Edith Bouvier Beale

[icghosts]

I highly recommend that you rent or buy the movie Grey Gardens


Edith Bouvier Beale

Reclusive model and singer devoted to her mother and a crumbling mansion

The sometime model and singer Edith Bouvier Beale, who has died aged 84, was a cousin of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and, most famously, the resident of Grey Gardens, a rambling, 28-room gothic mansion in the exclusive seaside resort of East Hampton, New York. She shared her bizarre life with her mother, also called Edith Beale, and vast numbers of raccoons, opossums and, at one point, 75 cats.
Born in New York, the daughter of a Wall Street lawyer, Little Edie - as she was known to distinguish her from her mother, Big Edie - grew up as a legendary beauty at the centre of a privileged social scene. A model at 17, she claimed to have had movie offers, and marriage proposals from the likes of Howard Hughes and J Paul Getty. But, in 1952, she left Manhattan to look after her mother in the huge Long Island house. She was still there after her mother's death in 1977.

Big Edie and Little Edie almost never went out, rarely had company and got their groceries delivered. Big Edie's lawyer husband had left her for another woman, and she spent most of her time in bed, mixing cocktails in a jam jar and berating her daughter, while the house and its magnificent hedged gardens fell into disrepair.

In 1971, the health inspectors found the property strewn with empty catfood cans, newspapers, and cat faeces. With no running water, it violated almost every building code. In 1972, Jackie Onassis organised a clean-up, which required 40 gallons of germicide. A local estate agent said the house still had a urine-soaked smell.

In 1975, the mansion and its inhabitants were the subject of an award-winning documentary, Grey Gardens, directed by Albert and David Maysles. Ellen Hovde, who worked on the film remembered there were so many holes in the attic that raccoons were dropping into the hall. Throughout the six weeks of filming, the Maysles wore flea collars on their ankles.

Their depiction of the strange, intense relationship between the two women, then aged 79 and 54, intrigued both audiences and filmmakers. "It was a mother-daughter relationship writ large, with all the difficulties and pleasures that that entails," said Hovde.

In the documentary, Little Edie blamed her mother for ruining her love life, and talked wistfully about fleeing to New York or Paris. "You've had enough fun in your life," her mother replied. Later, as Little Edie was singing somewhere in the house, her mother called for a radio. "I've got to have some professional music," she said.

The film caused strong reactions; many loved it, but others found it too painfully revealing, crossing the boundaries of privacy - though Albert Maysles insisted that both women adored it. People who knew the Beales say they, and especially Little Edie, were charming and well-bred; for Hovde, "they were a strange combination of madness and aristocracy. Despite her delusions, Little Edie managed to get along in the world very well".

Little Edie retained a strong fashion sense, as singular as her world. In the film, she was shown wearing a skirt held together at the front with a large brooch, which, she said, doubled as a cape. Calvin Klein has said he was influenced by Edie's strange fashion sense. In 1997, Harpers Bazaar shot a fashion spread based on her styles.

In 1979, Little Edie sold Grey Gardens to Washington Post editors Ben Bradlee and Sally Quinn, who restored it to its original glory. The mansion, today occupied by upmarket tenants, stands in the same street as the summer homes of Steven Spielberg and Nora Ephron.

Little Edie moved back to Manhattan, where she performed in cabaret, singing and telling stories of her strange and colourful life. She ended her days in an apartment in Bal Harbour, Florida; reportedly, she had not owned a cat in five years.

· Edith Bouvier Beale, model and singer, born November 7 1917; died January 14 2002