Edith Bouvier Beale - Early Life

Early Life

Beale was born in New York City, the only daughter of Phelan Beale, a lawyer, and the former Edith Ewing Bouvier (known as "Big Edie"). She was born at 1917 Madison Avenue (now the site of the Carlyle Hotel). She had two brothers, Phelan Beale, Jr. and Bouvier Beale, and had a privileged upbringing and gilded youth. Beale attended The Spence School and graduated from Miss Porter's School in 1935. She was also a member of the Maidstone Country Club of East Hampton. She had her debut at the Pierre Hotel on New Year's Day 1936. The New York Times reported on the event, where she wore a gown of white net appliqued in silver and a wreath of gardenias in her hair.

While Beale was young, her mother pursued a singing career, hiring an accompanist and playing small venues and private parties. In the summer of 1931, Phelan Beale separated from his wife, leaving Big Edie, then 35 years old, dependent on the Bouviers for the care of herself and children. In 1946, he finally obtained a divorce, notifying his family by telephone from Mexico (his daughter described it as a "fake Mexican divorce" since it was not recognized by the Catholic Church).

In her youth, Little Edie was a clothes model at Macy's in New York and Palm Beach, Florida. She later claimed to have dated J. Paul Getty and to have once been engaged to Joe Kennedy, Jr. (although in reality she only met him once). During the 1961 inauguration of John F. Kennedy, she told Joe Kennedy, Sr. that, if young Joe had lived, she would have been First Lady instead of Jackie.

In her youth, Beale ran away to Palm Beach, where she was found by her father and brought home. She said people thought she had eloped with actor Bruce Cabot.

From 1947 until 1952, Beale lived in the Barbizon Hotel for Women, hoping to find fame and possibly a husband in Manhattan. While she states in the documentary Grey Gardens that she was searching for an ordered life and a Libra husband, she later confessed in footage included in The Beales of Grey Gardens (2006) and in unseen raw footage that she seemed only to be interested in men whose zodiac sign was Sagittarius, which believers in horoscopes would consider a bad match for her. She also mused that she had "landed" in New York "at the wrong time" and had not enjoyed the experience. She had moved to the Barbizon Hotel for Women after feeling unsafe at her previous apartment, which was furnished with her mother's valuable antiques. Little Edie told her mother (in the documentary) that, by moving back home, she missed her big showbiz break via Max Gordon.

Beale felt that she was on the verge of a big break into films in 1952 when she was 34. She said she had offers from MGM and Paramount, and that her dance career was set to take off. She also said that wealthy men, like Howard Hughes and J. Paul Getty, had asked her to marry them.

According to Edie Beale's diaries and letters that she left to the executor of her estate, her nephew Bouvier, she had an affair in the late 1940s with Julius Albert Krug, the U.S. Secretary of the Interior, who was married. The relationship is depicted in the 2009 HBO bio film Grey Gardens. "Big Edith" Beale alludes to "that married man" during an argument with her daughter in the documentary in which she says, "That married man was not going to give you any chance at all."

When she was in her late 30s, Beale developed alopecia totalis which caused her body hair to fall out and prompted her to wear her signature turbans. But Beale's cousin, John Davis claims Edie once climbed a tree at the house and set her hair on fire, suggesting Beale might have contributed to her own baldness.