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Little Eddy and Big Eddy, the stars of the groundbreaking and undeniably terrifying documentary Gray gardensis one of the most famous mother-daughter teams.
Rooted in old money and East Coast aristocracy, both women lived in incredible poverty into their senior years.
Although they undoubtedly loved each other, their relationship was definitely strange and hurtful, perhaps especially for vulnerable little Eddy.
Born Edith Bouvier Beale and Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale, Sr. respectively, the women were cousins of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and came from a life of money.
Big Eddy was nurturing dreams of becoming a singer, something she abandoned when her husband – and Little Eddy’s father – left her in 1931 to care for their growing family.
Somewhat inheriting his mother’s creative spark, little Eddie left home at age 20 to seek fame and fortune as a fashion model and dancer in New York.
Unfortunately, her luck ran out as she developed alopecia totalis, which caused her to lose all her hair, leaving her with an infamous headscarf and occasional skirts.
He was also unlucky in love, as his mother – with the first signs of future codependency and jealousy – would scare off suitors for little Eddie.
As Big Eddy got older, his health failed and he begged Little Eddy to come home and look after him and their property, Gray Gardens.
This is when their relationship really became Textbook Code 101. The women became more and more isolated as time went on.
The needy sold their Tiffany silver pieces one by one to help make ends meet.
Considered by some to be quite a daring move, the two women slowly drifted away from the high society of which they were a part, fleeing the pomp and circumstance of their blue-blood heritage and fleeing into an increasingly vulnerable household.
Immersed in the daily rituals of fighting, it suddenly breaks into terrible songs and dances and eats half-rotten food – as documented in the film by the Maysles brothers.
The women inadvertently made headlines in 1971 when local health officials ordered them to clean their homes or risk eviction.
The media frenzy reached a fever pitch when their famous cousin, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, gave them money to help restore the house.
Fascination with the little and big eddies culminated in the Meissler brothers’ landmark documentary, when people openly wondered how and why women escaped their patrician heritage and descended into madness.
The question remained, were the staunch outsiders bravely defying society’s expectations of them, or if their relationship was simply too close for comfort.
However, mostly no one could believe that they lived in such conditions: the house was practically cavernous with feces, wild animals, the ceiling, and moreover, all this was in front of its seemingly oblivious inhabitants.
Little Eddy’s loneliness became harder to bear as she recounted several suitors asking for her hand in marriage, but her mother, Big Eddy, toxically cut them out of the picture.
Having lost touch with almost all of his friends due to alopecia, little Eddie desperately tried to get some kind of attention, playfully flirting with the young man assigned to run their errands, or the random sanitation workers trying to work on the horribly run-down estate.
Apparently, Big Eddie was afraid of losing both his daughter and his claim to his estate, Gray Gardens, so he dug deep into them, no matter the cost.
Even if it was at the expense of his increasingly sensitive and grieving daughter.
Big Eddy died in the late 1970s and Little Eddy found a way to sell the house despite his mother’s refusal.
In a final and surprising moment of total rebellion against his mother, baby Eddie refused to be buried next to her, choosing a different resting place instead when the time came in 2002.
