Edith Bouvier Beale

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Edith Bouvier Beale
Born (1917-11-07)November 7, 1917
New York City, New York
Died circa January 9, 2002(2002-01-09) (aged 84)[1]
Bal Harbour, Florida
Resting place
 Locust Valley Cemetery, Locust Valley, New York
Other names Little Edie
Citizenship United States of America
Occupation Socialite, fashion model, Cabaret performer
Known for participation in Grey Gardens
Religion Roman Catholic
Parents Phelan Beale, Sr.
Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale
Relatives sister of Phelan Beale, Jr. and Bouvier Beale
first cousin of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Lee Radziwill

Edith Bouvier Beale (November 7, 1917 – circa January 9, 2002) was an American socialite, fashion model and cabaret performer. She was a first cousin of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Lee Radziwill. She is best known as "Little Edie," one of the subjects of the documentary film Grey Gardens by Albert and David Maysles detailing life at the East Hampton home.

Early life

Beale was born in New York City, the only daughter of Phelan Beale, a lawyer, and the former Edith Ewing Bouvier (known as "Big Edie"). She was born at 917 Madison Avenue (now the site of the Carlyle Hotel). She had two brothers, Phelan Beale, Jr. and Bouvier Beale, and had a privileged upbringing and gilded youth. Beale attended The Spence School and graduated from Miss Porter's School in 1935.[2] She was also a member of the Maidstone Country Club of East Hampton. She had her debut at the Pierre Hotel on New Year's Day 1936. The New York Times reported on the event, where she wore a gown of white net appliqued in silver and a wreath of gardenias in her hair.

While Beale was young, her mother pursued a singing career, hiring an accompanist and playing small venues and private parties. In the summer of 1931, Phelan Beale separated from his wife, leaving Big Edie, then 35 years old, dependent on the Bouviers for the care of herself and children. In 1946, he finally obtained a divorce, notifying his family by telephone from Mexico (his daughter described it as a "fake Mexican divorce" since it was not recognized by the Catholic Church).

In her youth, Little Edie was a clothes model at Macy's in New York[2] and Palm Beach, Florida. She later claimed to have dated J. Paul Getty and to have once been engaged to Joe Kennedy, Jr. (although in reality she only met him once).[3] During the 1961 inauguration of John F. Kennedy, she told Joe Kennedy, Sr. that, if young Joe had lived, she would have been First Lady instead of Jackie.[2]

In her youth, Beale ran away to Palm Beach, where she was found by her father and brought home. She said people thought she had eloped with actor Bruce Cabot.[2]

From 1947 until 1952, Beale lived in the Barbizon Hotel for Women, hoping to find fame and possibly a husband in Manhattan. While she states in the documentary Grey Gardens that she was searching for an ordered life and a Libra husband, she later confessed in footage included in The Beales of Grey Gardens (2006) and in unseen raw footage that she seemed only to be interested in men whose zodiac sign was Sagittarius, which believers in horoscopes would consider a bad match for her. She also mused that she had "landed" in New York "at the wrong time" and had not enjoyed the experience. She had moved to the Barbizon Hotel for Women after feeling unsafe at her previous apartment, which was furnished with her mother's valuable antiques. Little Edie told her mother (in the documentary) that, by moving back home, she missed her big showbiz break via Max Gordon.

Beale felt that she was on the verge of a big break into films in 1952 when she was 34. She said she had offers from MGM and Paramount, and that her dance career was set to take off. She also said that wealthy men, like Howard Hughes and J. Paul Getty, had asked her to marry them.[1]

According to Edie Beale's diaries and letters that she left to the executor of her estate, her nephew Bouvier, she had an affair in the late 1940s with Julius Albert Krug, the U.S. Secretary of the Interior, who was married. The relationship is depicted in the 2009 HBO bio film Grey Gardens. "Big Edith" Beale alludes to "that married man" during an argument with her daughter in the documentary in which she says, "That married man was not going to give you any chance at all."

When she was in her late 30s, Beale developed alopecia totalis[3] which caused her body hair to fall out and prompted her to wear her signature headscarves. But Beale's cousin, John Davis claims Edie once climbed a tree at the house and set her hair on fire, suggesting Beale might have contributed to her own baldness.[2]

Grey Gardens

Sickly, alone, and draining money, Beale's mother began to beg her daughter to return to the East Hampton estate in March of 1952. On July 29, 1952, Beale returned to live with her mother in the East Hampton estate Grey Gardens (at 3 West End Road). The home had been purchased for Big Edie in 1923 when it still had one of the finest gardens on the East Coast.

In a 1980 letter to her nephew Bouvier Beale Jr., Beale claimed that: "When my Grandfather died (in 1948), he left $65,000 in trust. Jack B. ("Black Jack" Bouvier, Big Edie’s brother and a Wall Street broker) had only one objective—to grab the Bouvier fund to invest for his daughters (Jackie and Lee) and he did. He was supposed to take care of Mother." Instead, Big Edie ended up with $300 per month. Mother and daughter reportedly remained independent by selling off their Tiffany silver item by item.

After the 1963 death of the Beales' caretaker and handyman Tom "Tex" Logan, and a burglary in 1968, the women lived in near isolation and, eventually, poverty.

On October 22, 1971, inspectors from the Suffolk County Health Department raided the house and discovered that it violated numerous building regulations.[1] The story became a national scandal. Health Department officials said they would evict the women unless the house was cleaned. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis came to the rescue, paying $32,000 to clean the house, install a new furnace and plumbing system, and cart away 1,000 bags of garbage.

The Beales then rose to fame as a result of the Maysles brothers' 1975 direct cinema documentary film Grey Gardens. The film revealed the strong and dysfunctional ties between Mrs. Beale and Little Edie, as well as showcasing the reclusive pair's daily rituals of song, recollections, arguments, and reconciliations. Beale and her mother were each paid $5,000 for the documentary, which featured their daily lives, songs and dances included. They never did obtain a percentage of the film profits as originally allegedly promised by the Maysles brothers. The film was screened for the two Edies in the upstairs hall of Grey Gardens in 1975.

Later life

After her mother's death in February 1977, Beale attempted to start a cabaret career at age 60 with eight shows (January 10–14, 1978) at Reno Sweeney, a Manhattan night spot at 126 W. 13th Street. The club kept the bad reviews from her (The New York Times, on 12 January 1978, called it "a public display of ineptitude"), and she faced two new audiences a night, even through a fever and although she recently had undergone cataract surgery. Beale then continued to live in Grey Gardens for about two years, according to her mother's wishes, holding out against selling the house as a teardown. In 1979, she sold the mansion to Ben Bradlee, then the executive editor of The Washington Post, and his wife, the writer Sally Quinn, after they promised to restore it and paid her $220,000.

Beale moved to a small rental cottage in Southampton, New York, and then to a studio apartment on East 62nd Street in New York City, where she lived from 1980 to 1983 before moving to the Roney Plaza Apartments in Miami Beach, Florida. She lived briefly in Montreal in the mid-1990s (to master speaking French, a skill she mentions in Grey Gardens), and then with relatives in Oakland, California, in 1997. She returned to Bal Harbour, Florida, in the fall of 1997, where she remained in quiet isolation, writing poetry and corresponding with friends and fans. She reportedly swam every day until close to her death at the age of 84. She corresponded with author James Gerald Shaw for many years before her death.

Death

Edie Beale was discovered dead in her apartment on January 14, 2002, after a concerned fan could not reach her on the phone. She had been dead about five days from a presumed heart attack or stroke.[1] The body was cremated, and a memorial service was held in the local Catholic church in East Hampton. She was survived by three nephews and one niece.[1]

She reportedly did not wish to be buried alongside her mother in East Hampton, and had requested having her ashes scattered in or near the Atlantic. Her remains are interred in Long Island's Locust Valley Cemetery, next to the grave of her brother Bouvier "Buddy" Beale Sr.

Legacy

Interest in the Beales' story has produced a variety of publishing and media projects. These include:

  • The original 1975 Maysles brothers' documentary, Grey Gardens.
  • Little Edie Live! A Visit To Grey Gardens, a 78-minute interview with Edie Beale at Grey Gardens on April 22, 1976.
  • Two spreads in Vogue and one in Bust have been dedicated to Beale's unique lifestyle.
  • Ghosts of Grey Gardens, a 2005 documentary directed by Liliana Greenfield-Sanders, about Grey Gardens' continuing legacy.
  • An off-Broadway musical Grey Gardens — A New Musical debuted in March 2006, starring Christine Ebersole, and played on Broadway at the Walter Kerr Theatre November 2, 2006 – July 28, 2007 for 300+ performances. Little Edie was portrayed in the first Act by actresses Sara Gettelfinger (off-Broadway) and Erin Davie (on Broadway). Ebersole played Little Edie in the second Act. Ebersole and Mary Louise Wilson won Tony Awards.
  • Designer Marc Jacobs created the "Little Edie" bag for his Fall 2007 collection.
  • Grey Gardens, the 2009 Emmy Award-winning made-for-television movie for HBO, starred Jessica Lange as "Big Edie" and Drew Barrymore as "Little Edie," with Jeanne Tripplehorn portraying Jacqueline Kennedy. Directed and co-written (with Patricia Rozema) by filmmaker Michael Sucsy, it began filming on October 22, 2007, in Toronto. It first aired on HBO on April 18, 2009. Jessica Lange won an Emmy for her performance, and the film won Emmy awards for art direction, hairstyling, screenplay, make-up, and supporting actor (Ken Howard). Drew Barrymore won the Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild awards for her performance.
  • Musician Rufus Wainwright wrote a song titled "Grey Gardens," which appears on his 2001 album Poses. The song's narrative is partly composed of references to the 1975 documentary Grey Gardens and to Thomas Mann's novella Death in Venice (or to Luchino Visconti's film of the same title).
  • The spring 2010 issue of the online literary journal BigCityLit features a pantoum by American poet Joel Allegretti called "The Belles of Grey Gardens," which is made up entirely of dialogue from the Maysles' documentary.
  • In a 2012 episode of The New Normal, Shania Clemmons, played by a nine year old Bebe Wood, impersonates Little Edie.
  • In a February 2013 episode of RuPaul's Drag Race, Little Edie was imitated by drag queen Jinkx Monsoon in "The Snatch Game", a tribute to the television game show The Match Game. Monsoon won the challenge for her portrayal of Little Edie.

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 Martin, Douglas (January 25, 2002). "Edith Bouvier Beale, 84, 'Little Edie,' Dies". New York Times. Retrieved 2008-04-06. "Edith Bouvier Beale, once a successful model and aspiring actress who later lived a Gothic life in Grey Gardens, a dilapidated 28-room house in East Hampton, New York, with her mother and dozens of cats, raccoons, and opossums, was found dead in her small apartment in Bal Harbor, Florida, on Jan. 14. She was 84. Her nephew Bouvier Beale Jr. said the Dade County coroner attributed the death to a heart attack or stroke resulting from arteriosclerosis. Her cousin John H. Davis said she appeared to have been dead for five days." 
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 A Return to Grey Gardens – New York Magazine – October 29, 2006
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Grey Gardens DVD – 2009 – HBO – Audio commentary with executive producers Michael Sucsy, Lucy Barzun Donnelly and Rachael Horovitz

Further reading

  • My Life at Grey Gardens: Thirteen Months and Beyond by Lois Wright (2005) ISBN 0-9777462-0-8
  • Grey Gardens: From East Hampton to Broadway, a documentary by Albert Maysles about the making of the musical Grey Gardens
  • Edith Bouvier Beale: A Life In Pictures by Eva M. Beale and Anne Verlhac (2008) ISBN 2-916954-06-6
  • MemoraBEALEeia: A Private Scrapbook about Edie Beale of Grey Gardens First Cousin to First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis by Walter Newkirk (2008) ISBN 1-4343-7449-1

External links

Aspects of the 1975 documentary
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