Gardens, Sally���s famous house in East Hampton, New York.
Sally and her husband, Ben Bradlee, former Editor-in-Chief
of the Washington Post and confidante of President Kennedy,
rescued, preserved and love the house. NBC/LXTV Senior
Vice-President Morgan Hertzan had approved my proposal
to create a segment on Grey Gardens and we were there
with producer Marnie Kupfer and Alex Gittleson to film it.
Ben Bradlee certainly knows a great deal about the
importance of journalists since he constituted the third
person in the triangle formed by Woodward and Bernstein,
who significantly altered American history by exposing
Watergate. Similarly, two other journalists, in tandem with
this famous couple, Albert and David Maysles, have made
Grey Gardens famous. The legendary house has intrigued
since the Maysles��� 1970s documentary about its daffy yet
endearing occupants, Big Edie and Little Edie Beale. The
reclusive pair, living impecuniously in squalor, were rescued
from eviction by their Bouvier cousin, Jacqueline Kennedy,
and good they were.
Sally and Ben have a plethora of mementoes, ephemera
and furniture once owned or created by the two Edies,
salvaged from the debris and found in the attic following
their purchase of Grey Gardens. The collection is now a
veritable treasure trove for devotees of the Beales��� story,
HYLAND
