November 02, 2006

Grey Gardens secret: How did Little Edie lose her hair?

"Grey Gardens," which opens as a musical on Broadway tonight, is again this week the subject of a Gail Sheehy article in New York magazine. It was she who first wrote the Grey Gardens story for the magazine in 1972, profiling her eccentric Hampton neighbors who happened to be related to Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis.

In the new article, Sheehy says more of the family secrets are contained in Little Edie Beale's diaries and letters (soon available in a coffee-table book by one of the relatives,) and she also passes along a story that may explain how Little Edie lost her hair. (In the 1975 "Grey Gardens" documentary, Little Edie wears a sweater instead of a hat to cover the baldness.)

From New York:

There may have been a final fit of rebellion shortly after Little Edie moved back to Grey Gardens, as later described to me by John Davis. Little Edie’s hair had begun to fall out in her twenties; the family now ascribes it to a stress-borne illness; hence the constant head-coverings. But cousin John told me about a summer afternoon when he watched Little Edie climb a catalpa tree outside Grey Gardens. She took out a lighter. He begged her not to do it.

She set her hair ablaze. And in that act of self-immolation, she sealed her fate as a prisoner of the love of her mother.

November 2, 2006 07:41 AM in Broadway

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