Grey Gardens in interior design

Although not specifically Grey Gardens-inspired (no cat food cans to be seen!), that color and the delicious touch of squalor are very Edith Beale!

From {frolic!}, by Chelsea, on 15 August 2008

rita konig decorating tip #2

It doesn't necessarily follow that if everything in the room is beautiful you end up with a beautiful room. I think the best rooms are those that have a mix of things and an ugly lamp with a crooked shade, or an inherited table or the rug from your childhood bedroom. These are the things that add texture and life to a room.

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Video commentary on Grey Gardens by Vadim Rizov

A very interesting perspective...

From YouTube, by Vadim Rizov, on 19 August 2008

Grey Gardens video essay

Video essay for Grey Gardens (1976, Albert and David Maysles, Ellen Hovde, Muffie Meyer). Featuring commentary by Vadim Rizov of The Village Voice and The House Next Door. For more information on the film visit alsolikelife.com/shooting

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Edie Beale models for Ben Kahn Furs?

I just saw this ad on eBay, and was surprised at how the model is reminiscent of Little Edie from our Grey Gardens!

From eBay, by shali21

Cute Model in Ben Kahn Wild Mink Fur Coat Vintage Ad

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Raccoon invasion, Grey Gardens-style

So when raccoons aren't busy blogging about Grey Gardens, we wreak havoc in people's homes.

In Grey Gardens, it's implied that the raccoons tore down the wall in the upstairs hall. Yet in The Beales, it appears as if this had been done by the fire department. Although the East Hampton Fire Department did most of the damage, raccoons can do obvious damage to homes, as seen in this hilarious video clip.

From YouTube, by damygeebo, on 30 July 2008

Raccoon Willie: I Hate You!

Ol' Wilcat decided to remodel my kitchen while I was at work. Too bad his background is only in demolition.

He is EVIL!!!

Update

damygeebo has many more videos of "Raccoon Willie", including this one with Willie looking very cute!

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Mixed review for the TheatreWorks production of Grey Gardens

Still, a very interesting review! Have any readers seen this live yet?

From SF Gate, by Steven Wynn, on 25 August 2008

'Grey Gardens' can't add much color as musical

It may be one of the oddest show-stoppers an audience will ever encounter. The number arrives in the second act of "Grey Gardens," a surpassingly strange musical that opened Saturday as a TheatreWorks production at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts. Sunk into her sagging bed in the dilapidated Long Island mansion she's sharing with her 56-year-old daughter in 1973, an octogenarian recluse (Dale Soules) sings a twisted platonic love song to a monosyllabic high school boy (Nicholas Galbraith) who's sporting flea collars on both ankles.

To say that "Jerry Loves My Corn" stops "Grey Gardens" does require the qualification that this 2006 show, based on a 1975 documentary film of the same name, is not exactly sprinting anywhere in the first place. In its portrayal of a tyrannical, charismatic mother and stunted, resentful daughter who get trapped - physically, emotionally and psychologically - in the patterns of the past, this risky, often artful but essentially flawed musical is all about characters who can't move forward. Few if any Broadway musicals embrace stasis so willingly.

That's the challenge librettist Doug Wright, composer Scott Frankel and lyricist Michael Korie faced when they set out to musicalize the true story of Edith Bouvier Beale and her daughter, Edie Beale. When it works, in fits and starts in this first post-Broadway staging, "Grey Gardens" creates a spell that is at once vital, crepuscular and farcically Freudian. Korie's cunningly well-made lyrics are especially choice. But the overall degree of difficulty is high. The show, under Kent Nicholson's game direction, continually battles its own inherent inertia.

One strategy involves ramping up the original story's celebrity tabloid factor. Capitalizing on the fact that Edith and Edie were the aunt and cousin, respectively, of Jacqueline Kennedy, the musical enlists Joe Kennedy Jr. as a suitor to Edie. Wright ("I Am My Own Wife") also tosses in a pair of children to play a young Jackie and her sister, Lee (the future Lee Radziwill). All that happens in a first-act flashback, set in 1941. That's where the troubles for this unbalanced show begin.

As the facade of J. B. Wilson's shingled East Hampton house splits open, the action spins back to preparations for the engagement party of Edie (an ebullient Elisa Van Duyne) and her doomed famous-name fiance (a stiff, ill-equipped Galbraith as Joe Kennedy). A simmering battle of wills emerges over whether Edith (played by Beth Glover in this act) will steal her daughter's romantic thunder by insisting on singing at the party.

A light-fingered pastiche of 1940s-style music and dance and an assortment of stock characters fill out the act, which is meant to introduce the fissures that will widen into gaping mother-daughter fault lines later on. Michael Winter plays Edith's alcoholic, homosexual piano player and "soul mate." Paul Myrvold is Edith's scornful ramrod father, who displays a clear preference for his winsome blond granddaughter over his self-absorbed daughter. Anthony J. Haney looks on as a discreetly dismayed butler.

It takes quite a while for any of this to gain much traction. After a deftly sustained ensemble number ("The Five-Fifteen"), Frankel's music patters in and out at times, the songs stopping and starting as if to suggest the tenuous nature of the festivities. In one of the better moments, Edith and Edie briefly patch up their differences in a soft-shoe duet, "Peas in a Pod."

But the sum effect of this rather sketchily drawn and thinly orchestrated first act is further undermined by Glover's monochrome performance as Edith. With her voice warbling flat at times, and her reliance on fixed takes and indicating gestures, she never finds the character's mixed shading of sexual vanity, self-delusion and maternal instincts.

All is swept away after intermission, when time vaults forward 32 years and Glover morphs from the mother of the first act into the fuming, bizarrely costumed daughter of the second. From the first, deliciously shaped number, a fashion manifesto like no other ("The Revolutionary Costume for Today"), Glover taps into the potency of a dual role that made Christine Ebersole such a sensation when she played it in New York.

Part of the richness comes directly from the real-life figures. Several of the scenes and swatches of the show's dialogue are drawn directly from the Maysles brothers' woozily intimate film. "I got fat from wearing too many clothes, " Glover muses in Edie's squawking Long Island accent. "And sitting down." Soules, who closely resembles the real Edith and gives the most textured performance of this production, also gets plenty of the old woman's inspired wit and caustic wisdom.

But credit belongs to all the creators here for finding a theatrical pulse in the seemingly unpromising material of two women who keep replaying their old arguments and grievances. It's the animating central irony of "Grey Gardens" that the musical expands as these two lives contract. In addition to her "Corn" number, Soules sings a perversely masterful song of herself in "The Cake I Had." Glover feels much more at home as the glowering, blatantly self-dramatizing Edith than she did as Edie in the first act. Freed from their generic first-act roles, the supporting players become a chorus who play cats, sailors and members of a radio revival choir.

Yet even in its stronger second act, "Grey Gardens" remains earthbound. The final two numbers, which musically affirm a dramatically foregone conclusion, lack the comically looping and more powerful punches that come earlier on. The real feast of the show comes in the "Corn" and "Cake" that an old woman savors as her daughter paces hungrily back and forth through the ruins of her home-bound life.

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Photos of Grey Gardens from 2007

Many recent photos of the house exist, but I still figured I would share these with you.

From Flickr, by americasroof, on 16 June 2007

Grey Gardens

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Grey Gardens the Musical starts tonight in Mountain View, CA

How exciting! And, yes, this is the first production of the musical since its Broadway run.

From San Francisco Chronicle, by Edward Guthmann, on 21 August 2008

The first post-Broadway 'Grey Gardens' staging

Cats, cobwebs and raccoons occupy the once-glamorous East Hampton, N.Y., mansion. In rooms where the Kennedys and Gettys were once entertained, a 78-year-old invalid and her childlike 56-year-old daughter mingle with ghosts and regrets and the heartbreak of unmet dreams.

That's the scenario of "Grey Gardens," the 1975 documentary about Edith Bouvier Beale and her daughter Edie, the eccentric aunt and cousin of Jackie Kennedy Onassis. Directed by Albert and David Maysles, the film was made shortly after the Suffolk County Health Department famously inspected the 28-room seaside house, judged it "unfit for human habitation" and threatened to evict the Beales.

Almost instantly, "Grey Gardens" became a cult classic, finding a particularly strong following among gay men who saw its parallels to the Bette Davis film "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?" The daughter, "Little Edie," inspired fashion designers with her penchant for turning sweaters into headdresses, tablecloths into skirts and skirts into capes. Rufus Wainwright dedicated a song to the Beales. HBO has a film coming up with Jessica Lange and Drew Barrymore.

And in 2006, "Grey Gardens" became a Broadway musical with landmark, Tony-winning performances by Christine Ebersole and Mary Louise Wilson.

TheatreWorks, the Peninsula company that specializes in generating new musicals ("Emma," "Memphis"), is offering the first post-Broadway production of "Grey Gardens," starring Beth Glover and Dale Soules. The show is in previews tonight and Friday, opens Saturday and runs through Sept. 14.

"We're always fascinated by eccentrics because we think they're so out there," says Kent Nicholson, TheatreWorks' director of new works and director of this production. "But the reason they appeal to us is they show us some portion of ourselves in a distilled manner."

Little Edie was obsessed with the notion that she could have been a dancer and a star had she not been forced to return from Manhattan in 1952 and care for her divorced mother. In the documentary, allusions are made to a mental breakdown, to Edie's fear that her father would have her committed. But mixed with that tragedy is a buoyant spirit, a goofy compulsion to please and entertain. Edie is stunted by the past but not undone. "She always amazes me," Nicholson says at TheatreWorks' rehearsal space in Menlo Park. "Any time I want to dismiss her as crazy, there's something that happens that's utterly truthful. You keep being drawn in to her."

In addition to a second act that captures several moments from the documentary, the musical's creators - scenarist Doug Wright ("I Am My Own Wife"), composer Scott Frankel and lyricist Michael Korie - added a first act that gives a clarifying perspective. It takes place in 1941, when Big Edie was a society matron and Little Edie was a debutante, briefly engaged to John F. Kennedy's older brother, Joe.

Ebersole, in one of the most dazzling, ambitious roles ever written for the musical theater, played Big Edie in Act 1 and Little Edie in Act 2, shifting from effervescent, aristocratic pretension to an adolescent limbo, both heartbreaking and surreal.

"I love the piece," Nicholson says at TheatreWorks' rehearsal space in Menlo Park. "It's stunning, but I think it's been a little bit buried under the legend of those performances. The most common question I get is, 'Well, how are you going to do this without Christine Ebersole?' And the answer is, 'You do it.' It's a great musical."

Glover, a New York actress who toured in "Dirty Blonde," the hit Broadway play about Mae West, is doing the Ebersole role at TheatreWorks. Soules, who understudied Wilson on Broadway, is Big Edie in Act 2. Elisa Van Duyne plays Little Edie in Act 1.

Glover, who looks a bit like Julianne Moore, calls her double duty in "Grey Gardens" "a marathon. It's really two musicals in one." Of the two women she plays, she's partial to Little Edie: "Oh, she's so lovable! When I watch the documentary, which I'm using as a template for line readings and body language, I just want to hug her.

"People are pulled toward Little Edie because she is iconic, like Holly Golightly or Sally Bowles or even Judy Garland. She wears her flaws openly - sometimes aware of them, sometimes not - but she clearly always has a passion for life that is rich and compelling."

Nicholson says he's drawn to the inherent contradictions in the piece: that the Beales were once wealthy and are now destitute; that they argue bitterly about the past and yet are so bound in love to each other.

"There's something about the humanity of these two, their intertwining and the need they have for each other," he says. "The love and care that they have for each other shines through."

Grey Gardens: Opens Saturday. Runs through Sept. 14. Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro St., Mountain View. Tickets: $26-$64. (650) 903-6000, www.theatreworks.org.

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Documentary about Grey Gardens the musical to air on PBS

Academy Award nominee Terrence Howard will host the premiere of Grey Gardens: From East Hampton on the PBS program Independent Lens on 23 December 2008.

From Broadway World, on 15 August 2008

Terrence Howard To Host 'Grey Gardens' Documentary 12/23

Grey Gardens: From East Hampton to Broadway, the new documentary film produced by East of Doheny with Albert Maysles that has already reached cult status during its rollout of limited screenings, will air nationwide on PBS on the Emmy Award-winning Independent Lens, hosted by Terrence Howard, on Tuesday, December 23, 2008 at 10:00 p.m. (check local listings).

"We are delighted to bring Grey Gardens: From East Hampton to Broadway to Independent Lens," series producer Lois Vossen said. "The joy of this new film is that not only do you reconnect with the Beales, you also get a front-row seat to the creative process that transformed the Maysles' film into a moving and award-winning Broadway musical. We are extremely pleased to be associated with such an influential talent as Albert Maysles. We know this film will be a favorite with our viewers."

Grey Gardens: From East Hampton to Broadway unfolds the creative journey of Albert Maysles' cult classic, Grey Gardens, from non-fiction film to legendary Broadway musical. Edith Beale and her daughter Edie - aunt and cousin to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis - were a most unique and engaging mother/daughter act, built upon powerful independence, courage, devotion and love. The 1975 Maysles film, Grey Gardens, catapulted them to icon status and culminated in the ultimate homage: being portrayed on the Broadway stage. This new Maysles documentary features behind-the-scenes footage of the Tony Award-winning show's rehearsals and performances. Also included are interviews with the creators and cast, as well as insights from fashion designers, cultural commentators, fans, and a revealing interview with Albert Maysles himself.

"All of us at East of Doheny are so proud that this latest incarnation of the incredible mother/daughter relationship of Edith and Edie Beale has found a new outlet through Independent Lens and PBS," Kelly Gonda, President of East of Doheny, said. "Our thanks for the involvement of Albert Maysles for helping us protect the Beale legacy."

East of Doheny is an independent theatrical and film production company headed by Kelly Gonda, with offices in New York and Los Angeles. EOD's upcoming projects that are presently in advanced development for the stage are My Man Godfrey, Please don't Eat the Daisies and Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. Film projects in development are Flipped, Stuffed, Julie and Romeo and Secret Letters.

Independent Lens is a Peabody and Emmy® Award-winning weekly series airing Tuesday nights at 10:00 PM on PBS. The acclaimed anthology series features documentaries and a limited number of fiction films united by the creative freedom, artistic achievement and unflinching visions of their independent producers. Independent Lens features unforgettable stories about a unique individual, community or moment in history. Presented by ITVS, the series is supported by interactive companion websites and national publicity and community engagement campaigns. Independent Lens is jointly curated by ITVS and PBS, and is funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), a private corporation funded by the American people, with additional funding provided by PBS and the National Endowment for the Arts.

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Aerial views of the set from the upcoming Grey Gardens film

I can't believe this! Microsoft has a map service, Live Search Maps, that can display bird's eye views of many locations. Apparently, Microsoft was flying over the set of the upcoming Grey Gardens movie (you know, with Jessica Lange and Drew Barrymore) as the set was being constructed! See for yourself below.

A multitude of thanks the anonymous contributor who sent this in!

From Live Search Maps

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Jessica Lange on the upcoming Grey Gardens film

I can't vouch for the authenticity of this item, but I have no reason to disbelieve it. It certainly seems plausible!

From Fast Food Janitor, by Gary, on 10 August 2008

This Week in Pictures

I took a day off work and went and helped my friend Paulette garden at Jessica Lange's house she is selling. I haven't been there for a few years and it has changed a lot. All the bushes and trees are so much bigger. Lots of deadheading to do and general weeding. Jessica was there and it was good to see her again. As she ran her fingers through my hair (I think she loves me -Ha.) I asked her about how The making of Grey Gardens went. She said it was fun. I tried to get her to sing for me but no go. She talked of cat wranglers and said they even had a raccoon wrangler. I had forgot about the raccoons, how could I forget the raccoons? Only in the movies can you have a job as coon wrangler. Maybe I could be a plant wrangler?

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Before it had Frances Hayward, Grey Gardens had...

...Ruth Altshuler!

Here's a little Grey Gardens trivia for you:

From Dallas News, by Alan Peppard, on 4 August 2008

Where Dallas' elite go to cool their heels in the heat of summer

No place like the Hamptons

Back in the 1980s, Dallas civic leader Ruth Altshuler, daughter of Fidelity Union Life Insurance tycoon Carr Collins, paid top dollar to rent East Hampton's most famous mansion, Grey Gardens, from Washington Post lion Ben Bradlee and his wife, Sally Quinn.

The long-time home of Jackie Kennedy's Aunt Edith "Big Edie" Bouvier Beale and her daughter, Little Edie, the house as well as its staggering decay and retinue of cats were immortalized in the 1975 documentary Grey Gardens and later the Broadway musical of the same name.

Mr. Bradlee and Ms. Quinn purchased the 14-room mansion and returned it to its Gilded Age splendor. For two summers, Ms. Altshuler paid $50,000 to rent the house for six weeks.

"It's a lot of money now, but it was really a lot of money then," Ms. Altshuler says. "Between those two summers, I was at a dinner and I was seated next to Ted Koppel. When I told him I was renting Ben Bradlee's house, he pushed his chair back from the table and slapped his knee laughing."

Mr. Koppel told her that he had just had lunch with Mr. Bradlee, who had bragged, "You'll never believe what I'm getting for my house in East Hampton."

Mrs. Kennedy's sister, Lee Radziwill, had not returned to the house since the spooky days when her aunt and cousin lived there in squalor. When Ms. Altshuler had her over for dinner, Ms. Radziwill pointed at the dining room ceiling and said, "The last time I was here, there was a big hole up there with a raccoon peering down."

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Eva Beale's Grey Gardens book has been further delayed

The original shipment date for Eva Beale's book from Amazon.com was 4 August 2008. This date has now been pushed back two months to 14 October.

From Amazon.com

Your Order with Amazon.com

Hello from Amazon.com.

We're writing about the order you placed on [removed]. Unfortunately, the release date for the item(s) listed below has changed, and we need to provide you with a new delivery estimate based on the new release date:

Eva Marie Beale (Author), et al "Edith Bouvier Beale Of Grey Gardens: A Life in Pictures (Powerhouse Books)" [Hardcover]

Estimated arrival date: 10/14/2008 - 10/20/2008

Update

Some fans who purchased this book may be at the end of their rope. (This one, too.)

Emails to Eva Beale (including mine) have not been returned.

Update

The book may be shipping soon!

From Grey Gardens Yahoo! Group, by Lynn, on 19 August 2008

I just received the following email from Verlhac Editions:

Dear customer

The books will soon depart Hong Kong for our CA warehouse.

We will re-email you as soon as the ship date is final. We apologize for this further delay. Your order is important to us.

Sincerely, customer relations

So...maybe relief is on the way!!!!

Let's hope the books are on the fast boat over!

What happens when you feed raccoons a daily diet of Wonder Bread?

The video (after the jump) is not for the faint of heart!

From East Hampster, on 1 July 2008

Plum Island Debunks Monster of Montauk Mystery

The Director of the Plum Island Animal Disease Center today uttered an unequivocal denial that the Monster of Montauk came from the facility.

With the Monster of Montauk the hottest topic on Google Trends for the second day running, Associated Content called the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) which jointly operate the facility, for a response to persistent speculation that the Montauk Monster is USDA property. As reported yesterday on Associated Content, the USDA's Plum Island Animal Disease Center is located not far from where the Montauk Monster washed ashore.

The close proximity of the Plum Island facility and the site of the Montauk Monster's discovery had fueled speculation that the Monster of Montauk is property of the USDA and may have been an experiment gone wrong or a byproduct of improper disposal.

Dr. Larry Barrett, Plum Island Animal Disease Center (PIADC) Director, responded to a flood of media inquiries on the Montauk Monster by issuing the following statement:

It is impossible to accurately identify the species of animal from the photo. There is no scale from which to judge its size. Additionally, when a body has had prolonged exposure to water and predators, it can be altered or appear different from its normal form. If we had the actual body, we could tell you what it is; however, from viewing a canine tooth in the picture, we could guess it may be a cat or raccoon. I can state categorically that it is not associated with the work performed at Plum Island Animal Disease Center (PIADC). PIADC serves as the nation's first line of defense against foreign animal diseases of livestock by identifying such diseases through diagnostic testing and by developing vaccines to protect livestock from those diseases.

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