Drew Barrymore

Hi Jennifer & Friends: Just the other day I was watching an interview of one of my favorite actresses, Drew Barrymore. The interview was very interesting and she spoke about her new venture into directing. Barrymore is taking on this new challenge in a show called "Whip it" due out later this year. She's been working on the project for almost two years now.

When I was watching the interview she spoke about a part in an HBO movie that she did called "Grey Gardens". I remember this movie and I saw it a couple of months ago. I thought she did a remarkable job but it was the story about real life characters that provoked me to learn more about them after seeing the movie. Edith "Big Eddie" Ewing Bouvier Beale was played by Jessica Lange and Barrymore played Edith "Little Edie" Bouvier Beale.

Here's part of the story - Edith "Big Edie" Ewing Bouvier Beale and her daughter Edith "Little Edie" Bouvier Beale were the aunt and first cousin of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis. The two women lived together at Grey Gardens for decades with limited funds, resulting in squalor and almost total isolation.

The house was designed by Joseph Greenleaf Thorpe in 1897, and purchased in 1923 by Phelan Beale and Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale. After Phelan left his wife, Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale and her daughter Edith Bouvier Beale lived there for decades more, over 50 years in total for each woman. The house was called Grey Gardens because of the color of the dunes, the cement garden walls, and the sea mist.

In the fall of 1971 and throughout 1972, their living conditions—their house was flea-infested, inhabited by innumerable cats and raccoons, lacked running water, and was full of garbage and decay—were exposed as the result of an article in the National Enquirer and a cover story in New York Magazine after a series of inspections (which the Beales called "raids") by the Suffolk County Health Department. With the Beale women facing eviction and the razing of their home, in the summer of 1972 Jacqueline Onassis and her sister Lee Radziwill provided the necessary funds to stabilize and repair the dilapidated house so that it would meet Village codes.

Albert and David Maysles became interested in their story and received permission to film a documentary about the women, which was released in 1976 to wide critical acclaim. Their cinema vérité technique left the women to tell their own stories.

"Big Edie" died in 1977 and "Little Edie" sold the house in 1979 to former Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee and his wife Sally Quinn. "Little Edie" died in 2002 at the age of 84. According to a 2003 article in Town & Country, after their purchase, Bradlee and Quinn had the house and grounds completely restored. Philanthropist Frances Hayward currently rents the home 11 months out of the year from the Bradlees.

I hope all of you get a chance to see this film and read up on these characters.

Lynn Los Angeles