Grey Gardens is a 1975 American documentary film by Albert and David Maysles. The film depicts the everyday lives of two reclusive, upper-class women, a mother and daughter both named Edith Beale, who lived in poverty at Grey Gardens, a derelict mansion at 3 West End Road in the wealthy Georgica Pond neighborhood of East Hampton, New York. The film was screened at the 1976 Cannes Film Festival but was not entered into the main competition. Ellen Hovde and Muffie Meyer also directed, and Susan Froemke was the associate producer. The film's editors are credited as Hovde (who also edited Gimme Shelter and Salesman), Meyer and Froemke. In 2010, the film was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant", and in the 2014 Sight and Sound poll film critics voted Grey Gardens the tenth-best documentary film of all time. Cast Edith "Big Edie" Ewing Bouvier Beale as Herself Edith "Little Edie" Bouvier Beale as Herself Brooks Hyers as Himself—Gardener Norman Vincent Peale as Himself (voice) Jack Helmuth as Himself—Birthday Guest (uncredited) Albert Maysles as Himself (uncredited) David Maysles as Himself (uncredited) Jerry Torre as Himself—Handyman (uncredited) Lois Wright as Herself—Birthday Guest (uncredited) Background Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale (1895–1977), known as "Big Edie", and her daughter Edith Bouvier Beale (1917–2002), known as "Little Edie", were the aunt and the first cousin, respectively, of former US First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. The two women lived together at the Grey Gardens estate for decades with limited funds in increasing squalor and isolation. The house was designed in 1897 by Joseph Greenleaf Thorpe and purchased in 1923 by "Big Edie" and her husband Phelan Beale. After Phelan left his wife, "Big Edie" and "Little Edie" lived there for more than 50 years. The house was called Grey Gardens because of the color of the dunes, the concrete garden walls, and the sea mist. Throughout the fall of 1971 and into 1972, their living conditions—their house was infested by fleas, inhabited by numerous cats and raccoons, deprived of running water, and filled with garbage and decay—were exposed as the result of an article in the National Enquirer and a cover story in New York Magazine after a series of inspections (which the Beales called "raids") by the Suffolk County Health Department. With the Beale women facing eviction and the razing