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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'.