A middle-aged woman wearing what looks like Princess Diana’s infamous ‘revenge dress’ and a balaclava from an IRA funeral approaches the hole in the floor. The raccoon that lives there, clearly used to her presence, looks up expectantly. Sure enough, the woman empties a bag of dry food into the hole. The scene is framed by the intricate fluted wainscotting of the room’s door frame. I am not exaggerating when I say I believe it to be one of the great scenes of modern cinema.
The vignette comes from Grey Gardens, the Maysles brothers’ cult documentary, which turns 50 this autumn. Like many great documentaries – from Tiger King to The Imposter to The Queen of Versailles – the film’s purpose changed over the course of filming. Its original premise was to track down the Bouvier Beales – the aunt and first cousin of sisters Jacqueline Kennedy and Lee Radziwill – who had been born into high society but now lived in a sort of luxurious exile from 20th-century America. Radziwill had begun with the vague idea of making a documentary about the history of the Hamptons, including their childhood. It was during filming for this planned documentary that the Maysles brothers first visited the Bouvier Beale summer estate.
What they actually found were two women, a mother and daughter, nicknamed ‘Big Edie’ and ‘Little Edie’, living a life that was the perfect mix of comedy and tragedy. Having long since fallen upon hard times, the pair had developed a series of eccentricities which, combined with their obvious love of the limelight after years of obscurity, made for incredible cinema.
The other star of the show was the house itself, from which the film takes its title. The opening shots establish the pristine Wasp paradise of the Hamptons, with waterfront access and manicured lawns. Then the camera lands on Grey Gardens – a mansion with roof tiles missing and trees growing out of it. Here is where the life of Big and Little Edie, and a masterpiece of tragicomic drama, plays out.
Little Edie is a faded debutante, once considered the great beauty of the family, ‘surpassing even the dark charm of Jacqueline’, as one cousin recalled. In her youth she had dated Howard Hughes and claimed to have had proposals from Joe Kennedy Jr and J. Paul Getty. By the 1930s, however, she and her mother had lost almost everything – everything except the summer residence in East Hampton, where Big Edie and eventually her daughter remained for the next few decades, joined by dozens of stray cats and a thriving population of semi-domesticated raccoons. They were reportedly reduced to selling off their Tiffany pieces one by one to survive.
At its heart is a tale of male negligence. Phelan Beale, Big Edie’s husband, had walked out on the family amid their financial ruin. He notified his wife via a telegram from Mexico, explaining that he was both divorcing her and running away with a much younger woman in the process. Little Edie, a staunch Catholic, dismisses this in the documentary as a ‘fake Mexican divorce’.
In her youth, Little Edie dated Howard Hughes and had proposals from Joe Kennedy Jr and J. Paul Getty
Little and Big Edie had pinned the cause of their destitution, meanwhile, on Big Edie’s brother ‘Black Jack’ Bouvier – father of Jackie and Lee – who they claim had appropriated the Beales’ share of a family trust while the two ladies lived in squalor. But the two Beale sons were also reluctant to support their mother and older sister, only belatedly repaying the back-taxes on Grey Gardens. It was left to Jackie (by then Jacqueline Onassis) to come to some sort of rescue in the early 1970s; she arrived bearing a $25,000 cheque for the renovation and clean-up of the place, essentially bribing the local authorities to let them stay in a house they’d declared a public safety hazard.
A huge part of the film’s appeal is our innate human fascination with decay. From the Colosseum to the haunting remains of Blobbyland (the abandoned Mr Blobby-themed amusement park in Somerset), we seem to have a never-ending preoccupation with ruination. And few places better embody this than Grey Gardens, not only in terms of physical dilapidation but as a symbol of an America that was no longer gilded but increasingly grubby. I have a framed copy of the poster at home; it features Little Edie standing in front of the rundown mansion, wearing a glamorous if no doubt mangy fur coat, staring wearily down the camera.
In one scene a stray cat does its business behind a portrait of Big Edie by the society painter Albert Herter
As with so many family relationships, the pair flit between extremes of love and resentment. There’s more than a hint of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? in the women’s numerous quarrels. And the crumbling mansion and its ghosts of eras past summon up shades of Sunset Boulevard. What we are witnessing is both a documentary and a real-life gothic horror film. And this is before you get to its extraordinary cultural impact.
The two Edies are textbook camp: theatrical, flamboyant, defiant. They embody Susan Sontag’s famous essay on the subject: ‘What [camp taste] does is to find the success in certain passionate failures.’ So it is perhaps not surprising that the film has a large gay following. Little Edie’s camp eccentricities are manifold: she reads horoscopes with a magnifying glass (longing for a ‘Libran husband’) and performs a dance routine to the Virginia Military Institute’s ‘We All March Together’ while twirling an American flag. Underlying it all is a profound fragility. In one of the most memorable scenes, Big Edie attempts to recall the words to the 1925 Broadway hit ‘Tea for Two’ from her bed, while Little Edie tries to talk to the camera about being single.
The poverty forces Little Edie to come up with fantastical fashion ensembles: upside-down skirts, glamorous bathing suits with high heels, repurposed clothing – tablecloths for headscarves. (Suffering from alopecia, Little Edie hides her baldness with scarves, often pinned with a family heirloom brooch.) ‘You can always use the skirt as a cape!’ she explains about one of her get-ups. Needless to say, everyone from Marc Jacobs to John Galliano and Isaac Mizrahi have cited Grey Gardens as an influence.
The film is best encapsulated by Little Edie’s observation that: ‘It’s very difficult to keep the line between the past and the present.’ The narrative is erratic, non-linear and shaped almost entirely through anecdotes, arguments and old photographs. There are monstrous juxtapositions. Piles of empty cat-food containers sit alongside a rotting grand piano. Their upper-crust New England accents and charming manners co-exist with a diet of ice cream, canned liver pâté and boiled corn on the cob. In one scene, a stray cat does its business behind a portrait of Big Edie by the society painter Albert Herter.
Perhaps the lasting legacy of Grey Gardens – the film, the house and its inhabitants – is to show us how money and influence are always just two steps away from tipping kibble into a hole full of raccoons.
Grey Gardens is available to watch on YouTube and Amazon Prime.
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