THE STORY BEHIND THE GREY GARDENS DOCUMENTARY:
Seventy-nine-year-old Edith Bouvier Beale and her fifty-six-year-old daughter, Edith 'Little Edie' Bouvier Beale, are Jacqueline Kennedy's aunt and cousin.
They live alone with several cats, fleas, and raccoons which are wild and live in the attic.
In the early 1970s, the Beale's are discovered living in filth and squalor in Grey Gardens, their 28-room family estate located in East Hampton, Long Island. The home doesn't have running water. Edie moved home twenty-four years earlier to care for her ailing mother. In what Edie considers a "raid" on their privacy, the Suffolk County Board of Health orders the Beales to clean up the house or be evicted.
With few exceptions, the Beales are suspicious of the outside world. They finally comply with the order and renovate the home with financial help from their more famous relatives, Jackie Onassis, and her sister Lee Radzwill.
Mother and daughter are outwardly combative with each other but their constant bickering masks a protective attitude each has for the other. Both cling to their past lives, with each still believing that that life can exist - Edith as a singer, and Edie as a social débutante (Edie is always sporting a fashionable scarf around her head because of reported hair loss.)
Two years after renovations on the home have begun, Edith still lives primarily in her bedroom in a twin bed which is covered with garbage and cats. Daughter Edie constantly dreams of a time when she can return to living in New York City as a debutante and dancer. However, some people believe that she is only using her mother as an excuse for what she really considers her comfortable current living situation.
You can watch the documentary on Amazon Prime or below.
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