MemoraBEALEia: A Private Scrapbook About Edie Beale of Grey Gardens First Cousin To First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

memoraBEALEia : A Private Scrapbook about Edie Beale of Grey Gardens by Walter Newkirk, celebrates and pays tribute to Edith "Little Edie" Bouvier Beale. Miss Beale was the first cousin of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and is best known for her participation in the famous documentary Grey Gardens (1976). This book was specifically created for fans of the film. On April 22, 1976 college journalist Walter Newkirk traveled to Grey Gardens, the Beale estate on Long Island, to interview Edie Beale about Grey Gardens, for his college newspaper, The Rutgers Daily Targum. In the 1970s, Edie Beale and her mother Edith Bouvier Beale -- the respective cousin and aunt of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis - former society ladies - were living in a cat-infested, filthy, crumbling estate called Grey Gardens in East Hampton. The interview for the Rutgers newspaper was conducted shortly after the release of the film. Newkirk and Beale kept in touch for several years, by phone and by mail. After the estate was sold and her mother died, Beale moved to New York ( from 1980-1983) and the author escorted her to luncheons, parties and special events. She later moved to Florida, and died in January 2002. memoraBEALEia contains never-before-seen photographs of Edie Beale and Grey Gardens, the Rutgers Targum interview along with a few other obscure newspaper clippings, reproductions of letters written by Little Edie (along with cards she created), and art inspired by Grey Gardens. There are also essays about Miss Beale by photojournalist/paparazzo Ron Galella, former literary agent Pat Loud (An American Family, PBS TV series, 1973) and the artist Maria Manhattan. A new movie about Edie Beale and her mother, also called Grey Gardens, starring Drew Barrymore as Little Edie and Jessica Lange as her mother Big Edie will be released during 2008.