Grey Gardens: Haunting, Heartbreaking Film About Decadence and Decline in the Hamptons

Photo by Jennifer Remus on Unsplash

You can hardly be an American without having heard of "the Hamptons." Even if you don't know precisely where it is located on a map--the tip of Long Island--you know it as a place where upscale folk have established their upscale digs. Think of Gatsby and you get the picture. Wealth, hoity-toity lifestyles and prominent families.

One such family was the Beales. Phelan Beale was an attorney in partnership with John Vernon Bouvier Jr.. He took a shine to Bouvier's daughter Edith and proceeded to marry her. The two of them bought a 28-room house in the Hampton's called Grey Gardens and started a family. Jacqueline Bouvier was Phelan's partner's granddaughter and would later become wife of a president and still later be Jackie Kennedy Onassis.

The Beale's owned the house from 1924 to 1979, though Mr. Beale ultimately left the place to his wife and daughter, who was also named Edith. They became known as "Big" Edie and "Little" Edie.

SPOILER ALERT

Map of East Hampton. (Public Domain)

During the time they lived there the house fell into increasing disrepair and ruin as they were beset by financial difficulties. Their lives crumbled from privileged to pathetic, at which time they were about to be evicted when Little Edie's cousin Jackie stepped in.

In 1975 a pair of brothers, Albert and David Maysles, produced a documentary on the two women who lived through this prolonged debacle, capturing their dreams, their co-dependency, their battle to maintain their place and their pathos.

In 2009 the story was resurrected for a Broadway musical, and then in 2010 HBO turned into a film called Grey Gardens, starring Jessica Lange as Big Edie and Drew Barrymore as little Edie. The made-for-TV film was about the making of the original documentary, and these very real people who on one level seem to have been exploited.

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The reviews for this film were deservedly strong, though reviewers had differing interpretations of what happened. One imdb.com review wrote, "I was uplifted by the ability of these ruined aristocrats to thrive in such conditions. Later, I became weighed down with the dizzying fall they suffered."

For myself, the story of the estate and its decline brought to mind a novella by Nobel prize winner Andre Gide titled Isabelle. Isabelle in the ruins of an old chateau in Normandy. The narrator of the story, Gerard Lacase, is showing some friends around the property where he was once a guest many years earlier as a young university student from Paris. The friends see that he is emotional about the place, and they persuade him to tell his story. The parallel with Grey Gardens: it was an estate with opulence and grandeur that became marred and left a ruin.

Some viewers of Grey Gardens found Big Edie's determination to stay to be inspirational, but the degree to which the place became a shambles was ultimately pathetic.

HIGHLIGHTS of the movie would include the performances by Jessica Lange and Drew Barrymore. To be quite honest, they were both sensational. I've not seen the original documentary but purportedly Barrymore literally became Little Edie. As for Lange, you would never know she was acting. There is not one second where you catch yourself thinking this is a person playing a role. The film should be seen simply for that aspect alone. It all has that feeling of authenticity, a real projection of what was.

And then there's this haunting and wonderful soundtrack by Rachel Portman which really carries you places and conveys that whole sense of beauty and tragedy, life and loss, hope and horror.

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Like any good story there are twists you don't anticipate. Jackie is introduced in a brief scene at the very beginning, which serves to foreshadow what will occur near the end. The reactions of the two Edies will be surprising, once again adding to the veracity of the narrative.

Others who have seen the film use words like stunning and astonishing to describe it. I believe descriptions are a fair assessment and the film was a true achievement.

On the other hand, some who were intimate with the original documentary felt this to be a betrayal of sorts. Perhaps when I've seen the first I'll be tempted to re-assess. As a film this one holds together with panache.

Trivia: Who bought this house in the Hamptons when Little Edie sold it in 1979?
Answer: Ben Bradlee, editor of The Washington Post from 1968 to 1991. During his reign there he published the Pentagon Papers and stood behind his two young reporters, Woodward and Bernstein, in their efforts to unravel the Watergate Scandal.

Flashback Friday: Samuel Barber's Heartbreaking Adagio for Strings

‘I am not an elephant! I am not an animal! I am a human being! I am a man!” ~ John Merrick

Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings (1936) is one remarkable piece of music. In the 1980 David Lynch film The Elephant Man, starring John Hurt and Anthony Hopkins, Adagio becomes the perfect score for the film’s tragically soft climax. More theater goers probably remember it as the theme music weaving together Oliver Stone’s 1986 Viet Nam epic Platoon.

Having just viewed The Elephant Man again this weekend, my heart breaks for these social outcasts. This film tugs at your heart on many levels, detailing an exceptionally deformed man's struggle to gain a sense of dignity after years as a side show carnival attraction. The commercial exploitation of this “freak,” John Merrick, is a major undercurrent throughout.

A long forgotten memory came to mind while watching the film. I had been in Washington D.C. for the May Day protests of 1971. When the streets were safe as the first day’s rioting wound down I attempted to hitchhike out of D.C. in order to reach Athens, Ohio for my ten o’clock philosophy class at Ohio University Tuesday morning. I could tell many stories from that trip, but will only share one here. When it became apparent that the two students from Antioch, who had picked me up in Maryland, were not going to go several hours out of their way to bring me back to school, they were kind enough to drop me off at the Pittsburgh bus station where my ten dollars was just sufficient to catch a midnight bus that would transport me to Athens. With a transfer and two stops along the way I would arrive at 8:00 a.m., just in time to shower and ready myself for class. (Anecdotal: Impractical 19-year-old hippie that I was, I actually left Athens the Thursday before, thumb extended, with no money whatsoever for this five day adventure. My aunt in Falls Church outside D.C. gave me the tenspot in case I got arrested.)

There were four of us on the bus: a young black woman who pretty much kept to herself, a middle aged West Virginia woman who insisted that every boy friend she ever had was named Eddie and that I should get off with her at Parkersburg (an offer which I declined), and a man who worked for the Coney Island Freak Show who was traveling the country to purchase freaky attractions for the famed New York amusement park. He showed me photos which people sent, which he would then go examine in person and occasionally purchase. Some were Polaroids, others regular pictures.

As we riffled through the stack of photos I saw a two-headed sheep, two-headed dog, a six-legged sheep, Siamese twin pigs with eight legs and two heads, and other horrors, some fascinating, others grotesque. It was not a pretty assignment, yet he seemed to relish it.

I think it fortunate that the carny sideshows with humans as monsters to be gawked at are a thing of the past… or I hope so. But the reality is, we still see this attitude in the world where some people are made to feel themselves outcasts. Every society has its untouchables. It could be race, social standing, education level, special needs, the way we look, piercings... What we forget is that these are fellow human beings, with beating hearts, who like John Merrick have had human aspirations, who long to be treated with dignity.

How indescribably painful it can feel to be outcast, untouchable and dehumanized. Oscar Wilde, in his poem Ballad of Reading Gaol said it aptly:
"We did not dare to breathe a prayer or give our anguish scope,
Something was dead in each of us and what was dead was hope."

Perhaps there is someone in your life who feels isolated. Perhaps by befriending this person you will give birth to hope in his or her heart. Or if you are feeling inward pain from a heart wound that seems to go on an on, perhaps you can take comfort in knowing you are not alone. My prayer is that you will be comforted.

There are a number of versions of Barber’s wonderful and heart-rending composition. I selected this one to remove its film associations so you can just lose yourself in the streams of sound. If you get a chance, take it in. Inhale its evocative mesmerizing power.

This blog post was originally published in March 2009.