Dan's Papers - April 17, 2009 - Finally Famous Forever

Many people want to leave a mark on the world for others to remember them by. Maybe it's an Olympic gold medal. Or an Academy Award or a Nobel Prize. Maybe it's just that you've been or tried to be a damn good parent to your children. Or maybe it's that you'd like to be remembered for writing the great American novel.

From 1915 to 2002 there lived a woman in East Hampton who wanted to be a famous nightclub singer. A wealthy New York debutante, she gave it a try, but her mother was so much against it and embarrassed by it, that she gave it up. A few years later, her father left the family, never to return and never to leave them any money, and so her mother insisted that she return from school and move back to the family mansion in East Hampton and take care of her.

The young woman never married. She put away her dream, and did as she was told. And her mother then ran the house and drank and frittered away the time, and ran out of money until finally, by 1970, when the good daughter was 52, she was still living with her now sick and elderly mother, in this falling down mansion on West End Ave. in East Hampton, filled with the disgusting excrement of 22 cats and several raccoons. Neither of them owned a car.

The daughter was named Edie Beale, known as Little Edie because her mother was also named Edie, and during the earlier years when the family came over to visit before the place stank so bad they couldn't anymore, they called the mother Big Edie.

In 1973, a man delivering food to this home came out the front door, drove back to Fedi's Market on North Main Street, and told the boss the place was a health hazard. The boss called the town police, who sent down an ordinance inspector. After that, the Board of Health was called.

At the time, the matter was dutifully noted in all the local newspapers at the time, including Dan's Papers. I never met Big and Little Edie Beale because I never went to Grey Gardens. I was just a local boy. They were wealthy WASP women, apparently abandoned by their blue blood family, either because they didn't want any help or nobody wanted to give it to them. They were, respectively, the niece and aunt of the former first lady of the United States, Jackie Bouvier Kennedy, now Jackie Onassis. It wasn't my place to intrude, though I certainly could report about it.

Now, it appears, Little Edie, after her passing, is going to get her wish, not because she was a nightclub singer, but because she was Little Edie. And her mother, Big Edie, will be having her story live forever, too.

The media attention brought by Dan's Papers and the other newspapers at the time has cascaded onward and upward right through until this day and now, it appears, on and on into the future. Much of the attention features major filmmakers and motion picture stars. And who knows where it will ever end?

The media attention sparked the interest of two young documentary filmmakers of that era, David and Albert Maysles, who had a studio in New York City. A year or two earlier, a friend told them that Jackie Kennedy's sister, Lee, wanted to make a documentary about her happy life as a wealthy rich girl. The Maysles met her, and she gave them a long list of things in her life that she wanted them to film, which included Big and Little Edie.

The arrangement with the Maysles never worked out. The Maysles later said that Lee was unhappy with a preview version they did for her. So that never happened. Then, the articles appeared in Dan's Papers.

The Maysles came through the vines, stepped over some cats asleep on the sagging and filthy front porch steps and knocked on the door. Little Edie answered. A documentary about them? Her dreams of becoming a singing star would be assured. She asked her mother. And her mother reluctantly agreed to let them in. And so the documentary was made, a full-length movie that came out in 1975, called Grey Gardens. It was a huge success. There was Little Edie, wearing a scarf made from a shirt wrapped around her head, talking about nightclubs. There was Big Edie, in her bed, drinking and complaining about her damned husband, who left her all those years ago. And there were the cats. There was not much left of the house, except it was disgusting.

The documentary got the family of the Beales rallying to their side. Money was spent and the place cleaned up, at least a little. In the years that followed, Big Edie died. Little Edie got jobs at nightclubs singing but was so poorly reviewed she gave that up and moved to Palm Beach. The house got sold in 1979 to Ben Bradlee, the retired editor of the Washington Post, and his wife, a reporter from the paper, Sally Quinn. They fixed it up beautifully. And they own it to this day.

The name, Grey Gardens, stuck, of course. The house had been given that name when the Beales bought it and lived in it with servants and mother and father Beale during the 1920s. Now, the documentary made it famous.

In 2003, a musical was written for Broadway called Grey Gardens, based on the documentary. It seemed an incredible and awful idea. It was amazing. Christine Ebersole played Big Edie, age 37, in the first act, which was set in 1933 when Little Edie, at 16, had her coming out party. Then came the second act. Christine Ebersole now played Little Edie, now 56, in 1973, just a month after the delivery boy turned them in. Ebersole won Best Actress in the Emmys and Golden Globes. The play won many honors, too, and remained on Broadway for two years.

Now, Big and Little Edie are back again in East Hampton, this time played by Jessica Lange (Big Edie) and Drew Barrymore (Little Edie) as a motion picture. The movie, written and directed by Michael Sucsy and co-written by Patricia Rozema, will air Saturday night, April 18, on HBO at 8 p.m.

In Grey Gardens, the REAL Grey Gardens, Little Edie made weird fashion statements with the slowly diminishing wardrobe she had been given as a young woman, including various jackets and trousers. For a while, it seemed her designs might become a fad or fashion. But it sort of fizzled out too. That was in 2004.

I foresee a future in Little Edie fast food, in Big Edie wheelchairs, in Grey Gardens t-shirts and in a huge novel and then a video game, based on the novel, based on the movie, based on the Broadway show, based on the documentary, based on what happened.

And who knows what will happen after that? As the earth warms and life as we know it passes from the scene, perhaps those on other planets will refer to this place as Grey Gardens. I think Little Edie would like that very much. Provided, at the end, when the earth falls into the sun, she can sing a little song.