Grey Gardens

“Two roads diverged”

I just watched a documentary film by the Maysles Brothers called Grey Gardens. It was a glimpse into the lives of Edith Bouvier Beale (Little Edie) and her mother, also Edith Bouvier Beale (Big Edie). They lived in a decaying, 28 room mansion in the Hamptons (Long Island). Abandoned by her husband in 1935, Big Edie had to fend for herself and raise her children and care for that home alone. The mother and daughter came to the attention of the world in 1972 when local authorities “raided” their home because of the deplorable living conditions. The house was very rundown, they had cats living all over the house, they supposedly had not had running water nor electricity, there was garbage everywhere, and they were told they would have to leave if the house couldn’t be fixed up. In an interview done after the film, Little Edie said that she thought someone powerful had wanted their house or their property and had instigated the whole thing. What gave this further notoriety was the fact that they were related to Jackie Kennedy Onassis. Jackie received publicity for helping to fix up the house and do some restoration, which was still going on when the documentary was made. They seemed to end up back on their own fairly quickly. I guess the millions Jackie had access to from Ari didn’t go too far to help her aunt and cousin. They agreed to the filming partly because they were to share in the profits though that doesn’t seem to have happened.

According to liner notes on the Netflix envelope, “The ladies shut out their bleak present by recalling richer times and lost loves, and while Little Edie confides that she’d like to leave, the camera captures a co-dependency destined to continue.” An interesting premise, but I don’t think it tells the true story. Little Edie came back to live with her mother in 1952 because she had no one to care for her, and it was expected of her. The mother refers to it as rescuing Little Edie from New York and allowing her 20 years or so to recover. Little Edie is 56 when the film is made in 1975, meaning, she was 35 when she came home. She had worked as a model in NY but clearly was afraid of doing too much because she was afraid of her father and his disapproving of what she was doing. Her two younger brothers, who are not in the film, did much better and struck out on their own. They had careers and married, something Edie never did. The early pictures of her show an incredibly beautiful woman, much more beautiful than Jackie O. Even at 56, she was still very attractive despite her quirky behavior and her propensity to wear scarves over her head at all times and to tie a sarong-type wrap around her hips. Articles have been written about what affect on style this had when the film came out. She keeps saying she needs to regrow her hair though it is never clear why this is so. Despite the decay of their surroundings, they both retain a sense of elegance and gentility that one associates with the upper class, to which they were born. The mother sings along to old recordings remembering her attempts at a career as a singer. Little Edie has the look, sound, and style of Katherine Hepburn. It’s not hard to see why she achieved cult figure status after this film was released.

What is never quite clear to me is why the Maysles Brothers made this film. Despite the fact that it is a documentary, this type of film still needs a purpose and point of view. Though there seems to be affection expressed on the part of the women and the filmmakers, it’s never quite clear how real that is or what the filmmakers really think about their subjects. In a voice-over from a phone interview between Little Edie and Albert Maysles in 2001, Edie is still as outgoing and larger-than-life as she was in 1975. She regrets not marrying the filmmaker and wants him to send her a letter. It isn’t clear how much contact he had had with her all those years. Her mother died in 1977, and Edie sold the house in 1979. She eventually moved to Bal Harbour, FL (not too far from here) and died in 2002 at the age of 85. Apparently, some had criticized the whole venture as an invasion of their privacy and wondered how far into someone’s life a filmmaker has the right to intrude, documentary or not. The two of them might have come across as two sad, eccentric old ladies that one hears about on the evening news just after authorities removed them and their 27 cats from their house (Eileen, this will never happen to you—I hope). What saves them from this is their innate and obvious dignity, the true affection that they have for each other, and the fact that they had survived, on their own terms, in a world that is full of lesser people who only see them as people to exploit or, as Ralph Ellison said in Invisible Man, “Who are outside of history.” As in the novel, just the opposite is true of these two remarkable women. Though this takes place in the Hamptons, it would be best told by Faulkner or Tennessee Williams. While talking about those who would deny them their existence, Little Edie says that she was a “Staunch character,” and someone that they didn’t expect to meet. Her mother looks at the old pictures of her daughter and says that she looks like, “The girl that had everything.” Edie quotes lines from Frost’s “Road Not Taken,” and maybe that is a fitting eulogy for her and her life.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

She is also fond of Hawthorne’s novel, The Marble Faun. An attempt at achieving utopia failed, but what was important was the attempt. Near the end of the film, when reflecting on her choices of life and responding to questions about her regrets, Little Edie says, “The hallmark of aristocracy is responsibility.” That, I believe, says it all.


Happy New Year!