Beginning in the fall of 1971, reports – first in the “National Enquirer” – began appearing in the New York City press about a dilapidated mansion in an exclusive oceanfront section of East Hampton, the Long Island enclave some 114 miles from New York City. Grey Gardens was the Beale family’s 28-room estate, then inhabited by Edith Bouvier Beale, Sr. (“Big Edie”) and her 55-year-old daughter Edith, Jr. (“Little Edie”), plus a large number of cats and raccoons. Because Big Edie owned the property, her estranged husband had been powerless to sell it, as had her two sons, although they administered the small trust left to her after his death, which had by then run out...
