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Their high-end tastes meant importing custom concrete walls from Spain to build an enclosed garden and hiring landscape designer Ruth Bramley to create the gardens that the home would one day be known for. It took Hovde, Meyer, and Susan Froemke two years to edit the over 70 hours of film into a coherent story. The importance of the editors is obvious but often overlooked, as film editing can certainly make or break a film. The dynamic and creative roles of these three women are responsible for pulling together the complex elements of this unscripted slice of life. Any other collaboration of editors would have certainly produced an entirely different film. The Maysles spent close to $50,000 on film and equipment before they went back to visit the Beales with their new proposal a year later.
The Maysles Brothers' Film (
In 1979, writer Sally Quinn and her husband Ben Bradlee of Washington Post fame drove from D.C. To East Hampton to see a property that was "more of a ruin than a habitable home," as she described on House Beautiful's podcast, Dark House. “She lived in one little bedroom upstairs and she had one light bulb over a mattress on the floor and a little table that had a hot pad on it,” she says. “My real estate agent would not go into the house with me because there were so many fleas and it was horrible. I walked in the hallway and I said, ‘Oh my God, this is the most beautiful house I've ever seen.’ And Edie did this little pirouette in the middle of the hall and she said, ‘Yes, all it needs is a coat of paint,’” Quinn recalls. We'll tear the house down, we'll get an architect, this and that.’ She'd say to the real estate agent, ‘I'm not selling it to them.
Sally Quinn and Ben Bradlee
So, on that fateful day, Little Edie gave Quinn a warm welcome, singing "'welcome to Grey Gardens,' as though it was some fabulous palace. She did a pirouette and said 'all it needs is a coat of paint,'" Quinn said. Meanwhile, Quinn added, "there was cat shit all over the walls and the smell and filth were unbelievable, but we both saw it the way it once was." Beyond the veneer of those unglamorous remnants, the home's former grandeur was still obvious to Quinn. The full interview with Sally Quinn is featured in season 2 of House Beautiful’s haunted house podcast, Dark House. On Rugrats, season 2, episode 15, "The Case of the Missing Rugrat", Tommy is misplaced by Grandpa and "adopted" by two elderly eccentric sisters living in a mansion named "Grey Gardens."
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Phelan and Edith purchased the house and started a family, having a daughter that they also named Edith. In a massive scandal, Phelan divorced his wife in approximately 1946 by sending a telegram from Mexico. Their settlement agreement included a $300 per month allowance to care for herself and her daughter, which equates to around $4,000 with the cost of inflation.
Audubon Center at Debs Park
The project was ultimately canceled and the Maysles turned their attention to the Beales, resulting in the 1975 documentary Grey Gardens. After the release of the film, Edith and Little Edie continued to reside in the house. In 1897, Joseph Greenleaf Thorp (1862–1934) designed the house.[4] Thorpe had designed several other houses in East Hampton. Stanhope Phillips died in 1901, leaving behind an estate valued at $250,000 (equivalent to $9,156,000 in 2023). His brother challenged Margaret for control of the estate, saying she had used undue influence on him and that she had cremated him so that an autopsy could not be performed to confirm this.
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Built as a home for Virginia and Harry Robinson of the Robinsons department store chain, this 1911 estate is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Park grounds are usually open to the public daily but may occasionally be closed for holidays, filming, or special events.No fee for parking or park admission on open park days.Doheny Greystone Mansion is open only for special events. Marissa is part of the content marketing team and enjoys writing about real estate trends and home improvement. Los Angeles has a Mediterranean climate with hot, dry summers and mild, wet winters. Therefore, it’s important to choose plants that are well-suited to the region’s arid conditions.
The grounds include public art works, cypress trees, fountains and shallow pools. Los Angeles, famously known for its glitz and glamour, is also home to numerous serene and beautiful gardens that offer a respite from the hustle and bustle of urban life. From lush green parks to botanical gardens and private sanctuaries, Los Angeles has something for every nature lover. So whether you’re living in an apartment in Los Angeles or seeking an escape from your home in LA, there are plenty of picturesque and tranquil gardens awaiting you. Grey Gardens is a fourteen-room mansion that sits on four acres in the Georgica Pond Area of East Hampton, NY.
The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens
She and her late husband, Ben Bradlee, the famed editor of The Washington Post, bought the house for $220,000 in 1979, with the agreement that they would not tear it down. Raccoons and birds traveled from the overgrown garden to the house and nested in the attic, digging holes in the walls. The Beale woman also loved cats, and without spaying or neutering, the place was soon overrun. The Sanitation Department no longer picked up their trash, as they hadn’t paid the bill, so Grey Gardens was soon piled high with refuse.
Grey Gardens, 4 More Historic Homes Tapped for House & Garden Tour - Behind The Hedges
Grey Gardens, 4 More Historic Homes Tapped for House & Garden Tour.
Posted: Thu, 26 Oct 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]
They gained their fame during the Watergate scandal by being the first to cover the story at The Washington Post. The couple purchased the property for a mere $220,000, or around $726,000 at today’s rates. The former first lady and her sister donated money to the Beale’s to bring it up to livable standards, but that’s not where the story ended. In the 1970’s, Albert and David Maysles set out to make a documentary about Jackie O’s life when she lived in East Hampton. The project didn’t come to fruition, but instead, they chronicled the eccentric Big and Little Edie in the documentary Grey Gardens. In 1913 she sold the home to the president of the local coal company, Robert C. Hill and his wife, Anna.
Although the 1972 project didn’t pan out at the time, in 1975 the Maysles Brothers decided to go back to the historic home and reconnect with the eccentric women to make one of the most enduring, entertaining cult classic films, “Grey Gardens”. In the age before reality TV, this film was something special, not just for the women’s famous family connections, but for the bittersweet honesty that shone through as the women reminisced and debated the past. Most heartbreaking was Little Edie talking about what her life might have been or could be if she could leave Grey Gardens. Particularly poignant is the daughter’s sorrowful commentary alongside the bedridden mother donning a hat and gaily singing “Tea for Two”, feeding on the attention.
Impressed with their work, the Maysles were approached by Lee Radziwill and her sister, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, about doing a documentary about their lives growing up in the Bouvier family. Their family, of course, included their eccentric aunt and cousin in East Hampton. It's one of the only items from Grey Gardens that she still has after she parted ways with almost everything at an estate sale when she sold the house in 2017. The shingle-style home was designed by Arts and Crafts architect Joseph Greenleaf Thorpe in 1897. A Princeton graduate, Thorpe designed many of the summer cottages in East Hampton during the late 19th Century.
She would befriend the staff and she would find somebody on her floor who would take her places, grocery shopping. Ilene Shane was living in a friendly building on East 62nd Street and First Avenue in Manhattan when Edie moved in. “We used to hang out in the lobby and we'd see her come and go in her get ups and the turbans, dressed up to go out,” says Shane, who was at the time taking a photo class. Eventually, she asked to take Edie’s portrait and was invited into her apartment. Despite their difficult relationship, Edie’s recollections of her mother turned almost immediately to hagiography. “Her mother became a saint, and so she revered her almost religiously,” says Bartram.
But despite the media couple’s 1980s-era salon luster, the house drew much of its fame — or infamy — from earlier stewards. The once-squalid home of the most notorious mother-daughter dyad since Tennessee Williams poured his own family into “The Glass Menagerie” went into contract last month, and its contents were unloaded in a three-day estate sale. Old photographs reveal both women to have been spectacular beauties when they were younger. Big Edie was a popular singer in her youth (a pleasant version of “Tea for Two” is offered as proof), but at a certain point her husband left, her life collapsed and she insisted that her daughter return to East Hampton to care for her. Grey Gardens enjoys an enduring legacy; although those driving by the historic home now will find little connection to the ramshackle mansion depicted on film.
This Runyon Canyon-adjacent site is perhaps most popularly known as the site of the Freddy in Troop Beverly Hills. The house was designed in the early 1900s by Myron Hunt and Elmer Grey, and is surrounded by several gardens (including a community garden) in various states of upkeep. In 1979, she agreed to sell it to Ben Bradlee and Sally Quinn, on the condition that the house be restored, not torn down.
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