Eva Beale's book available for pre-order on Amazon.com

Those of us hesitant to order Eva Beale's book Edith Bouvier Beale of Grey Gardens: A Life in Pictures because it had no clear, stable release date and it required payment or a deposit up front, will be comforted to know that the book is now available for pre-order on Amazon.com. Pre-ordering on Amazon.com relieves this raccoon's concerns because Amazon does not charge your credit card for the order until it is shipped.

Amazon is selling the book for $47.25, a savings of $27.75 (37%) over the list price of the book.

Pre-order it now!

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Mary Louise Wilson and Christine Ebersole not to reprise their roles in London

She absolutely did quash the rumors!

From BroadwayWorld, by Joseph F. Panarello, on 23 June 2008

Mary Louise Wilson: Doing It With Finesse

Miss Wilson also quashed the rumors that the two of them would be repeating their roles in the London production of Grey Gardens. "It's amazing how long that rumor has lingered. It never was going to happen."

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Grey Gardens the Musical marches on

As we know, the musical about the Edith Bouvier Beales may be coming to a theater near you. Two other theater companies have announced that they will put on the musical. Cincinnati will stage the musical from 10-28 September 2008. Dates for Philadelphia don't seem to have been announced yet, but this raccoon will let you know when he finds out what they are!

From Cincinnati Arts, on 26 March 2008

Ensemble Theatre: Grey Gardens to Open 2008-09 Season

Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati will open its 2008-2009 Season with the regional premiere of the fun and eccentric Broadway smash hit musical, Grey Gardens, with book by Doug Wright (author of I Am My Own Wife).

From BroadwayWorld, on 23 June 2008

Philadelphia Theatre Initiative Announces Grant Winners

Philadelphia Theatre Company

$110,000 to produce the Philadelphia premiere of the Tony Award-winning musical Grey Gardens by Doug Wright, with music by Scott Frankel and lyrics by Michael Korie. Grey Gardens is based on a 1975 documentary of the same title about Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale ("Big Edie") and her daughter ("Little Edie"), two relatives of Jacqueline Kennedy. The musical tracks the Beales' progression from American aristocrats to isolated eccentrics living on their increasingly squalid East Hampton estate.

Source: here and here

Grey Gardens-inspired photo shoot from Jeremy R. Jansen

I especially like a few of the images in the middle of the shoot.

From Dailies, by Jeremy R. Jansen

LXIV (Grey Gardens)

05.11.07 - stylist: Claire Edmondson - model: Jayme Keith

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2004 Article on Little Edie Beale

An anonymous reader sent me a link to the journal article. The site is currently down, but you can still read it in Google Cache. Follow the link for the

From Penn State Deluge, by Christina Jordan, from Spring 2004

Dealing with a S-T-A-U-N-C-H Character: Locating Edie Beale's Cultural Significance

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Art and stories of Lois Wright in the East Hampton Star

An interesting story about Lois Wright and her upcoming gallery show.

One thing mentioned in this article that I hadn't posted about before is the screening of Grey Gardens at 10:50am on Saturday in Sag Harbor.

I can't tell you how surprised I was to see this blog mentioned in the article!

From East Hampton Star, by Virginia Garrison, on 12 June 2008

An Eye for the Ghosts of Grey Gardens

Lois Wright paints the Beales

The free spirits of Little Edie and Big Edie Bouvier Beale still loom large in East Hampton, where over 30 years ago they pranced, primped, sang, and argued among cats, raccoons, and squalor on the corner of West End Road.

They've lived on, of course, in "Grey Gardens," the Maysles brothers' 1976 documentary, in the Tony-Award-winning Broadway musical starring Christine Ebersole, in "Little Edie and the Marble Faun" and "A Few Small Repairs," two more stage performances, and in a forthcoming HBO movie starring Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lange.

And, like the cats at Grey Gardens, their ghosts might well have been scoping out the human drama at a fund-raiser for the East Hampton Historical Society on Saturday at the now-long-rehabilitated Grey Gardens.

But they also endure in the memory of Lois Wright, whose mystical, colorful acrylic paintings, mainly inspired by her good friends the Beales, are on display his week at the Gallery in Sag Harbor.

Ms. Wright will also be signing copies of her memoir, "My Life at Grey Gardens," at an opening reception on Saturday, and the original documentary will be shown nearby at the Bay Street Theatre as part of the tribute. In addition, Walter Newkirk will be on hand to sign copies of "MemoraBEALEia," about, well, you know.

"Like my book, it's the truth," Ms. Wright said of Mr. Newkirk's, which originated with an interview he did with the Beales in the 1970s while a student at Rutgers. For the spirits of the Edies live on, as well, in a rabbit's hole of feuds and alliances over whose version of their story is correct.

As she dodged enemies and reconnoitered with allies at the historical society benefit on Saturday, Ms. Wright said, she was pleased to receive a compliment about her book from Frances Hayward, who rents Grey Gardens from Ben Bradlee and Sally Quinn.

"She said she would have liked to live there with them," Ms. Wright said. "She must have felt the love there."

To devotees of the original documentary, Ms. Wright is known as "the birthday guest" for her brief silent appearance in bangs during a birthday party for Big Edie, whom she presents with a pretty index card box containing a small spiral notebook. Big Edie proclaims that it will get her organized, "straight as a die," so that "no one can hate me" for missing appointments.

The camera pans to birthday signs that Ms. Wright painted for the reclusive but gifted mother and daughter: "The Great Singer Edith Bouvier Beale," "The Great Dancer Edie Beale."

A family friend from childhood whose great-uncle, Dr. John Frederick Erdmann, had lived just down the road, Ms. Wright stayed with the Beales for 13 months from 1975 to 1977, after her own mother's death, at the tail end of the documentary's filming, and just before Big Edie's death. During that time she stayed in the "Eye Room" above the porch, where she could see the comings and goings of visitors from tourists and reporters to raccoons.

The room was aptly named; "I consider myself something of a mystic and a psychic," said Ms. Wright, who analyzes palms and Tarot cards and often integrates a watchful eye into her paintings, as in "Fan" and "Space Traveler," which are in the Sag Harbor exhibit.

Having moved her own canvas cot into the Eye Room, she carefully spread newspapers on the floor to suppress fleas just before sliding into her sheet each night. She explains nonchalantly in the book that she wore a hat to ward off raccoons falling through holes in the ceiling. While Big Edie cooked on a hotplate on her bed full of curled cats, tissue boxes, and newspapers, Ms. Wright prepared her own meals on a gas stove in the kitchen, which she also used as a studio in which to paint and hang her works.

She and Little Edie lugged out trash bags filled with empty cat food tins and wet newspapers and kept the cats in as people entered and left the house. Ms. Wright ran errands in her Karmann Ghia and held down the fort when Little Edie traveled for interviews and screenings after the documentary was released.

She also slipped Little Edie what they called their Friday five--a weekly cut from Ms. Wright's palm readings to help cover groceries and other expenses.

"The only way I helped the Beales, was--they felt safer with me--was I would go to the post office," Ms. Wright said at her apartment in East Hampton.

Although some of her paintings had been removed for the show, her place was still a Beale-Bouvier-Erdmann gallery of memorabilia: painted portraits, landscapes, and signs, newspaper clippings, framed letters, photographs of Jackie O., Caroline Kennedy and Little John, Beales, Erdmanns, and Wrights.

"I look awful in that shirt," Ms. Wright said regretfully of a photo in which she posed with Ms. Barrymore, who she said had consulted her about Little Edie's accent. There were no cats in sight.

Ms. Wright was sometimes charged with picking up sorely needed checks from Jackie Onassis, who was Big Edie's niece and Little Edie's cousin. According to her book, help came more frequently, at her own request, as Big Edie's health deteriorated following a fall from a rolling chair that had belonged to Ms. Wright's mother. She helped out as best she could, even though she had already left Grey Gardens.

"It was the fleas. I was feeling better about the loss of my mother, and the fleas were really bothering me," Ms. Wright said. "The house owned the Beales, but not me, so that's when I departed."

Big Edie died in 1977 at Southampton Hospital and Little Edie died in 2002 in Florida, where she had one of Ms. Wright's Georgica Beach landscapes on either side of her bed. "Big Edie and Little Edie loved the ocean scenes I'd painted," said Ms. Wright, who once painted a portrait of Jimmy Carter, whom the Grey Gardens household supported, and mailed it to him.

One of the acrylics in the Sag Harbor exhibit, "Big Edie Going Up to Heaven," with the subject's white hair seeming to pull her up into the sky, was painted shortly after her death. Many of Ms. Wright's works from that time were lost, however — some in a fire at her subsequent residence, but "most all of them disappeared into Grey Gardens, and Edie had a lot of them," Ms. Wright said.

"I sort of put myself back in memory" to recreate that time rather than working from photographs, said Ms. Wright, who keeps tubes of acrylics, an easel, and a palette at hand in her living room-kitchen area.

More than half the paintings on exhibit sold over the weekend, Rebecca Cooper, the Gallery's owner, said on Tuesday, and she was in the process of adding some pieces on Sunday when the thunderstorm broke out. "It was so dramatic, so exciting," she said of the combined experience.

"They capture history, they're spiritual, and they're wonderful," she said of Ms. Wright's paintings, one of which, "Little Edie Enjoying Water," sold "instantly." Another, "Little Edie With Pinky I and Pinky II," featuring a blue turban with two favored felines, was sold earlier this year at Guild Hall's artist members exhibit.

"Our contact now is totally spiritual," Ms. Wright explains in her book, which until recently had been a manuscript in her closet. Ms. Wright had copyrighted her Grey Gardens journals, excerpts from which appeared in The Star in 1980, and later gave a copy to Michael Sucsy, who used it as background for the HBO movie, by Ms. Wright's account. But aside from that, it went nowhere.

Then, several years ago, a man from Massachusetts contacted her to ask if she would make a birthday sign, like the ones seen in "Grey Gardens," for his friend. She did so, then was commissioned to make one for the man himself, then a portrait, then a portrait of him in a past life. The two men were, Ms. Wright said, "true fans," and she eventually showed them some of Little Edie's letters and photographs.

Although they were not in publishing, she made them a proposition: that she would split any profits if they could get her memoir on the Internet. Ms. Wright will be 80 in July--"I think it's a mistake, but that's what it says," she said--and, although she still hosts a long-running LTV show, is not computer literate.

The men agreed and the book followed (there are 15 listings for "fleas" in the index). But Ms. Wright still has a seriously thick bone to pick with Jerry Torre, known in Maysles-land as the Marble Faun, the doe-eyed teen who visits the Beales in the movie and at one point reclines on the bed of Little Edie, who may or may not have had something in mind (Ms. Wright says not).

Not only does Mr. Torre figure more prominently than Ms. Wright does in the Maysles documentary, for which she earned $300, she says in her book, but his role was further amplified in the musical, on the Internet (where a Cafe Press site sells Marble Faun coffee cups and T-shirts bearing his youthful mug), and in various and sundry accounts that peg him as the Beales' longtime resident, chauffeur, and handyman.

"He must have read 'Driving Miss Daisy,'" Ms. Wright said. "He had a bicycle, the Beales had no car."

She did not see the musical. "I couldn't stand that 'Jerry Likes My Corn' song," she said of a number based on Big Edie's pleasure in buttering an ear for Mr. Torre. "I couldn't take it."

Entering this fray on the Internet is a blogster named Buster of East Hampton. Named for the alpha raccoon at Grey Gardens who, with his friends, was fed every day, Buster is a staunch defender of Ms. Wright and has taken heat for it at his site, greygardensnews.blogspot.com.

While that battle rages on another one simmers. Ms. Wright also appears in a more recent documentary, "Wild Blue Yonder" by Henry Corra and Celia Maysles, whose father, David Maysles, died when she was 7. Evidently Ms. Maysles had a dispute with her uncle, Albert Maysles, over archival footage not used in "Grey Gardens," all the details of which saga can be found at Buster's blog.

Alas, for Ms. Wright, Albert Maysles's children are expected to attend Saturday's free screening. Seating is at 10:50 a.m. A free mimosa brunch will follow at the gallery, which is on Main Street and where "light fare" will be served from 12:30 to 7 p.m. The exhibit will be up until the weekend of June 28, Ms. Cooper said.

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Release date for Eva Beale's book rescheduled: Fall 2008

It looks like the release date of Eva Beale's book has been moved back again. According to Hint Fashion Magazine, it comes out in the fall (in spite of the book's official website's promise of the first week of July). My email to Eva Beale has not received a response yet.

From Hint Fashion Magazine, on 7 June 2008

Grey Gardens, Now With More Color

Little Edie may have died in 2002, but our (and John Galliano's) obsession with her never could. This fall, Powerhouse Books will come out with "Edith Bouvier Beale of Grey Gardens: A Life in Pictures"-basically a collection of photos, letters, drawings and such recovered from the albums and scrap books she kept for decades. Endearing, hilarious and a little heartbreaking, it just might tide us over until HBO airs its Grey Gardens remake, starring Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lang. Friend of the family Peter Beard wrote the foreword, excerpted here...

Remembering back to the Beales' saga in the summer of '72, there was never an even-slightly-dull moment for all those afternoons and evenings. The middle of Gold Coast Lane—a primordial overgrowth of nature itself, a jungley bush of leaves and vines—boasted the abandoned-looking house they called Grey Gardens. Throw in a troop of raccoons and around fifty-two cats (when they weren’t having a die-off), and there you have the last stronghold of the Beales. Lots of eccentricity and individuality inside and out. Genuinely genius-like personalities ran a rebellious, boycotting household that had just evolved along slowly. From what I’ve heard, it had been since the 1938 hurricane that they were ever more resentful of the goings-on outside. Rebels with a cause, Edie and Edie Beale: over the years, alone together, one-on-one, no one else, since the 1938 storm, all locked up in that house, considering it a better deal than what was going on outside.

I came from Kenya, a Mecca of the looming over-population horrors, into the summer-rush of the famous Hamptons. From the wasteland of "Starvo" to gluttonous consumer-ville; from the middle of 30,000 starving pachyderms, and the carcasses of rhinos and elephants (you could smell them from the airplane), to a summer sweltering mare’s nest of Bloomingdales and Macy’s relocated from Palm Beach. Right in the middle of it all, on the Gold Coast itself, were the two debonair die-hards. I have to rush to say again that every single visit with Edie and Edie was every bit as interesting as anything I enjoyed in my wildlife years of East Africa: rhino-gorings, elephant-tramplings, leopards and baboons fighting, wild dogs hunting, spitting cobras, centipedes and scorpions, whatever.

A quarter of a century of greeting cards on the mantelpiece—birthdays and holidays, Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter cards addressed to each other, jammed all around the dilapidated fireplace, under the cracked and broken ceiling. Many with a cat’s face (or once an opossum), peering down Chas Adams-style. Life without running water. Two hundred bags of cat shit in the cellar (personally carried out by William vanden Heuvel and myself). A musty world like Dagoretti corner in the slums, just beyond Nairobi swamp, and beyond belief. Every square inch in magnificent disrepair, and these two elegant and above-it-all creatures lounging around in all of it. Young Edie probably posing or performing, Aunt Edie muttering Oscar Wilde-like sarcasms—probably about how the town of East Hampton had somehow decided to go down the urban-migration-drain ("loss of rural integrity", etc...), with a mushrooming catastrophe of H.L. Mencken-esque tin-god "bureaucraps"—all kinds of Kafka S&M dogma, and loads of it.

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