Edith Bouvier Beale home collection

A number of fashion designers and fashion photographers have used Edie's style as inspiration for their work (case in point: here, here, and here), but have any interior designers done this as well?

Designer Todd Oldham is a fan of Grey Gardens and he's used it as inspiration for his fashion collections, but I don't believe I saw this influence in his furniture collection for La-Z-Boy.

I came across a picture of this strange cobwebbed chandelier and it took me straight to Grey Gardens, although I realize there are many possible interpretations of the Beales' interior design other than infusing squalor into light fixtures.

Zeppelin

How about it? Has anyone seen anything inspired by how the Edies decorated Grey Gardens? Have you painted the woodwork and door trim to match the wall colors in your home? Are you using a pile of cat food cans as seating?

Grey Gardens fan video megapost

There are a number of fan-made Grey Gardens videos floating around on the internet now, and here are some of my favorite ones.

Danorama's fantastic video mash-up is no longer up on YouTube, due to a copyright claim by Maysles Films, but it's still available here. I believe this pre-dates the famous Madonna's "Hung Up"/Grey Gardens mash-up, and it's still my favorite!

As for having the video removed from YouTube, Al Maysles doesn't like people stealing his work, but these creative fans aren't doing it for profit; they're doing it because they love the Edies!

Speaking of Madonna, here's that mash-up:

Hung up on Grey Gardens

Here, Edie dances to "Back in the Daze" by Dimitri From Paris:

Grey Gardens Daze

Edie also dances to "Disco Inferno" by The Trammps:

Grey Gardens is burning!!!!!

I love the mellow groove in this one:

Groovy Gardens

These next two aren't fan videos, but I can't help but re-post them. This first one is a great little clip never actually made it into Grey Gardens or The Beales.

The Living Moment

And here's a fairly recently filmed video of Plum TV host Jenny Mayer at Grey Gardens for the 30th anniversary party for the film. The video features nice views of the home's interior today.

Jenny Mayer at Grey Gardens

Source: here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here

Fashion designer Laurie Foon's Grey Gardens-inspired collection

Thanks to the anonymous contributer who passed this link along!

I'm glad to see a designer inspired not just by Little Edie's style, but by Big Edie's as well.

From Laurie Foon

Winter 07 sees Laurie Foon drawing inspiration from the 1975 documentary film Grey Gardens which observes the lives of two outcast socialites; Edith Bouvier and her daughter Edie. Their eccentric lives, filled with daily theatrics and flamboyance is the essence behind this collection of boundary pushing classics.

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Interviews with Al Maysles: past and future

Jessica Harris of From Scratch Radio interviews Al Maysles, and there's an MP3 of the interview available online. It is interesting to hear Al's backstory! He chats about Grey Gardens about 21 minutes into the interview.

Albert Maysles

Co-Founder, Maysles Films

Documentaries used to be films with a bunch of talking heads. But nowadays, more docs capture reality as it accidentally unfolds in front of the camera.

Who are some of the directors who led the shift to more reality based films?

Jessica's guest is one such pioneer, Albert Maysles, whom the New York Times calls "the dean of documentary filmmaking." Albert has made over three dozen films of the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Truman Capote, and his film Grey Gardens was turned into a Broadway show.

Albert tells Jessica how he pioneered a new documentary genre, from scratch.

In addition, Grey Gardens will screen at the Green Mountain Film Festival in Montpelier, VT on 24 March 2007, and Al Maysles will give a talk.

Grey Gardens

Saturday, March 24 4:15 pm

City Hall Arts Center

In 1976, filmmakers Albert and David Maysles told the unbelievable but true story of Mrs. Edith Bouvier Beale and her daughter Edie, the aunt and first cousin of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Mother and daughter lived in a world of their own behind the towering privets that surrounded their decaying 28-room East Hampton mansion known as Grey Gardens. Together they descended into a strange life of dependence and eccentricity that no one had ever known about until the Maysles brothers arrived with their camera and tape recorder in hand. Post-film event: Filmmaker Albert Maysles will discuss the film. Sponsored by the Vermont Humanities Council. No rating, 94 minutes.

Source: here and here

What's Hot Fashion on Grey Gardens

Here's an article on Grey Gardens by "celebrated novelist Donna Tartt". Like many other such articles, there are loads of little incorrect facts spattered throughout, but it's still interesting to hear someone's opinion on the Beales.

From What's Hot Fashion, by Donna Tartt, on 18 February 2007

Grey gardens

She belonged to one of the grandest families in America, yet Edith Beale ended up living in a squalid, raccoon-infested house, where she would cook on a hot plate by her bed and bicker with her daughter. Thirty years after the pair starred in a cult documentary, the celebrated novelist Donna Tartt explains why film-makers and fashion designers are still gripped by their story

In 1972 there was an uproar in the American press when it was reported that these forgotten and impoverished relatives of Jackie's had been evicted from Grey Gardens, which was condemned by the Suffolk County Board of Health for violating multiple building and sanitation codes. (Big Edie and Little Edie - as mother and daughter are known in the film - refer rather ruefully to this attempted eviction as 'when we got raided', as if they were talking about a speakeasy bust-up).

The resulting scandal must have been intensely embarrassing to Jackie, who did her best to distance herself, but in America the story was splashed all over the tabloids and there was widespread shock that such a beloved (and immensely rich) public figure would allow her relatives to moulder in such poverty and decrepitude.

In the documentary, the two Edies seem resigned to their reduced circumstances, all things considered.

The 'clean-up' of the mansion (supposedly taking place at time of filming) is not much in evidence, apart from a lunkish and slightly stunned-looking young carpenter/houseboy whom Little Edie (sashaying about in her 'costumes' and trademark headwrap) calls, incongruously, the 'marble faun'.

Mother and daughter are happy enough to share their home with 'a few too many cats' (neither spayed nor housebroken) and with the wild racoons that have eaten the shingles off the roof and invaded the attic.

Time, in the film, is marked by the ever-growing holes in the walls. But - untroubled by the damage - Little Edie totters up the dark stairs in her high heels with big sacks of Wonder Bread and Cat Chow for the raccoons, which she dumps out on the attic floor. ('Of course, I'm mad about animals, but raccoons and cats can become a little bit boring. I mean… after a time.')

As her imperious mother shouts orders from her bed, and scolds her daughter for failing to marry a Getty when she had the chance, Little Edie (52, at time of filming) gets herself up in various eye-popping ensembles from the ragbag, stands atop the scales peering woefully down at her weight with opera glasses ('Isn't it awful when a dancer gets fat?') and cheerfully performs her famous Virginia Military Institute dance (complete with American flag) for the camera.

(The Virginia Military Institute dance is particularly beloved by fans of the film; readers with high-speed computer access may go to YouTube and find various versions of it online.)

Amid the daily routine at Grey Gardens - which is at once macabre and charming, in the manner of Edward Gorey - a great, unspoken question throws its shadow over the film.

How did this patrician mother-and-daughter pair with their tony accents and their Kennedy connections slide down so hard and fast from the heights of the Social Register (its broad As still clearly audible in their voices) into such flagrant ruin?

The short answer is that the elder of the two Edies - blowsy, bedridden chanteuse in smudgy harlequin glasses and a floppy hat, who famously entertains guests in one sequence by boiling up ears of corn on a bedside hot plate - was a bohemian socialite who, in the 1930s, alienated her husband and father by hiring an accompanist and entering into a career as a nightclub entertainer: something not done by women in her set.

Her husband was glad to seize upon an excuse to leave her; her father disinherited her. On the litter-strewn floor by Big Edie's bed (which she seldom leaves) is propped a grand portrait in the style of Sargent, from back when she was still Edith Bouvier.

No matter how many times you have seen the film, the image shocks, for it does not seem possible that this cool, gowned society beauty with pearls, straight from The Philadelphia Story, could have wound up as the dotty old wreck surrounded by trash and singing in bed.

But before the shock of the transformation can register, one of the Beales' many cats slinks behind the portrait to urinate. 'Oh, look,' says Big Edie, 'the cat's going to the bathroom on my portrait,' and then adds tartly: 'I'm glad somebody's doing what he wants to do.'

It is even more difficult to understand exactly how Little Edie, who once had a promising career as a model, slipped into poverty and madness alongside her mother.

In photographs and old news clippings, we see her as a long-legged and gorgeous young débutante, much more striking than her cousins Jacqueline and Lee Radziwill.

('See how beautiful Edie was when she was young?' her mother comments. 'It's perfectly foolish of her not to look that way now.')

Little Edie's story - repeated passionately again and again - is that she had to leave New York to come home and look after her mother, and that she never married because sharp-tongued Mrs Beale managed to run off all the suitors who came along.

It's a perfectly probable scenario - and yet it does not fully explain why mother and daughter have retreated into quite such a squalid and isolated life, having hardly left the house in 20 years - 'kind of locked up', as Albert Maysles has said, 'but by their own choice'.

If all this sounds unlikely material for a Broadway musical or a Hollywood film (one is in the works, starring Jessica Lange and Drew Barrymore), it is.

Grey Gardens is such an unsettling portrait of folie à deux that most people are puzzled and disturbed the first time they see it. Its charms tend to emerge after a second viewing, and people who love it tend to have watched it so many times they know it practically by heart.

In America it has a devoted cult audience, particularly in the fashion world. An incidental delight of the film is Little Edie's utterly singular mode of dress, which inspired a famous Steven Meisel photo-shoot for Italian Vogue in 1999 and, more recently, a 2002 feature in American Vogue with the model Karen Elson.

The designer John Bartlett, who is interviewed along with Todd Oldham on the Criterion DVD, based his autumn 2000 collection on what Little Edie blithely calls her 'revolutionary costume': tights over shorts; bath towels as headscarves and skirts worn upside-down or as capes; long-sleeved woollen sweaters wrapped turban-style around the head and fastened with giant rhinestone brooches.

It all looks as batty as it sounds - yet there's an uncanny rightness about it, too, a sureness of proportion, as if Miuccia Prada or Marc Jacobs had dressed her out of bins.

But it is Big Edie and Little Edie themselves, and the messy, many-layered intricacies of their relationship, that make this a film to return to.

On every viewing, there is something new to notice, an almost literary richness which suggests not only Miss Havisham but other, gentler Dickensian eccentrics fallen on hard times, such as ruined Miss Flite with her 'reticule' and her garret full of birdcages. (With their theatrical pasts, and their readiness to sing and dance at the drop of a hat, the Beales could also have been employed brilliantly on the stage by Mr Crummles in Nicholas Nickleby).

But mother and daughter are perhaps most Dickensian in their speech, which is incredibly comical and stylised, surreal at times, full of hyperbole and distinctive tics.

Big Edie, with her haughty, piercing voice, is a matriarch out of a screwball 1930s comedy gone terribly wrong; Little Edie (who often calls her mother Mrs Beale) speaks in a daffy, antiquated schoolgirl slang straight out of Miss Porter's.

They are constantly berating and correcting each other, talking at the same time, murmuring behind each other's backs, and - in asides to the camera - appealing to the Maysles brothers, whom they both plainly adore.

'The people don't speak,' Little Edie whispers fretfully to the Maysles, drawing them aside, in the midst of her mother's monologue about how 'terribly happy' her failed marriage was. 'But they don't get divorced.'

Big Edie overhears this: 'I had a terribly successful marriage!'

'There was a fake Mexican divorce,' Little Edie murmurs. 'He did have another wife that we didn't recognise... it wasn't recognised by the Catholic church...'

'I never had a fight in my life!' her mother shrills. 'I never threw anything at Mr Beale!' Back and forth it goes, as fast and funny at times as a vaudeville routine.

Yet their fixation on the past is also rank with a repellent, nightmarish quality. The house itself - falling to pieces, packed with mildewed and crumbling 'mementos' - is a visible manifestation of their shared compulsion to clutch too tightly, to hang on, to endlessly repeat old grievances and complaints, so that even in its campier and more charming moments, their banter is alight with a fierce glint of insanity.

Edith Sitwell attributes the English predisposition to eccentricity to the 'peculiar and satisfactory knowledge of infallibility that is the hallmark and birthright of the English nation'.

And part of the reason Grey Gardens is such a disturbing film is the utter self-assurance of the Beales.

Their sense of themselves - and of each other - is unshakeable; like ageing drag queens in a Diane Arbus photograph, they seem to have no conception how grotesque they appear to the viewer.

Yet - and this is what Dickens would have loved most about the Beales - there is a deep, endearing humanity in how stubbornly they cling to their romantic vision of themselves.

'You don't see me as I see myself,' confides Little Edie to the Maysles at one point, 'but you're very good at what you do see me as.'

In this unflinching but affectionate documentary we see mother and daughter not only as they are, but as they would like to be - and as the unlikely fashion icons and inspirations for stage and screen they have become 30 years later.

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Video Followup: Christine Ebersole on The Early Show

Christine Ebersole appeared on CBS's The Early Show on Saturday, 17 February 2007, and now videos of her performance are available online.

Christine Ebersole Grey Gardens

And the CBS website also has a video right here (via artscallion's comment).

Source: here and here

Tomorrow 2/17: Christine Ebersole on The Early Show

Christine Ebersole, star of Grey Gardens the Musical and darling of Grey Gardens-obsessed raccoons everywhere, will be on CBS's The Early Show tomorrow morning. That's Saturday, 17 February 2007. Don't miss it! I anticipate that a video clip of Ebersole will appear on CBSnews.com after the show airs.

From Broadway World, by BWW News Desk, on 16 February 2007

Christine Ebersole Featured on 'The Early Show,' 2/17

Grey Gardens star and Tony Award-winner Christine Ebersole will appear on CBS's national edition of "The Early Show" this Saturday morning, February 17.

As part of the program's popular "Second Cup Cafe" series, Ebersole will be interviewed and sing two numbers from Grey Gardens. Accompanied by musicians from the Grey Gardens orchestra, the performances and interview will be in the program's second hour. "The Early Show" broadcasts live from New York City on CBS (Channel 2 in the tri-state area) from 7-9AM. Viewers across the country should check local listings for times in other cities.

Ebersole, a Tony Award-winner for her performance in 42nd Street and a Tony-nominee for her work in Dinner at Eight, has won a multitude of awards for her work as both "Big Edie" Bouvier Beale and "Little Edie" Beale in Grey Gardens. She has also appeared on Broadway in Steel Magnolias, Gore Vidal's The Best Man, Getting Away with Murder, Camelot, Oklahoma!, and On the Twentieth Century, as well as at Encores! in A Connecticut Yankee, Ziegfeld Follies of 1936, Lady in the Dark, and Allegro. Her film credits include My Girl 2, Amadeus, and the TV musical version of Gypsy. She is also a noted cabaret artist.

Grey Gardens, after a hit run at Playwrights Horizons, began previews at the Walter Kerr Theatre on October 3rd and opened on November 2nd. In addition to Ebersole (42nd Street, Dinner at Eight) and Mary Louise Wilson (Cabaret, Full Gallop), Grey Gardens stars John McMartin, Bob Stillman, Matt Cavenaugh, Michael Potts, and Sarah Hyland (all from the Playwrights Horizons production), as well as Broadway newcomer Erin Davie as Young 'Little' Edie Beale, and Kelsey Fowler.

The musical features a book by Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Award-winner Doug Wright, music by Scott Frankel and lyrics by Michael Korie. The show, which is directed by Tony Award nominee and Obie winner Michael Greif, "brings to life both the delightfully eccentric aunt and cousin of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Once among the brightest names in the pre-Camelot social register, these two women became East Hampton's most notorious recluses, living in a dilapidated 28-room mansion. Set in two eras – in 1941 when the estate was in its prime and in 1973 when it was reduced to squalor – the musical tells the alternately hilarious and heartbreaking story of two indomitable individuals, Edith Bouvier Beale and her adult daughter 'Little' Edie," according to production notes.

For tickets and information, visit www.greygardensthemusical.com.

From Playbill, by Kenneth Jones, on 16 February 2007

Christine Ebersole Wakes Up With the Sun for "Early Show" Appearance Feb. 17

The tireless Christine Ebersole will appear on CBS-TV's "The Early Show" the morning of Feb. 17 to sing two numbers from Grey Gardens.

As part of the new program's "Second Cup Cafe" series, the Tony Award-winning actress will be interviewed and sing two numbers from the Broadway musical now playing the Walter Kerr Theatre.

Accompanied by the Grey Gardens orchestra, she'll perform live in the show's second hour.

"The Early Show" is seen in the New York City area on Channel 2 between 7-9 AM.

Viewers across the country should check local listings for times in other cities.

In the new musical by Scott Frankel, Michael Korie and Doug Wright, Ebersole plays two roles - the poised matriarch Edith Beale, hostess for a grand party at her Long Island estate called Grey Gardens, in 1941 (Act One); and her middle-aged daughter, Edie, an eccentric, broken creature in 1973 (Act Two).

Visit www.greygardensthemusical.com.

Source: here and here

Christine Ebersole on the appeal of Grey Gardens the Musical

The audio and video are out of synch (at least when I play it on my computer), but I love how Ebersole expresses herself, and I think she's right on.

Ebersole discusses why GREY GARDENS appeals to Gay men

Source

''They're not going to force us out,'' said Edith Beale

Karima of the Grey Gardens Yahoo Group found yet another great old article on the Beales!

This one's from a Nebraska paper. Our girls really made the national headlines!

From The Lincoln Star, on 14 December 1971, transcribed by Karima

Jackie's Cousin Lives in an 'Unsanitary' Mansion

East Hampton, N.Y. - A cousin of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis says she won't be forced out of a 28-room mansion here which Health Department officials claim is unsanitary.

"They're not going to force us out," said Edith Beale, 55 of a threatened eviction action.

Miss Beale and her mother, Edith Bouvier Beale, a sister of Mrs. Onassis' late father, John Vernon "Black Jack" Bouvier III, have lived in the mansion for years. Last month, Health Department officials said the house was unsanitary with human and cat excrement, piles of empty dog food cans, cobwebs and fleas.

Neighbors had complained that it was a health hazard and, after an inspection, the department told the Beales to clean house.

Last week, the health officials reported conditions worse and threatened to evict the Beales if necessary.

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Drew Barrymore on her upcoming role in the Grey Gardens feature film

Having seen this hilarious video, I love Drew Barrymore more than ever, and I very much look forward to seeing her performance as Little Edie Beale in the upcoming Grey Gardens feature film!

Excerpt from New York Mag, by Logan Hill, on 19 February 2007 (issue date)

Hopeful Romantic

After breaking up with a Stroke, Drew Barrymore still believes in happy endings. Isn't that sweet? Actually, yes.

...And then there's her next departure part, in the upcoming—nonmusical—film adaptation of Grey Gardens, cast (easy there, Christine Ebersole fanatics) before the play even opened. "I'm so excited it's, like, painful waiting for it to happen," she says. "I fought for the part. I just want to prove that I am capable of more."

Opposite Jessica Lange, Barrymore will play Little Edie Bouvier Beale, who was, when you stop to think of it, the most hopeless sort of romantic--almost like one of those girls that Barrymore worries about, a woman who cloistered herself away in Hollywood and Camelot fantasies and never had a shot at a real-life happy ending. But Barrymore's take on the Beales is more optimistic than that, and not necessarily so inaccurate either. "You know, love stories can come in so many different forms," she says. "I love Harold and Maude and Paper Moon. One of the greatest love stories I've ever seen is Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. It's between two men, but I defy you not to get choked up at the end. I even think that Big Edie and Little Edie have a kind of love story. It is a love story,” she stresses. "It is."

Source: here (via here)

I'm back!

Fellow Grey Gardens fans,

Blogger finally restored my original blog with all the old posts and its original URL, so we're back at this, its original address permanently! Enjoy browsing the archives for stories, pictures, and videos you may have forgotten!

Buster

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Broadway recording of Grey Gardens the Musical in the works

Here's a scoop on an upcoming original Broadway cast recording of Grey Gardens the Musical. The off-Broadway version of the musical has a cast recording CD. Congrats to the creative team for this success and demand!

From Grey Gardens the Musical's Myspace blog, on 9 February 2007

New Broadway Recording TO BE RECORDED FEBRUARY 13 Released in March!

The hit Broadway musical GREY GARDENS – recently proclaimed the #1 Show of the Year by Time Magazine – will have its Original Broadway Cast Recording recorded and released by PS Classics. The Grammy-nominated label previously released the musical's World Premiere Recording, featuring the Off-Broadway cast and based on the musical's original run at Playwrights Horizons. The new recording will feature the Broadway cast and preserve the changes made for the Broadway production by author Doug Wright, composer Scott Frankel and lyricist Michael Korie, including several new songs.

The Broadway cast and orchestra will go into a New York studio on February 13 to preserve their performances. The recording will be produced by multiple Grammy winner Steven Epstein (The Light in the Piazza) and a release date is planned for March, with the exact date to be announced soon.

In a rave review for the score in The New York Times, Stephen Holden wrote, "To listen to the original cast album of GREY GARDENS is to bring to mind two phrases seldom linked nowadays: 'Broadway musical' and 'artistic integrity.' The songs, with music by Scott Frankel and lyrics by Michael Korie, sustain a level of refined language and psychological detail as elevated as Stephen Sondheim's. The score is a meticulously fashioned piece of musical theater that gains in depth the more you listen to it."

The GREY GARDENS score recently won The ASCAP Foundation's Richard Rodgers New Horizons Award for composer Scott Frankel and lyricist Michael Korie, and was also nominated for Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards.

PS CLASSICS, the Grammy-nominated label, was founded in 2000 by Tommy Krasker and Philip Chaffin. It's been profiled in publications such as The New York Times for its diverse line of show albums, solo CDs and songbook recordings. Its cast albums celebrate Broadway (Assassins, Nine: The Musical, Fiddler on the Roof, the recently-released Company), Off-Broadway (My Life with Albertine, Lone Star Love) and regional theater (First Lady Suite). Its solo albums range from jazz (Jessica Molaskey's Make Believe) to pop (Johnny Rodgers's Box of Photographs) to folk (Rebecca Luker's Leaving Home). The composers highlighted range from Jerome Moross and Billy Strayhorn to Maury Yeston and John Bucchino. PS Classics is distributed exclusively by Image Entertainment.

Update

There are now more articles about this upcoming recording.

From Playbill, by Kenneth Jones, on 12 February 2007

Grey Gardens will Sprout a Fresh Broadway Cast Album, Due in March

That Off-Broadway cast album of Grey Gardens that you've fallen in love with is about to become a collector's item.

PS Classics preserved the spring 2006 version of the Scott Frankel-Michael Korie score of the musical that moved to Broadway by October, but new songs were written in the interim--and a major cast change occurred between the Playwrights Horizons run and the current commercial engagement at the Walter Kerr Theatre.

On Feb. 13 the Broadway troupers will go into a Manhattan recording studio to sing on new tracks that will be folded into existing tracks to create a freshened cast album to be released in March.

The new album--billed as the original Broadway cast recording--will be produced by Grammy Award winner Steven Epstein (The Light in the Piazza) and include the show's fall 2006 additions, including "The Girl Who Has Everything," "Goin' Places," "Marry Well," the final moments of the musical, and the many numbers in which cast newcomer Erin Davie appears.

The recording will also offer a repackaged booklet.

In the tale of mother and daughter socialites Edith and Edie Beale, Erin Davie plays young Little Edie Beale on Broadway. Sara Gettelfinger played the role Off-Broadway and is heard on the "world premiere recording."

Don't expect the albums to be next to each other in the record store: Once supplies are gone by March, the first disc will be replaced by the Broadway album, which the authors see as their definitive version of their work, PS Classics co-founder Tommy Krasker confirmed to Playbill.com.

"The new recording will feature the Broadway cast and preserve the changes made for the Broadway production by author Doug Wright, composer Scott Frankel and lyricist Michael Korie, including several new songs," according to the producers.

The Grey Gardens score recently won The ASCAP Foundation's Richard Rodgers New Horizons Award for composer Scott Frankel and lyricist Michael Korie, and was also nominated for Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards.

Orchestrations are by Tony Award winner Bruce Coughlin and Music Director is Lawrence Yurman.

The cast of Grey Gardens includes Christine Ebersole (celebrated for playing dual roles, Edith in Act One and Little Edie in Act Two); Mary-Louise Wilson as a decrepit older Big Edie; five-time Tony Award nominee John McMartin as both "Major" Bouvier and Norman Vincent Peale; Matt Cavenaugh as both Joe Kennedy, Jr. and Jerry; Erin Davie as Young Little Edie Beale; Kelsey Fowler (in her Broadway debut) as Lee Bouvier; Sarah Hyland (title role in Paper Mill's Annie) as Jacqueline Bouvier; Obie Award winner Michael Potts as Brooks Sr. and Brooks Jr.; and two-time Tony Award nominee Bob Stillman as Gould.

PS Classics is the Grammy-nominated label founded in 2000 by Tommy Krasker and Philip Chaffin. The label is known for its diverse line of show albums, solo CDs and songbook recordings. Its cast albums celebrate Broadway (Assassins, Nine: The Musical, Fiddler on the Roof, the recently-released Company), Off-Broadway (My Life with Albertine, Lone Star Love) and regional theatre (First Lady Suite).

PS Classics is distributed exclusively by Image Entertainment. For future updates on the new cast recording, visit www.greygardensthemusical.com and www.psclassics.com.

Grey Gardens is produced by East of Doheny, Staunch Entertainment, Randall Wreghitt/Mort Swinsky, Michael Alden and Edwin W. Schloss, in association with Playwrights Horizons.

Tickets are available by going online to www.telecharge.com, calling (212) 239-6200 or visiting The Walter Kerr Theatre box office, 219 W. 48th Street.

From Broadway World, by BWW News Desk, on 9 February 2007

Grey Gardens to Hit Recording Studio for March CD Release

The hit Broadway musical Grey Gardens – recently proclaimed the #1 Show of the Year by Time Magazine – will have its Original Broadway Cast Recording recorded and released by PS Classics. The Grammy-nominated label previously released the musical's World Premiere Recording, featuring the Off-Broadway cast and based on the musical's original run at Playwrights Horizons. The new recording will feature the Broadway cast and preserve the changes made for the Broadway production by author Doug Wright, composer Scott Frankel and lyricist Michael Korie, including several new songs.

The Broadway cast and orchestra will go into a New York studio on February 13 to preserve their performances. The recording will be produced by multiple Grammy winner Steven Epstein (The Light in the Piazza) and a release date is planned for March, with the exact date to be announced soon.

In a rave review for the score in The New York Times, Stephen Holden wrote, "To listen to the original cast album of Grey Gardens is to bring to mind two phrases seldom linked nowadays: 'Broadway musical' and 'artistic integrity.' The songs, with music by Scott Frankel and lyrics by Michael Korie, sustain a level of refined language and psychological detail as elevated as Stephen Sondheim’s. The score is a meticulously fashioned piece of musical theater that gains in depth the more you listen to it."

The Grey Gardens score recently won The ASCAP Foundation’s Richard Rodgers New Horizons Award for composer Scott Frankel and lyricist Michael Korie, and was also nominated for Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards.

PS CLASSICS, the Grammy-nominated label, was founded in 2000 by Tommy Krasker and Philip Chaffin. It’s been profiled in publications such as The New York Times for its diverse line of show albums, solo CDs and songbook recordings. Its cast albums celebrate Broadway (Assassins, Nine: The Musical, Fiddler on the Roof, the recently-released Company), Off-Broadway (My Life with Albertine, Lone Star Love) and regional theater (First Lady Suite). Its solo albums range from jazz (Jessica Molaskey’s Make Believe) to pop (Johnny Rodgers’s Box of Photographs) to folk (Rebecca Luker’s Leaving Home). The composers highlighted range from Jerome Moross and Billy Strayhorn to Maury Yeston and John Bucchino. PS Classics is distributed exclusively by Image Entertainment.

For future updates on the new cast recording, visit www.greygardensthemusical.com and www.psclassics.com.

Source: here, here, and here

Three images of Grey Gardens from Tom Wargacki

I was browsing GettyImages to see if any new Grey Gardens images had been added, and I came across this trio of fantastic images by photographer Tom Wargacki.

Little Edie

Little Edie

Big and Little Edie

Gorgeous!

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Video of Al Maysles on his various films, including Grey Gardens

Jump 32 minutes into it to hear Al talk about how he and his brother got involved in the project.

From Aaron Ernst Blog, by Aaron Ernst, on 2 February 2007

Al Maysles, a documentary filmmaker known best for cinema verite films such as "Salesman" and "Grey Gardens" as well as "Capote" spoke recently at Columbia. I taped his talk, which focused on an overview of his works and style.

Albert Maysles

At the end of the video, he briefly mentions that he doesn't like it when clips from his films are uploaded to sites like YouTube. I've found the remixed clips of Grey Gardens to be very creative tributes to a favorite film, and they make for great free publicity for Al's hard work.

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