Frances Hayward hosts a benefit for animals at Grey Gardens

Animal rescue isn't just close to Frances Hayward's heart. Last year, the musical had a pet adoption drive.

From Newsday, by Ana P. Gutierrez, on 15 July 2007

Guests stand in the garden of the Grey Gardens home during a fundraiser for the Humane Society of the United States in East Hampton on Sunday.

From Newsday, by Dave Marcus, on 16 July 2007

Grey Gardens event for the animals

Grey Gardens, the Hamptons mansion made famous in a documentary film and a Broadway musical, is going to the dogs.

Which is probably good, because these are well-groomed and well-mannered dogs, some with their own trainers.

When Grey Gardens made headlines 35 years ago, it was going to the cats -- 52 cats living in such decrepitude that it attracted the ire of Suffolk County's Health Department.

The shambles also got the attention of the national media because the two human occupants of the 28- room estate were Edith "Big Edie" Ewing Bouvier Beale and her daughter Edith "Little Edie" Bouvier Beale, the aunt and first cousin of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Grey Gardens became synonymous with faded old money and squalor.

No longer. Grey Gardens has been spruced up and the garden is abloom with daylilies and peonies. Frances Hayward, an animal benefactor, rents it 11 months a year with her mixed-breed rescued dog, Amigo. The other month it is occupied by Washington journalists Ben Bradlee and Sally Quinn, the owners who restored it to its shingle-cottaged grandeur.

Back to the dogs. Several of them--mutts and Maltese and Jack Russell terriers--showed up for a poolside party Sunday night with their owners in tow. The party was held to spread word about the Humane Society of the United States and the animals it serves.

"Fantastic -- the place looks like it did before the decline," said Bouvier Beale, who remembered visiting Grey Gardens in the 1950s and '60s, when it was the home of his grandmother and his aunt, Big Edie and Little Edie. "Then it was overrun by 32 cats -- whatever, 52 cats."

He noted that "Grey Gardens," the musical, will close in two weeks. Still, there's more history to come: Beale, who lives in San Francisco and summers in Amagansett, is completing a book about his family and Grey Gardens.

Next to him, Lucky, a rescued Maltese, poked his nose out of the shoulder bag of his caretaker, Jessica Gallardo. Amigo, also a rescued dog, patrolled poolside.

Wayne Pacelle, Humane Society president, denounced the slaughter of animals for fur in China, as well as cruel conditions of pigs and chickens on factory-like farms in America.

"I never saw animals as creatures apart; I saw them as peers," he told the crowd of 90 humans and canines, who nibbled on food that was mostly vegetarian -- except for the Moroccan sea bass.

Another guest, hip-hop impresario Russell Simmons, described himself as a vegan and an "aspiring yogi." He is trying to discourage music fans from teaching pit bulls to fight.

"I care about Mother Earth and all of the species on it," he said.

Source: here and here