away in their otherworldly idyll.
A completely absorbing documentary. Albert Maysles later took another look at the Beales in The Beales of Grey Gardens, which was released in 2006 and made up entirely of unused footage that didn’t make the cut the first time around.
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