A Very Grey Gardens Christmas- Ideal Gifts for the Little Edie in Your Life

I adore Grey Gardens, and everyone knows someone who loves the Edies, Big & Small. Now you have the chance to buy official Grey Gardens items, lovingly curated by family members, including Eva Marie Beale. 

There are gift ideas for everyone in the beautiful online store.  Whether you want to wear your Grey Gardens appreciation loud & proud, with one of these Alli Arnold Little Edie Scarves, or more subtly in your home with the Sea Spray or Lily Pond Lane scented candles.

There is a Grey Gardens jewellery collection, featuring Little Edie’s Famous brooch, but also other carefully made reproductions of the pair’s vintage pieces. The range is handcrafted in 14k gold, with diamonds and semi-precious stones. I’ve only shown Little Edie’s brooch above, but if you click through you can browse the whole collection.

The store even has Grey Gardens wine (sadly out of stock right now) and a Sadler Teapot and Grey Gardens tea for your ‘Tea For Two’ moments.

I’ve featured the Grey Gardens Scrapbook, by the Maysles Sisters previously, but the other must-have book for fans of the documentary is this gorgeous, coffee table, photo book by Eva Marie Beale. ‘Edith Bouvier Beale Beale of Grey Gardens- A Life in Pictures’ has a selection of photos of Little Edie growing up, that you just can see anywhere else. It would make a lovely Christmas present.

Lastly, there is a preorder for this fabulous Alli Arnold designed Little Edie stationery.

Visit the Official Grey Gardens store for more, bags, cushions, fragrances, everything your heart could desire! 

Grey Gardens Scrapbook, by Sara & Rebekah Maysles

My Grey Gardens book arrived! This huge tome has been put together by Sara and Rebekah Maysles, daughters of Albert, one of the brothers who filmed the famous documentary in the 70s. It's clearly a labour of love, and a must buy for any serious Grey Gardens fan.

There are pages and pages of conversations with the Edies, a timeline of events in their lives, not to mention the priceless collection of candid photos and behind the scenes information.

I don't want to spoil it too much by showing you too many pages, you really should go buy it if you're a fan because it's worth every penny.  This really is a tiny snapshot of the hundreds of pages of pure Grey Gardens joy.

There is a huge section on the technicalities of putting the film together, plus these photos of the premiere which Little Edie attended in her beloved New York. 

There is also the entire 'script'  of the documentary, should you wish to reenact it!

Included at the back is a 60 minute CD of unreleased recordings with the two Edies. My son is already dreading me playing this in the car!

Lastly, you might not be aware that there is a Grey Gardens sequel of sorts. The Maysles brothers released a new feature length cut of unused, but equally amazing, Big & Little Edie footage in 2006. The documentary is called 'The Beales of Grey Gardens' and you can buy the DVD online.

If you missed it last week I posted a video I made comparing the original footage of Little Edie with Drew Barrymore playing her, and also the Christine Ebersole musical version, and Bill Hader's Little Vivvy.  Drew Barrymore totally nails it!

The Best Little Edie For The Day-Compare Drew Barrymore, Christine Ebersole & Bill Hader's Versions Of The Famous Grey Gardens Costume Speech

I'm totally obsessed with Grey Gardens right now, and was searching for a video that showed just how close Drew Barrymore got to actually being Little Edie Beale in the HBO drama version about the ladies' lives. Drew won a Golden Globe for her amazing performance, but sadly YouTube didn't have any videos with her renditions of any of the famous sections of dialogue right beside the original clips from the documentary.  So I had to make one!

I decided to compare some other classic Little Edie performances, first with Christine Ebersole's Tony Award winning version in the Grey Gardens Broadway musical. Christine plays a younger Big Edie in the first act of the show, set when Grey Gardens was at its peak and Little Edie was a young girl. Then in the second act, set around the time the Maysles made their infamous documentary, Ebersole takes on the role of Little Edie. The Costume For The Day speech is set to musical accompaniment, and the whole second act quotes much of the documentary, which die hard fans adore.

Lastly, I just had to tag in Bill Hader's 'Little Vivvy' from the half hour spoof 'Sandy Passage', part of the Documentary Now! series which parodied a whole collection of classic documentaries including The War Room & Stop Making Sense.

Who do you think does the best Little Edie? I didn't include RuPaul's Drag Race winner Jinkx Monsoon's version as she doesn't do this speech on the episode, but I may go back later & see if I can find her quoting it in the Return to Grey Gardens stage show she has performed.