12/29/2022 0 Comments The gray garden story![]() ![]() The yellow bedroom where the Edies lived during the Maysles documentary is on the left side, back room on the floor plan. The first floor starting from the left shows the dining room, center entry hall, living room, solarium. Here Barrymore wears a dress modeled on the one Little Edie wore, above.Ī rough sketch of the floor plans, created by a fan of Grey Gardens. #THE GRAY GARDEN STORY MOVIE#The HBO movie Grey Gardens starring Drew Barrymore as Little Edie and Jessica Lange as Big Edie was remarkably similar to the Maysles documentary – word for word, scene for scene, especially in the later years. The truth may be somewhere in the middle, as it usually is. Did she truly suffer from alopecia? Her cousin and family historian John Davis wrote that he once witnessed her setting her locks on fire because she feared her hair was thinning. ![]() Additionally, in other scenes – you can see tufts of snow white hair peeking out. In the original Maysles brothers documentary Grey Gardens – you can actually see her head through the scarves in certain daylight shots. In later years Little Edie suffered from alopecia, which is why, in an effort to hide her baldness, she began wearing her trademark scarves and even sweaters on her head, held on with elaborate costume pins. The eldest of the Bouvier grandchildren – she was considered the beauty in the family, even over her first cousins Jacqueline and Lee Bouvier. The young Little Edie modeling – when she was so gorgeous. Finally, grab a cup of coffee, sit back, and enjoy! I sincerely hope you have as much fun reading this as I did putting it all together. I have divided it into two parts - exterior/interior and gardens, so you might want to read about the house at one sitting and the gardens at another. I plan to keep this up to date, including new pictures of the house as they are made available, so if you have any pictures or see any, please let me know!!! Everyone who reads Cote de Texas knows of my obsession with that other famous Hampton house - Something’s Gotta Give, and Grey Gardens holds a very similar appeal to me, and to you too, I hope! A word of warning, this is long and very detailed. I have tried to collect all the images of the house available from then and now, and together – we will see how it has evolved over the past hundred years. With this article, Cote de Texas is going to attempt to reconstruct the house and gardens of Grey Gardens, from before the Beales to the Bradlees and on through to the sets of the HBO movie. Many of the links on Grey Garden News led me to these pictures and stories – thank you Buster! To read all about the history and current events of Grey Gardens and the Beales and anything else on the subject online – see the fabulous blog that was started in 2006: Grey Garden News – written by a raccoon named Buster, in honor of the Beale pets who ate through the sheetrock of the house. Today, when it rains for a long period of time, the house will start to faintly smell of cats – 30 years after any felines have lived there – that is how squalid the property truly was. ![]() The Bradlees won the house from Little Edie because Quinn promised to restore the house, which just needed “a coat of paint,” according to Beale, rather than tear it down. The house was sold two years later to Sally Quinn and Ben Bradlee. Big Edie’s husband Phelan bought Grey Gardens for his soon to be ex-wife in 1923, and she lived there until she died in 1977. But, for me, the story has always been about Grey Gardens - the house itself – the beautiful shingled summer mansion built by Joseph Greenleaf Thorpe in 1897 at Georgica Pond in East Hampton, Long Island. There are multitudes of books and articles written on the history of these two eccentric women - how they came to live in squalor and abject poverty after a life of high society, debutante balls, expensive jewelry and glamour. I know everyone has probably overdosed on Grey Gardens, but just this week, Architectural Digest trotted out long unseen photographs of Sally Quinn’s restoration of the famous East Hampton’s mansion, once owned by Jacqueline Kennedy’s aunt Edith Ewing Bouvier “big Edie” Beale and her daughter Edith Bouvier “little Edie” Beale. It’s hard to understand how this sweet faced child and her mother – perfectly dressed for an afternoon party – could end up as the reclusive, eccentric women that they did, living out their lives in squalor – but that is exactly what happened. ![]()
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