Further Overkill for “Grey Gardens”
Will somebody please — please! — call a halt to the pop-culture phenomenon surrounding “Grey Gardens”? Drew Barrymore (pictured) and Jessica Lange are playing “GG”‘s main characters — Edie Bouvier Beale and her daughter, Edie, Jr. — in a film adaptation of the cult 1975 documentary, due out in November. A few years ago, there was the musical version of the flick, which won Tonys for Christine Ebersole and Mary-Louise Wilson. Now, Walter Newkirk, who began a lifelong friendship with Edie, Jr. after he interviewed her for the Rutgers college newspaper, has released the first of three books on the Beales expected before the film.
“My book ‘MemoraBealeia’ is about Edie on her own in New York City,” Newkirk told the New York Daily News. “When she sold Grey Gardens to [famed Washington Post editor] Ben Bradlee, she moved to a squalid studio apartment at 350 E. 65th St. She had a mattress on the floor with very little furniture. There were a lot of cats and the same smell that was in Grey Gardens. Someone had taken a key and carved the word ‘cats’ on the metal door of her apartment.” New books are also expected from original “Grey Gardens” director Albert Maysles, as well as Eva Beale, the wife of Little Edie’s nephew, Bouvier Beale Jr. Cat smell not included.
I guess there are two kinds of people in the world in the world
Those who can’t get enough of Grey Gardens
AND
Those who have had enough of Grey Gardens
I know what type you are now!
Little Edie is a kindred spirit. All the media attention that has surrounded the Edies almost feels like a personal violation. I’m truly happy for the Edies’ posthumous success and notoriety but I fear a blitz similar to the one that befell Britney. Walter Newkirk told us of his plans to write the book back in 2001 shortly before LEdie’s death. Eva Beale is selling over-priced trinkets in the Beales’ name. Quite a disgrace to Body Beautiful Beale and her Mother Darling.