Grey Gardens

I watched Grey Gardens today, and was intrigued and fascinated by the two personalities at the centre of this 1975 documentary film by Albert and David Maysles using a direct camera technique about an elderly mother and her middle-aged daughter, the aunt and cousin of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, who live their lives in a filthy, decaying mansion in the wealthy East Hamptons; a holiday mecca for the super wealthy from New York. 

It seems Grey Gardens, as the property was named, is a haven for mental illness and dysfunction, fabulously captured, endearingly sad, voyeuristic and judgemental. 

Edith and little Eadie are strange, especially for the time, nowadays they would have been considered hoarders, with mental illness with an excessive collection of scarves and shoes. Little Eadie is a lost soul, with a distinctive style of speech indicative of a juxtaposed New York Southern Belle. Her ugly series of head scarves with ornate broaches perched dangerously on her head and strange little buttons around the neck, her white designer shoes scuffed and greyed, her laddered stockings and her bathings suits, her pantyhose and disdain for skirts and consequent replacing pantyhose and pinned scarves as pants should paint a picture of a sad creature, paranoid and lost and trapped within the gardens and epic house. Her scarves of course were due to her developing alopecia, which caused all her body hair to fall out.

In the film the house is depicted as filled with 28 cats and rooms, accompanied by fleas and mosquitos with a tranquil view of the ocean. 

Big Eadie was the aunt of Jacqueline Onassis, and after the family were raided for the mess of the house she and her sister stepped in to clean it up and rebuild some of the failing rooms. Big Eadie herself had married lawyer Phelan Beale who in left her with three children to raise and no money, the family was left to the financial care of the Bouviers (Jacqueline Onassis grandparents). 

Years after the documentary was made Big Eadie eventually died and little Eadie stayed in the house another two years before selling it. A decrepit figure, with no body hair, ugly scarves and perfect madness I can imagine Eadie on stage at her cabaret comeback, sixty years old, muddled. A critic from the New York Times called it a 'public display of ineptitude'. Little Eadie, a young beautiful womyn who debuted on society in 1936 and had it reported in the New York Times also died alone an undiscovered for five days, a not unusual story for a country in ruin. We hear so many stories like this from that giant continent of wealth and poverty, womyn alone and non financial after men walk out on them. Children enabling the abuse and nurturing their parents. 

Detroit made people.