Special mention to the TV movie “Grey Gardens” (2009)
Special mention to the TV Limited Series” Feud: Capote vs The Swans” (2024)
Big and Little Edie Bouvier have entered the hearts of gay men everywhere!
The documentary feature Grey Gardens tells the story of Big Edie and Little Edie Bouvier Beale, the aunt and cousin of former First Lady Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis. When the brothers Albert and David Maysles discovered them in the early seventies, Big Edie, who was almost eighty at the time, and Little Edie, who was fifty-six, appeared to be stuck in another era, holding onto their aristocratic past while living in near-total isolation inside their decaying East Hampton mansion, caring for numerous cats and raccoons.
The Maysles were already famous for their unique style of filmmaking, which they had used in such classics as “Salesman” (1969) and “Gimme Shelter” (1970), where, at the Rolling Stones Altamont Free Concert, they unexpectedly captured on film the altercation between 18-year-old Meredith Hunter and Hells Angel Alan Passaro that resulted in Hunter’s death. Their film footage showed that although Passaro stabbed Hunter a total of sixteen times, Hunter had drawn and pointed a revolver just before the stabbing began – astonishingly, no one had the wherewithal to see if the gun was loaded. As a result of the film footage and some eye-witness accounts, Passaro was found not guilty of first-degree murder on the basis of self-defense. Whether justice was served that day, however, is still a matter of debate.
The brothers christened their style Direct Cinema, a type of cinéma vérité with no directorial interference, although some critics, such as Pauline Kael, accused them of staging and more!
The filmmakers gained the trust of both Edies and filmed at Grey Gardens for several weeks. They, along with their co-directors, Ellen Hovde and Muffie Meyer, then carefully edited their footage to create a remarkable documentary that captured the essence of the women and their unique lifestyles. After its release, the film’s high campiness—a tragic story set in the faded milieu of New York high society and featuring some deliciously bitchy one-liners between an interdependent yet resentful mother and daughter—developed a significant gay following.
I need professional music!
BIG EDIE BOUVIER BEALE ON HAVING TO PUT UP WITH LITTLE EDIE BOUVIER’S CONSTANT SINGING.
This is not surprising since, in many ways, the story of the Bouvier Beales, in addition to being a metaphor for the collapse of old-money privilege, parallels the tale of Blanche DuBois and her fall from grace from the family plantation at Belle Reve to Stanley Kowalski’s bathroom in a New Orleans tenement slum. Like Blanche, their interior world is sustained by memory, imagination and ritual and like Tennessee Williams’ greatest creation, they turn their daily lives into a stage, curating their identities through performance.
Unlike Blanche, however, Little Edie appears to be in great shape for fifty-six, and she was blessed with a unique fashion sense, particularly with her head scarves. Over time, some gay fashion designers credited her as an inspiration for their work. She was also a wanna-be cabaret artist, and after her mother’s death in 1977, she did achieve her goal of signing in some of Manhattan’s top Cabaret venues, mainly to the gay audiences who had grown to love her over the years since the film’s release. She died in 2002, aged 84.
Like Blanche, Big and Little Edie did ultimately depend on the kindness of strangers, and when Suffolk County, New York, came to inspect the mansion following a number of complaints by the Beales’ neighbors, it was Jackie Kennedy and her sister Lee Radziwill who paid to have the mansion restored to at least part of its former glory. In fact, it was through Radziwill, with whom the brothers were making an uncompleted documentary, that the Maysles were introduced to Big and Little Edie in the first place!
The documentary received a Criterion Collection DVD release in 2001, where it is now available for screening. By the turn of the century, it had become a definitive gay cult classic, inspiring songs such as Rufus Wainwright’s “Grey Gardens.” In 2006, the documentary was adapted into a musical play by three gay men: Doug Wright, Scott Frankel, and Michael Korie.
Special mention to the TV movie “Grey Gardens” (2009)
Grey Gardens (2009), the HBO biographical drama starring Jessica Lange and Drew Barrymore, dramatizes the lives of Big Edie and Little Edie Bouvier Beale across four decades, weaving together their glamorous youth, their gradual retreat from society, and the events leading up to (and following) the filming of the 1975 Maysles documentary.
The film moves back and forth between 1930s-to-1950s flashbacks and the 1970s present, showing how two Park Avenue socialites—once part of the Bouvier family orbit that included Jacqueline Kennedy—slowly lose their financial stability, social standing, and connection to the outside world.
Little Edie, a debutante with ambitions in acting and dance, attempts to build a life in New York and becomes involved in a disastrous romance with married businessman Julius “Cap” Krug (Daniel Baldwin). Big Edie, who sees herself primarily as a singer, resists leaving Grey Gardens even as her marriage to Phelan Beale (Ken Howard) dissolves. After Phelan cuts off financial support, mother and daughter remain in the East Hampton estate, which deteriorates into squalor over the decades. Their isolation deepens, and their relationship becomes a mix of devotion, resentment, and mutual dependence. The film culminates with the arrival of the Maysles brothers, who document the Beales’ eccentric, decaying world—an act the women hope will restore their former glamour, though it ultimately immortalizes their decline.
Adapted by gay writers Michael Sucsy and Patricia Rozema and directed by Sucsy with Jeanne Tripplehorn as Jackie Kennedy and Ayre Gross and Justin Lewis as Albert and David Maysles, the movie is a minor triumph with exceptional performances by Lange and Barrymore.
Special mention to the TV Limited Series” Feud: Capote vs The Swans” (2024)
The Maysles brothers have returned in high style, thanks to the conceit behind the third episode, “Masquerade 1966,” of Ryan Murphy’s new limited series “Feud: Capote vs the Swans.” Written by Jon Robin Baitz and directed by Gus Van Sant, the episode brilliantly interweaves the footage the brothers filmed (with Charlotte Zwerin) for their documentary “With Love from Truman” in which Truman Capote, having just published his masterpiece, “In Cold Blood,” has reinterred New York society and is sorting the invitations (who is in and who is out) to his famous 1966 Masked Ball at the Plaza Hotel. In what has to be some of the most mesmerizing moments in television history, the entire episode – apart from the closing moments, when Truman (the excellent Tom Hollander) dances with the ghost of his dead mother (Murphy’s muse, the incredible Jessica Lang back after playing Joan Crawford in “Feud: Bette and Joan”) while The Swans – Babe Paley (Naomi Watts), Slim Keith (Diane Lane), C. Z. Guest (Chloe Sevigny) and Lee Radziwill (Calista Flockhart) look on – is shown as part of the brothers’ black-and-white “footage” giving The Swans ample time to bitch and moan about Truman. Pawel Szajda plays Albert, and Yuval David plays David. There is a scene where Truman flirts outrageously with David in the back seat of a car and another where Truman and Albert slow dance in Truman’s living room. It’s during this scene that Albert quotes Saint Theresa of Avila: “More tears are shed over Answered Prayers than unanswered ones,” giving Truman the title of his new book on New York society that he would never publish – apart from the articles in Esquire Magazine in 1975 in which he betrayed the trust of The Swans and for which Paley and Keith never forgave him. David Maysles died from a brain hemorrhage at age 55 in 1987. Albert Maysles died at age 88 in 2015.
