My father brought me back. Then I went into interpretive dancing and ran away to New York. She moved into the Barbizon Hotel for proper ladies on the East Side. I was all set to audition for the Theatre Guild that summer. Someone squealed to my father.
Do you know, he marched up Madison Avenue and saw my picture and put his fist right through Mr. Major Bouvier constantly wrote to his daughter telling her to quit going to the club and to sell Grey Gardens. Mother refused. Big Edie slumped into depression and blew up with weight. Later, she could no longer afford to send her daughter grocery money in New York, and Little Edie lacked any capacity to support herself.
Mother got the cats. There may have been a final fit of rebellion shortly after Little Edie moved back to Grey Gardens, as later described to me by John Davis. But cousin John told me about a summer afternoon when he watched Little Edie climb a catalpa tree outside Grey Gardens. She took out a lighter. He begged her not to do it. She set her hair ablaze. And in that act of self-immolation, she sealed her fate as a prisoner of the love of her mother.
The resolution of the two discards was to become defiant iconoclasts. Passed over by history, the ladies of Grey Gardens were left to the wreck of their lives until, sweet revenge! In the sixties, they were suddenly being indulged by a nervous White House. Secret Service cars were posted outside. As Davis recalls in his book, the Kennedy inauguration gave Little Edie a chance for her own theatrics. She reminded Joe Kennedy Sr.
The ladies hoped to get money from the deal, says Eva, though they never saw a penny. It did, however, make them famous. But her optimism was only part delusional. It also helped her to live another quarter-century on her own. Little Edie called to tell me she was ready to move back to New York, at last. Her exhilaration made her sound 19 again.
A brief splash singing in Manhattan cabarets delighted her, no matter how the critics mocked it. At the age of 11, Beale was taken out of school for two years by her mother for what was described as a respiratory illness.
Instead of class work, Little Edie tagged along to the movies or the theater with her mother nearly everyday. Blonde, blue-eyed and tall, Beale was a beauty, "surpassing even the dark charm of Jacqueline," recalled her cousin, John H. In , the same year she attended Miss Porter's finishing school in Farmington, Connecticut, Beale modeled for Macy's. She participated in fashion shows in East Hampton, too, and by her early 20s Edie Beale had earned the nickname, "Body Beautiful.
Paul Getty. As a young adult, Beale took up residence at the Barbizon Hotel in New York City, a residential hotel that catered to women who wanted to be actresses or models. As Edie Beale would later tell it, it was a time of opportunity for her. There was more modeling work to pursue and within time, Edie said, movie offers from MGM and Paramount studios.
The limelight, though, would have to wait. By the mid s, Phelan Beale had left Edie's mother for a younger woman. The couple's eventual divorce gave Big Edie Grey Gardens, child support, and not much else. To keep the household going, Edie Ewing Beale leaned on her father for financial assistance and sold family heirlooms. On her own, without a husband to try and drag her to the Hampton cocktail parties she had no interest in attending in the first place, Big Edie's singing aspirations only strengthened.
She frequented clubs, and even recorded a few songs. In she showed up late to her son's wedding, dressed as an opera singer. Without the money to support her or her house, Edie Ewing Beal's life at Grey Gardens fell into disrepair. She wouldn't leave again until Big Edie's death in For the next two decades, Beale and her mother became increasingly reclusive, rarely venturing outside their property. Grey Gardens itself continued to slide downward, too, becoming the domain of stray cats — later estimates would put the count as high as — and raccoons, both of which Beale took care to feed on a regular basis.
Bills went unpaid and the two women subsided, in part, on cat food. In one memorable photograph, Beale stands in front of a mound of discarded cat food cans measuring several feet in height. The exterior of the property changed as well; unkempt trees, shrubs and vines closed in around the house.
In the fall of County officials, armed with a search warrant, descended on Grey Gardens. She was kept out of the school for two years during the age of eleven and twelve , but accompanied her mother to movies and plays nearly every day. To the dismay of her father, she dabbled in professional modeling. One of her photos was displayed in the studio window of famed photographer Louis Bachrach; Phelan Beale reportedly smashed the window in anger.
Though never married, it is believed that she had proposals from Joe Kennedy, Jr. Paul Getty. She even dated jetsetters like Howard Hughes. Her one true love was Julius Krug, fomer Secretary of Interior. Her mother apparently scared off every suitor Edie ever had for fear that she would one day be left alone with no one to care for her.
From to she lived at the Barbizon Hotel for Women, one of the earliest residential housing alternatives for young women moving to New York City to take advantage of professional opportunities.
Codes of conduct and dress were enforced, no men were allowed above the lobby floor, and prospective tenants needed three letters of recommendation to be considered residency. Max Gordon, the successful Broadway producer, saw potential in Edie and invited her to audition for the Theatre Guild that summer.
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