    
Soda
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Username: Soda
Post Number: 3636
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Monday, March 20, 2006 - 3:28 pm: | 
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It's not often enough that one of my favorite writers discusses one of my favorite local celebrities, but here's Dan Rattiner of Dan's Papers talking about Christine Ebersole:
"Is Your Life a Book? A Documentary? A Poem? A Musical?
By Dan Rattiner
We’ve all had bad times in our lives. Imagine yours. Now imagine the very worst of your bad times. And then consider this: what if years and years later somebody made a very public display out of it. Even wrote a book about it. And then, amazingly, someone created a Broadway show out of it? So my question is, would you go? No? What if they made it into a Broadway MUSICAL? Would you go to THAT?
The answer to that question for family and friends of the Bouviers of East Hampton — First Lady Jackie Kennedy Onassis was a Bouvier and grew up here — was answered last week when the show GREY GARDENS opened in Manhattan just off Broadway.
Jackie’s sister, Princess Lee Radziwill, a longtime resident of East Hampton, came. So did editor Ben Bradlee and writer Sally Quinn, who bought the East Hampton mansion “Grey Gardens” from the Beales in the end. The character playing Ms. Radziwill as a sixteen-year-old debutante appeared in the first act. Some comments are made about finding a proper match for her from among the upper class families summering that year in the Hamptons. At that point, in the audience, Ms. Radziwill left. Bradlee and Quinn, however, stayed. And they remained on through the entire evening.
The bad thing that happened to the Bouvier family, and which was happening on the stage, occurred in the summer of 1977. In a filthy, falling down summer mansion in East Hampton there was Edith Beale, a grand dame (born Bouvier), now 75 years old, whose husband had left her. And there was her unmarried daughter, Little Edie, now in her fifties, who had years before almost gotten married to Joe Kennedy, Jr., but it fell through. These two, with the money long since run out, were still living in the tattered remains of their summer mansion, but now with rats, birds, piles of garbage and over 50 cats and cat droppings. The house had not been properly cleaned in twenty years. But they liked it. And would not accept any help.
As it happened, one day a man delivering groceries from the local market called police to tell them it was his opinion that this house was unfit for human habitation. The police called the County Board of Health and the County Board of Health threatened to file papers to have the Beales evicted if they didn’t clean the place up. Or maybe not. It was a delicate business, evicting people for living in squalor, particularly relatives of Jackie Kennedy. On the other hand, the Beales seemed not to care very much what happened. Oblivious to the outside world, they were gripped day to day in the power of a love-hate mother-daughter relationship. Mr. Beale had been such a bastard, running out on Big Edie like that. But maybe he would come back. And Little Edie, according to Big Edie, had been so filled with the promise of a glamorous future and now she was such a disappointment, wasn’t she?
The story of the attempted eviction of the Beales was a news item, and it appeared in many weeklies at the time, including this one. And so it came to the attention of two documentary filmmakers, David and Albert Maysles, who had made a mark for themselves earlier by filming the Altamont Rock Concert in California at the height of the hippie movement. They spent a few weeks in East Hampton trying to meet the Beales. And they finally did. Little Edie was enthusiastic about them doing a film of them in their house. Perhaps it would make her a movie star. Big Edie consented reluctantly. She really thought it was stupid. But it made her daughter happy.
And so this film — not a book or the later Broadway show — was made, and it became a big hit, and then, since this was thirty years ago after all, it kind of faded into the woodwork as a cult film. People would trot it out once in a while. It has been shown several times at the Dan’s Papers They Made the Movie Here Film Festival. On several occasions, we held Q and A sessions after the showing with people who were there at the time and knew the Beales.
And then, last year, 29 years after all this happened, this newspaper learned that several Broadway types were going to make a musical called GREY GARDENS based on the events in East Hampton all those years before. A musical? How do you make a musical out of that? It seemed impossible.
Well, they did. And it has opened and it is a smash hit.
“Christine Ebersole easily matches the achievements of this year’s newly anointed Oscar winners Philip Seymour Hoffman (who played Truman Capote in Capote) and Reese Witherspoon (June Carter Cash in Walk the Line),” crowed reviewer Ben Brantley in the New York Times the morning after opening night.
How could this be?
It could be because those putting this show together had assembled some of the most creative minds in the business. Pulitzer Prize winning author Doug Wright was put to work writing the book. Scott Frankel wrote the songs. Legendary costume designer William Ivey Long designed the clothes, Allen Moyer designed the sets, which cost in the six figures — there’s a lot of garbage — and the whole thing is directed by Michael Greif. In the cast is five time Tony nominee John McMartin, who has two roles: Major Bouvier (Edie’s father) and, for some reason, the evangelist Norman Vincent Peale, a cameo appearance.
The success of the project seems to have been decided early on by setting the first act in the house in 1940. The house glitters in the sunshine. Little Edie is 15. And Big Edie is dressed in the latest fashion. Hopes are high. Then the curtain comes down for intermission and goes up again on the same scene in 1976. What a mess. And Big Edie is sick in bed with her pills at 75. As for Little Edie, she is now the same age as her mother was in the first act, and she is now being played by the same actress, Christine Ebersole, who played Big Edie in Act One. Voila. A tour de force.
The house “Grey Gardens” was sold by Little Edie Beale upon the death of her mother in 1979. Ben Bradlee and Sally Flynn, who bought it, gave Little Edie a choice of two prices. Either broom clean or As Is. She chose As Is and moved to Florida. Little Edie died in 2002 at the age of 86.
GREY GARDENS the Broadway show is in performance at the Playwrights Horizons Theatre in Manhattan for a limited run. Call 212-279-4200 for tickets.
“Grey Gardens” the film by the Brothers Maysles, is available on DVD at barnesandnoble.com for about $22 anytime. Enjoy."
-s.
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