Grey Gardens – Memphis Flyer

Early on in the documentary classic Grey Gardens, Edith “Little Edie” Beale remarks to the man filming her, “It’s very difficult to keep the line between past and present. Do you know what I mean?” Her question, which goes unanswered by cinematographer David Maysles*, is an invitation into Grey Gardens’ dissociative estate. Little Edie and her mother, “Big Edie”, are fallen aristocrats who live reclusively in an East Hampton mansion, rehearsing old disappointments and feeding raccoons. Theirs might be an unremarkable story if the Edies weren’t first cousins of Jackie O, but their dysphoria was backdropped by 1975’s broader upsets with America’s ruling class: Vietnam, the energy crisis, Nixon. There was something in the water.

‘Big Edie’ Beale in the Maysles Brothers’ documentary Grey Gardens.

Watching Grey Gardens feels like having a seat at Wonderland’s madcap tea party. It is satisfying to see aristocratic logic skewed towards the insane, because of how insane very rich people seem to us in the first place. The Beales are the Kennedy’s court jesters, inverting white gloved tradition in a way both funny and sad. When Little Edie dances alone in the parlor of her broken mansion, wearing a bathing suit and jeweled headscarf, we are supposed to understand: the rich are not immune.

‘Little Edie’ Beale

In 2015, of course, we have new jesters. Real Housewives of wherever has given us the chance to gawk at the nouveau riche any time we want. Reality TV can trace a direct line back to cinema verite, but no news there. Grey Gardens more galling permutation can be found in figures like Donald Trump; politicians who run their own surreal tea party (no pun intended) and become more powerful for it. Far from cleaning up their own proverbial Grey Gardens, powerful people do better to curate the absurd. Which is why Little Edie’s most apt line in the film remains as ironic today as it was in 1975: “The whole mark of aristocracy is responsibility. Is that it?”

Throwback August: Grey Gardens

Jerry Torre

Jerry Torre was 16 in the Summer of 1974, when he ran away from home and found employment as a gardner on oil billionaire J. Paul Getty’s East Hampton estate. That same year the young man Little Edie Beale called “The Marble Faun,” stumbled across Grey Gardens, and into pop culture history when his visits to the decaying mansion were captured by the Maysles Brothers in their famous 1975 documentary. Drew Hampton is currently playing Torre in the musical version of Grey Gardens, which is on stage at Circuit Playhouse through April 17, but here’s what the original “Marble Faun” had to say about life at Grey Gardens, and its various translations to the stage and screen. And if this interview isn’t enough Bouvier/Beale to quench your thirst for staunch characters, there’s a second interview with Grey Gardens star Carla McDonald below the fold.

Intermission Impossible: Your proximity to the Beales makes you a fair judge: of all the versions of Grey Gardens we’ve seen in recent years, which one is most accurate in getting who the Beales were and what life was like in their peculiar corner of the universe?

Jerry Torre: The First film Grey Gardens [the documentary] is my choice with the two films. The conditions of the mansion were actually improved upon before this. Yet it does take the viewer into a brief understanding of the personalities, living conditions, and complexities of the women.

Intermission Impossible: What’s it like to see your love of corn immortalized in song?

Jerry Torre: When I did hear the song “Jerry likes my corn” I was in awe of the interpretation’s gravity into our relationship through a song. It captured what I had known about our relationship: a moment in our life at Grey Gardens. One of concern. I’m honored with [the] tender interpretation of our relationship. There was a young boy who shared the simplistic joys of caring about one’s dear friend. Mrs.Beale was a mother to me. Only a few days into our relationship and I knew that I was home.

Intermission Impossible: Does the world’s seemingly unending fascination with the Beales surprise you? What do you think it is that keeps people coming back for more?

Jerry Torre: Once I shared my thoughts on [the documentary] Mrs.Beale looked at me [and said], “Years into your life people will find our relationship to be one of interest.” It has been 35-years since. It is one very fascinating event. One that begins with a grand old mansion on the East end of Long Island where estates have great history. When I walked into the mansion my very first day I felt the history of a family. Of a place where time had stopped. There were no people quite like Mrs.Beale and Edie. Their appeal lives on. One of individual expression in ones own choice of lifestyles. The appeal is one of individuals who seek to live.