Grey Gardens
Sickly, alone, and draining money, Beale's mother began to beg her daughter to return to the East Hampton estate in March of 1952. On July 29, 1952, Beale returned to live with her mother in the East Hampton estate Grey Gardens (at 3 West End Road). The home had been purchased for Big Edie in 1923 when it still had one of the finest gardens on the East Coast.
In a 1980 letter to her nephew Bouvier Beale Jr., Beale claimed that: "When my Grandfather died (in 1948), he left $65,000 in trust. Jack B. ("Black Jack" Bouvier, Big Edie’s brother and a Wall Street broker) had only one objective—to grab the Bouvier fund to invest for his daughters (Jackie and Lee) and he did. He was supposed to take care of Mother." Instead, Big Edie ended up with $300 per month. Mother and daughter reportedly remained independent by selling off their Tiffany silver item by item.
After the 1963 death of the Beales' caretaker and handyman Tom "Tex" Logan, and a burglary in 1968, the women lived in near isolation and, eventually, poverty.
On October 22, 1971, inspectors from the Suffolk County Health Department raided the house and discovered that it violated numerous building regulations. The story became a national scandal. Health Department officials said they would evict the women unless the house was cleaned. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis came to the rescue, paying $32,000 to clean the house, install a new furnace and plumbing system, and cart away 1,000 bags of garbage.
The Beales then rose to fame as a result of the Maysles brothers' 1975 direct cinema documentary film Grey Gardens. The film revealed the strong and dysfunctional ties between Mrs. Beale and Little Edie, as well as showcasing the reclusive pair's daily rituals of song, recollections, arguments, and reconciliations. Beale and her mother were each paid $5,000 for the documentary, which featured their daily lives, songs and dances included. They never did obtain a percentage of the film profits as originally allegedly promised by the Maysles brothers. The film was screened for the two Edies in the upstairs hall of Grey Gardens in 1975.
Read more about this topic: Edith Bouvier Beale
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“Thou didst create the night, but I made the lamp.
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Thou didst create the deserts, mountains and forests,
I produced the orchards, gardens and groves.
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