Grey Gardens

I watched it again late last night on TCM after not seeing it for several years. I will always love Little Edie.

So does Madonna, apparently.

Watch it about once a year and saw the Broadway musical. I love the Edies.

Little Edie is fascinating, I've read as much about her as I could when I first saw GG. I think she was affected by undiagnosed mental illness, it's way beyond eccentric with her. That's the real sad part about GG and the mythologizing of the Edies.

I didn't realize the poor girl went bald, hence the scarves. Makes me feel sorry for her.

Was Big Edie really such a cunt?

It's a fascinating documentary - and I also love the HBO version with the Supreme Jessica Lange and Drew Barrymore. The documentary is sometimes so sad and raw, but the film makers let you decide. They were very good at documenting, without inserting their own commentary in the way it was shot, methinks.

Criterion Channel includes an audio interview done for Interview Magazine shortly after Grey Gardens was finished. COMPLETELY together and rational Edie. She was an entertainer first of all, let's not forget. A sad case in any event. There was some abuse in her girlhood, It's clear.

R6 mentally ill individuals are not raving mad most of the time, they can have illness and rational thought at the same time most of the time. It's obvious from both GG and the follow up footages that Little Edie had some real mental health struggles, but that didn't make her any less of a fascinating person.

I ended up liking Big Edie more, she was very interesting. Black Jack Bouvier’s sister, right?

I was just reading Sally Quinn's account of buying GG. Little Edie opened the front door, did a pirouette, and said "all it needs is a coat of paint!" They almost had to rebuild the house and even now, when it rains, you can still smell the cat pee. At least Little Edie was able to have 25 happy years after her mother died.

I’m like little Edie. Crazy and weird but a performer.

A 1970s interview I read somewhere on the Internet (Vanity Fair?) -- in which Little Edie once again came off as being very together and intelligent (if eccentric) -- implied she was feeding her mother cat food instead of pate -- because that's all their finances allowed, darling (wink-wink).

I fucking hate Sally Quin. Awful creature.

Little Edie was so beautiful when she was young I always wondered why she didnt have 3-4 husbands under her belt .

I like how she does patriotic dances while holding an American flag with an outstretched arm.

I’m re-enacting that now, r14

I watched Grey Gardens on the big screen at a local art house theater. Afterwards I came home and cleaned my entire house. Just seeing the way they lived made me feel itchy.

I felt sorry for Little Edie and thought Big E was a big c

How the fuck did they end up like that and what happened to all their $?

If it wasn't for Lee Radziwill coming in and doing the documentary, the world would of never gotten to know who they were.

I have often wondered if Little Edie lost her hair due to mites. I imagine they had scabies most of the time with the wild animals living in the house with them.

Jack Kennedy gave you the clap!

Must we have her every 4th ?

Anybody see her at Reno's?

[quote] They almost had to rebuild the house and even now, when it rains, you can still smell the cat pee.

Friends of mine bought a place where the floorboards had to be removed and even beyond that, they had to sand down/reinforce and seal several of the joists to get rid of the cat pee smell.

What happened to their pet raccoons?

About their lack of money: the Beales lived *extravagantly*. Big Edie drove her attorney husband away and was almost disinherited because of her outrageous behavior. The alimony she received wasn't enough to support her lifestyle, so she burned through her inheritance living beyond her means. Little Edie didn't do what was expected of her social class - she didn't marry and she was mentally unstable, couldn't hold a job.

Now without her paid Man Friday, Big Edie needed someone to fill the void in her life and Little Edie needed a place to live, so the codependent situation unfolded. Her sons tried to get her to sell the house and move to a condo, which would have given her a place to live and some mad money, but she refused to leave Grey Gardens and suffer the indignity of living in a (gasp!) condo. With no money to keep up the house, it devolved into the mess we know as GG. IMO their relationship exemplifies codependency, wild horses couldn't get Little Edie away from Big Edie's side, even as she was being used and abused.

My great-grandfather Cap (Secretary of Interior under Truman) was Little Edie’s married lover and was portrayed in the HBO film by Daniel Baldwin. Cap gave her the fur she is wearing in the iconic poster for the documentary (which, of course, by the point was probably not in the best of shape.)

^^^ Did you GGF say Lil Eddie was a bobcat in the sack?

R27, he passed away before I was born and our family only found out about his connection to Grey Gardens when the HBO film came out in 2009.

I'm sure any money left to them by their husband/father was controlled through a trust by their son/brother the attorney. The only way he could have gotten them to move would have been through some type of conservatorships. You know when all the publicity came out that Jackie on Assistance and Liz called him first to try to get him to pay for everything. He likely scoffed and figured let his cousins pay.

"I ended up liking Big Edie more, she was very interesting."

The opposite for me, after the film ended I thought Big Edie was a raging narcissist, a case of full-blown NPD.

The woman was out of touch with reality and monumentally self-absorbed, she wanted to do what she wanted regardless of whether the money was there to do it, or regardless of how it affected her husband or her daughter. In the film she treated her daughter like a servant and an audience, when Little Edie stepped out of the room for a minute her mother was yelling "EDIE!!! YOO HOO!!!" constantly during filming. And her refusal to sell the decaying mansion and move to a condo meant that her daughter was cut off from the world too, and not by her own choice.

Well, Edie had choices too, but she was a mess, too. To me, the story plays out as that of mental illness going from generation to generation, as growing up as the daughter-servant of a narcissist who was divorced from reality made Edie into the eccentric we all know, the one who couldn't make a go of reality.

I ended up feeling sorry for the daughter. She seemed to have a gentle personality and the mother took full advantage of the gentleness. The effect of the mother's actions was abuse.

Mother was totally delusional about her place in the social order. It was like a Tennessee Williams play. She was waiting for gentlemen callers.

The house made me want to go on a purging and cleaning jag.

I’m gonna dance like little Edie doing the patriotic flag dance routine today.

I’m starting to turn into little Edie!

[quote]If it wasn't for Lee Radziwill coming in and doing the documentary, the world would of never gotten to know who they were.

Oh, dear x 2.

Body Beautiful...they used to call me that. That was my...whaddya call it...my...

These two bitches are absolutely crazy and I love it.

What's sad is when Little Edie died it was a fan, who had her phone number, that called for a welfare checkup.

R35 An Anvil needs to fall on you ASAP.

Little Edie holding a painting of Julius “Cap” Krug, the love of her life, at Grey Gardens. Lois Wright, who appears at Big Edie’s birthday party in the doc and lived with the Edie’s for a year, painted it. After Cap’s death in 1970, Little Edie referred to him as “the ghost of Grey Gardens.”

Holy fuck is that painting bad.

Julius was rather handsome so the painting is doubly egregious. Lois wasn’t much among a painter.

R18 you should be publicly whipped for using "would of" in a sentence!

Here's my favorite scene. "Mother's giving all this s.h.i.t. so I went and told some things about the family..."

Hahahahahahahaha

I think Big Edie understood her daughter very well. Little Edie constantly blamed her 'need to take care of her mother' as the reason for her failures in show business, in living a New York lifestyle, in not being successful in life. Little Edie gave up on everything she ever tried at the first sign that it wouldn't be easy. She blamed her mother for 'depriving' her of the stardom she deserved but never worked for. Big Edie understood her daughter and understood that she was at the mercy of Little Edie's whims.

Little Edie did maintain a great figure into her later years.

I prefer the romanticized movie version with Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lange. Nice soundtrack, too.

There's no place like home . . .

Is there any footage online of Edie after the doc? After her mother died, in NYC?

Little Ede was a stunner in her youth. Much prettier than Jackie or Lee.

[quote]The woman was out of touch with reality and monumentally self-absorbed, she wanted to do what she wanted regardless of whether the money was there to do it, or regardless of how it affected her husband or her daughter.

Hmm, sound like anyone else we know?

I was just going to post that r45! S T A U N C H!

I prefer the Documentary Now! Version. . .

Why were they constantly singing? Did they feel the need to impress the film crew??

R49 Perez Hilton -- they were 'iconized'? Yikes. Let's make up words.

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7pa3TmqOorZ6csm%2BvzqZmraCimq6le5FucG9pYWiBbrPRnrBmn5Gnsaa60g%3D%3D