It does seem like this year has been a Grey Garden’ year for me. 

I watched the documentary again and read the book by Lois Wright about her stay there. 

The documentary ‘Grey Gardens’ opens up to us the East Hampton home of Mrs. Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale and her daughter Miss. Edith Bouvier Beale.

Today I watched the film based on the documentary starring Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lange.  It was interesting to see beyond the house, which you don’t see in the documentary (except when Little Edie goes to the beach – which from the accounts of Lois Wright she did infrequently because her mother couldn’t be left alone.)  To see a young Big and Little Edie was something that one had imagined before but never truly known or seen.

I feel sorry for the Edies. Their lives could have been so different, less isolated, and more sociable.  Maybe if they had not been so alike, so ‘staunch’ (as Edie says), they could have taken help or advice from those around them.  A little compromise would have gone a long way.

I see hints of my family in them, the untidiness and the ignorance of it in my sister.  The agoraphobic nature of them both in my boyfriend’s nature.  The hoarding of Big Edie reminds me of my love for collecting the detritus of life, the things that most would throw away.  Little Edie’s talk of travel is like my own, I do go places though, just not as often as I’d like.  Oh I can hear her saying that sentence as I write it.

More than anything and maybe just because it is the first thing that you notice in the documentary I am drawn to the say the Beales speak.  They have such a fascinating enunciation of words that a girl from London has never heard before.  It is both poetic and otherworldly and I would have loved to have gone round for tea (or pate and ice cream) and conversed for hours.

Unfortunately Mrs. ‘Big’ Edie Beale and Miss ‘Little’ Edie Beale are no longer with us.

Most famous previously for being the aunt and cousin of Jackie O, I am thankful that their eccentric and interesting characters were captured on film to live on endlessly in the hearts and imagination of everyone who knew or wishes they knew them.

1. Grey Gardens [Masters of Cinema] [1976]

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Grey-Gardens-Masters-Cinema-NTSC/dp/B000MZGW14/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1346786718&sr=8-1

2. Stunning Little Edie at Grey Gardens T Shirt

http://www.etsy.com/listing/98048920/stunning-little-edie-at-grey-gardens-t?ref=sr_gallery_7&ga_search_query=grey+gardens&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_ship_to=ZZ&ga_min=0&ga_max=0&ga_search_type=all

3. Vintage Scarfs

http://www.flickr.com/photos/graygoosie/427470639/

4. My Life at Grey Gardens: 13 Months and Beyond - Lois Wright

http://www.amazon.co.uk/My-Life-Grey-Gardens-Months/dp/0977746216/ref=pd_sim_b_3

5. Vintage Red White and Blue Bow Brooch

http://www.etsy.com/listing/81011349/vintage-red-white-and-blue-bow-brooch?ref=sr_gallery_24&ga_search_query=bow+brooch&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_ship_to=ZZ&ga_min=0&ga_max=0&ga_page=10&ga_search_type=all

Film 797: Grey Gardens

Trivia: Drew Barrymore has stated in many interviews that she stayed very close to Little Edie's character throughout filming, shutting herself off from the outside world and from friends. 

Drew Barrymore's facial skin developed some allergies because of the heavy make-up she had to wear. 

In the original Grey Gardens, David Maysles asked Edith 'Little Edie' Bouvier Beale who she would like to portray her mother Edith Bouvier Beale if a movie based on Grey Gardens were made, suggesting Ethel Barrymore, Drew Barrymore's great-aunt, despite the fact that Ethel Barrymore had been dead since 1959. 

Little Edie's black bathing suit with yellow flowers is not a reproduction. Though it actually never belonged to Miss Beale, it is a vintage piece from the same batch of suits as the one that did. It had been collected by a fan of the original documentary and lent to the film's production crew for the shoot. 

While in New York, Little Edie lives in the Barbizon Hotel, which (despite its name) was not a hotel but rather an apartment building on East 63rd Street for young single women on their own in the city. One scene shows Little Edie having to sneak Cap into her room because the Barbizon had a strict no-male-visitors-allowed policy (parents would often choose the Barbizon as a living location for their daughters for just this reason). Other real-life, later-famous women who lived at the Barbizon while starting out in New York City include Joan Crawford, Grace Kelly, Candice Bergen, and authorSylvia Plath, who had her protagonist stay in a residence much like the Barbizon in her novel 'The Bell Jar'.