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Asbury Park Press from Asbury Park, New Jersey • Page 58

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Asbury Park Pressi
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Asbury Park, New Jersey
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C8 ASBURY PARK PRESS, May 16, 1976 fGrey Gardens' Heroines Trapped in House Movies9 Woolworth-s Wants to Be Tiffany By BOB THOMAS "the entertainment, the parties," his sister's coming-out party at the Ritz-Carltnn, "all that Great Gatsby stuff." Edie Beale went to the Spence School, to Miss Porter's. She grew up pretty and lively, dancing at the Ivy League colleges. She grew up, too, with the affliction of so fnany pretty young women. She wanted to be a performer. And so she want to New York, modeled, and waited to be tapped for a M-fr; Mil i property; the place called Grey Gardens, worth possibly $100,000 was, said a health official, littered with excrement and dog food cans.

There was a defective furnace, exposed electrical wiring and a lack of hoi water. Jackie's relatives had to clean up or face eviction. JACQUELINE BOLVIER Kennedy Onassis and Lee Radziwill, her sister, poured $32,000 into repairs, after which, says Mrs. Beale, Mrs. Onassis told her "We can't go on." The sanitarians were mollified; the Beale ladies, outraged by the invasion from the outside, allowed to stay.

Boxes of clothes, cassettes, albums and a recorder were sent to them, say the ladies, courtesy of their niece a nice and "Mr. Onassis." Old Mrs. Beale has always loved to sing, just as her daughter, Edie, has always that we will have a bigger and hopefully better product to sell. HE CITED HOW filming costs have risen: "In 1957 we made 'I Was a Teen-age Werewolf in black and white with a young, unknown actor named Michael Landon. Studios were on a six-day week then, and we shot it in two weeks for $100,000.

That pic-lure would cost between $500,000 and $600,000 today. "The trouble with our business is that there have been no technological advances to speed up production. Movies are made pretty much the way they have been for 50 years, and the cost of making them has risen tremendously. The amount of theater attendance doesn't change much from year to year, and ticket prices won't be rising wildly. That leaves the film company in a bind." Arkoff, 57, believes "the crux of our business is fundamentally action pictures." Except for prestige items like "A Matter of Time," that's what AIP continues to aim for.

Especially those films with all kinds of man-made and natural disasters. "THE PUBLIC EATS up special effects," he commented, citing such successes as "The Towering Inferno," "The Poseidon Adventure," "Earthquake," "The Hinden-burg." But is there anything new about such films? Arkoff cites the French: The more things change, the more they remain the same. "Our first big success in 1955 was a picture called, 'The Day the World he remarked. "Now Irwin Allen is going to spend $15 million making a picture called The Day the World So what's new? "What the studios are doing now are super versions of the same formulas. That's necessary because there is tremendous entertainment on television today.

Television can't present anything too big; you rarely see longshots on TV shows. Nor is there much action, outside of fistfights and car chases. Movies have to give the public something more." LOS ANGELES (AP) Long the Wool-worth's of the movie business, American International Pictures is showing signs of wanting to be Tiffany's. Samuel Z. Arkoff denies it.

"We're still delivering the same old staples," says the AIP chief, "but we're adding to our wares and making the packages more attractive." It was typical understatement from the film tycoon, who describes himself as "just an old Iowa farm boy." Yet there can be no doubt that AIP, the company that gave the world "I Was a Teen-age Werewolf," "How to Stuff a Wild Bikini" and 350 other films in its 22-year history, is stepping up in class. HERE ARE SOME of its future releases: "A Matter of Time," with Liza Min-nelli, Ingrid Bergman, and Charles Boyer, and Vincente Minnelli directing in Rome and Venice. "Shout at the Devil," filmed in Africa with Lee Marvin, Roger Moore and Barbara Parkins. The reported cost: $9.5 million. 'The Great Scout and Cathouse Thursday," western foolery with Lee Marvin, Oliver Reed and Robert Culp.

"Futureworld," sequel to "West-world," with Peter Fonda and Yul Brynner, who is back as the robot. "Crime and Passion," with Omar Sharif, Karen Black and Joseph Bottoms. Arkoff, who is president and board chairman of AIP, and its founder with the late James Nicholson, said the company is swinging with the times. Nothing new about that, since AIP has always been the trendiest of the movie firms, But this time it is following an economic trend. "Since below-the-line costs charges for labor, film, etc.

have gone up so much, we have decided to add to the costs above the line stars, directors, stories, with the result Edith Bouvier Beale in bed Beale, doing some makeup Washington Post with the kittens (left photo) and her daughter, Edie at the mirror in their Grey Gardens bedroom. By JIDY BACHRACH The Washington Post EAST HAMPTON, Y. -It is the smell that assaults and dominates. Acrid and fierce, it throbs through the old house, penetrating even the clean-swept downstairs portion with its blue-green walls, dulling other senses, jolting concentration. There are roughly 21 cats and kittens in Grey Gardens, and all of them seem to be scattered in the small bedroom occupied bv Mrs.

Beale. Edith Bouvier Beale, 80 and much thinner these days than she was before, lies on the stained bed, eagerly responding to a photographer's request to let her kittens join her. They are limbing all over her, in fact. For all that, there is enormous beauty in her face in the prominent cheek bones and high, wide forehead and the haughty aquiline nose. "Edie, bring the pink ones." she cries to her (laughter.

"Bring the beautiful ones. Get me some more, Edie. Bring a pile of em." "I will not," Edie retorts, but she fetches a few more kittens, anyway. Her face, puffy with age, grows rigid now as she looks about the room: at the cats and kittens; at the hot plate and nonfunctioning refrigerator upon which cartons of milk languish; at the empty peanut butler jar on the floor. On the dresser, rows of raw carrots are aligned like fallen sentries and lettuce sits placidly.

Draped over the door is a plastic Wonder Bread wrapper. "I think this room is terrible," whispers Edie Beale. She has a very dramatic whisper, but then she is a very dramatic woman, dressed in red trousers, a red sweater, and a beaded black shawl that covers her head. "I'm sorry Ihe room got so she says later. Bits of dirty newspaper stick to the floor on which she's standing, a kitten in her arms.

"MY MOTHER doesn't believe in kitty litter," she explains. "She prefers" boxes and paper. And she's the cat-lover. So you can imagine how I suffer." But Edie Beale says she's learned to love cats. Surveying the whole scene, from the wall, is Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, beaming out of a magazine cover.

She is Mrs. Edith Bouvier Beal's niece, Edie's cousin, and she supports them. Has been doing so for some Kor it was in October 1971 that the Suffolk County Health Department and the world discovered how the Beales lived. The house young Jackie Bouvier once romped in; the mansion once situated on two acres of luxuriant green, luxuriously fashionable Long Island The Lure of Big Money Drawing Rock to Vegas The vanities Mrs. Beale possesses she is generous about extending to her daughter and vice versa.

"Oh, she's got the looks of the Bouvier family," Edie will say of her mother. "Edie, go put on your leopard negligee," commands the mother. "All photographers love that. Edie, put on the negligee." But Edie grows grim, withdrawn, her face tight. "She's always after me," she announces, "She nags and nags and nags and nags.

Over nothing. "I'm nearly 60," she replies in answer to a question. "Now Edie," scolds the mother, "You're 58. Why do you put two years on yourself?" Edie shrugs, annoyed. "Age doesn't matter anyway.

It's what you've done with your life that counts." She pauses for effect, her words aimed directly at her mother. "I haven't lived very much." ONCE, SAY THE BEALES, Grey Gardens had stables that contained three horses "Mr. Beale bought me that house when I was 25," explains the mother. It was four years after their marriage at St. Patrick's Cathedral.

He was a corporate lawyer, a partner in her father's firm. "You might say," says Phelan Beale, the father's namesake, "You might say he married the boss's daughter." They had a Park Avenue flat in New York, as well as the East Hampton home, and if you listen to Edie Beale you'll discover that her mother and the Bouvier family made East Hampton fashionable, in fact "practically discovered it." Phelan Beale remembers show. But when she was 34, her mother alone in Grey Gardenswhom Phelan Beale divorced in 1946 recalled the daughter. "You were doing so badly in New York," Big Edie tells her daughter. "Mother wanted her house taken care of," the daughter asserts.

And so the daughter went home. For good. PHELAN BEALE. the eldest son, says the father refused Mrs. Beale alimony.

There was a trust fund but, "trying to keep up that white elephant (Grey Gardens) was what ruined it." After the divorce, the mother sold some of the land. Now, says Phelan Beale, they live on 3-4 of an acre, on Jacqueline Onassis' providence, Social Security benefits, and Bouvier Beale- who (says Edie) pays the taxes on the house. With them, for the past 11 months, is a friend, a woman artist. Edie Beale never married, a lapse that erupts occasionally in the Maysles movie. "France fell," says Mrs.

Beale, remembering World War II, "But Edie never fell." "(Edie) is torn between her duty as a dutiful daughter," says Phelan Beale, "and getting out and leading her own life." In 1972, says Al Maysles, Lee Radziwill commissioned Al and David Maysles, to do a movie on the childhood of Lee Radziwill and Jacqueline Onassis it was destined for TV. Part of the film was to focus on Aunt Edie and Cousin Edie of Grey Gardens. "You see," explains Al Maysles, "Lee and Jackie adore these two, but at sort of a little distance. If only for the fact that (the Beales) do exactly what they want to do, whereas the others do for their image." The TV project with Radziwill didn't work out, but the footage on the Beales was so powerful that the brothers worked a movie around them. Al Maysles says he paid them $10,000 and gave them 20 per cent of "what was made on the film." "Jackie said she's gonna sneak in some day to see it," chuckles Al Maysles.

Lee Radziwill has no comment. AL MAYSLES says he ioves the Beale ladies. "I love them more and more all the time," he says. Shine "MGM had the greatest range of talent," observed Chaplin. "If Gene Kelly sprained his ankle, as he did on 'Royal Fred Astaire was available.

If Kathryn Grayson were pregnant, Jane Powell could substitute. Also, MGM had the most talented musical department; it always won the Academy awards." 'Will there be a "That's Entertainment, Part "Perhaps," said Melnick. "People say about this film, 'How could you leave out my favorite That's a good sign there's plenty material left." wanted to be a dancer. It is probably part of what unites them. Now they, finally got their chance to perform.

For Edith Bouvier Beale (otherwise known as 'Big Edie') and her daughter Edie, are starring in a movie just a few weeks old. A Maysles Brothers production named after their lives as well as their house. It is called "Grey Gardens." "THE MAYSLEY (sic) Brothers is that their name?" asks Phelan Beale. He is the son of Edith Bouvier Beale and he lives in Oklahoma City, and he deplores the attention accorded his mother and sister in recent times. "Such heartbreak and degradation.

the best publicity in the world for the family." Phelan Beale, like his brother, Bouvier, would be most pleased, would pay for it, if his mother and sister would move out of Grey' Gardens and "into some nice, well-kept place." Florida, elsewhere in East Hampton anyplace nice. For 10 years, says Phelan Beale, people have been coming up to him and saying, "You've got to do something about your mother." But what can he do really? He and his brother have, "for years been begging, pleading, cajoling, fighting. my mother would have none of it." And so there you are. "One member of my familyand I won't tell you which one even thought seriously about kidnaping getting some doctor to give 'em a shot, and when they wake up they'd be in some nice rest home." Well, Phelan Beale and his brother, Bouvier who is, after all, a lawyer, quickly dissuaded that relative, kidnaping being a major crime and reputable doctors being unwilling to do such things. PHELAN BEALE just might see "Grey Gardens" "out of together, and they are wondrous to behold.

"It was all Gene's doing," says coproducer Saul Chaplin. "He was the one who convinced Fred to do the picture in the first place. Then, after decided to use music to introduce the film clips, Gene suggested to Fred, 'Maybe we ought to mond will present a two-and-a-half hour concert. Whether Diamond is also getting a percentage of the gross, nobody is saying. But since Neil's deals in the past have always included percentages, the $500,000 may be only the beginning.

Other top rock performers have similarly been offered huge sums of money to play Las Vegas but most, except for the more "middle-of-lhe road" talents like Helen Reddy, The Carpenters, Neil Sedaka and the Osmonds, have looked the other way. Las Vegas establishments that maintain their own set of values, on the other hand, have turned down certain rock artists. Alice Cooper, for example, was more than willing to appear at the Riviera Hotel if he could perform his show at 2 a.m. The management ultimately decided against that because it preferred seeing long dollars to long hair. WHILE TOPLESS and what you understood (of the movie)?" Well, one of the things that emerges and it's not understandable, not entirelyis the consuming love that binds mother and daughter, that prevented Edie from marrying, imprisoning them both inside the walls of Grey Gardens.

It isn't, perhaps, what ordinary people would call healthy; it has wasted both women with its ferocity. But it is for all that love. Edie nods. "She needs me, you know, to hold down the house. It meant something to me There's great love there.

They don't understand that. Sex they understand." But she also says (because a part of her is anxious to leave and can't seem to), "You're young. You don't know what it's like Now things are worse off than ever. I now have a house. She's made a will leaving me the house.

I can't desert it. I'm completely at sea." She has seen the film four times. On the final occasion she thought she looked disappointed "except when I was dancing. Then I wasn't disappointed." The second time she saw it, she wept. "I cried because of my mother.

I don't know. She stole the show. I saw my mother singing in the bed. And I saw the bed look messy. I saw it objectively for the first time." HER MOTHER, at once less objective and less introspective, proclaims from the littered bed, "It was my own movie and I adored it Have you seen it? Tell them Mrs.

Beale sent you and they'll give you a pass I absolutely adored it. I hadn't seen any pictures of myself in years and years and years." the Astaire-Kelly intros, including a location in Paris. And inflation boosted production costs in the two years between the two versions. 'The new movie is much better technically," said Chaplin. "We discovered in the first one that certain things don't work, such as widening the screen for the earlier films.

We found a better way of reproducing black-and-white movies on Technicolor film. "Also we were able to reproduce the music of the older films in stereo. Fortunately, in the old days the studio made three musical tracks one for the brass, one for strings, one for woodwinds and percussion. curiosity." His brother sent him the reviews, though, and Phelan Beale is decidedly unhappy about "those two people (who) made the movie The two people who made the movie, Albert and David Maysles are specialists in cinema verite which involves simply presenting people as they are, without narration. The film plunges into the ritualistic entanglements of mother and daughter, honed and polished by time and usage into an impromptu script only Tennessee Williams could really understand, i On the screen conversations overlap; accusations rise and subside, recollections of daughter's suitor spurned by mother, of mother's vibrant but defeated beauty; of daughter's vain attempt to flee Grey Gardensall these pour forth artfully and with great contrivance by the subjects themselves.

From her bed (a big straw hat dipping over her face) mother sings "Tea for Two" in a dramatic' warble; daughter dances to martial music waving a plastic flag. It's as if they had both waited a very long time for the Maysles to arrive with camera, sound equipment, the promise of irresistible immortality. THERE ARE. CJUTICS, and at least one believes that the Maysles brothers should have left the two women alone. "The sadness for mother and daughter turns to disgust at the brothers," wrote a New York Times reviewer.

"Are we such a different breed?" asks Edie Beale. "I don't know. Quick. Tell me dows, 65 per cent in the United Slates and Canada. "The foreign gross was surprisingly big," said coproducer Daniel Melnick.

"One reason was that foreign audiences were seeing some of the numbers for the first time. During the 1940s and 1950s, musicals were not popular in many foreign markets and many films were sent abroad with most of the musical numbers removed." When Melnick and Chaplin began planning the second film, they realized it had to be different. "Finding the material was no problem; we had 300 numbers to choose from," said Chaplin, who has been associated with film musicals from "The Jolson Story" to "Man of La Mancha." "THE BIG PROBLEM was tying the numbers together, or what we call the 'gozintas' how one sequence 'goz-inta' the next. We couldn't get together all the stars of the first movie (Crosby, Sinatra, Rooney, Minnelli, etc.) So why not Gene and Fred? "Gene had one reservation. He was afraid that if he picked his own numbers he would be accused of stacking the picture in his favor.

So Dan and I made all the decisions, and Gene participated only as a friend at court." "That's Entertainment, i Part T' cost SI fi million, the I increase due to the stagfng of 4 trKQflttfrfr mm 'Entertainment Part 2': Kelly, A stair REVOLUTIONARY ONE 5' 05 By KIM GARFIELD Times they are a-changin' in Las Vegas. Although the gambling capital of the world is used to serving up the Sinatras, Dean Martins' and Sammy Davis's, Vegas audiences are now being exposed to more contemporary artists who wouldn't have been caught dead there until now. BETTE MIDLER, who reportedly turned down a quarter-of-a-million a week to play the Tropicana Hotel, finally relented this year to appear at Caesar's Palace for an undisclosed amount. And while Neil Diamond refuses to disclose the fortune he's getting to make his Las Vegas debut, he is boasting that it's the highest salary ever paid to any. Vegas performer.

The figure is rumored to be $500,000 for three nights. Barbra Streisand held the previous record with $250,000 a week at the Hilton International. Even that astronomical sum has not lured her to complete her 10-year contract. Two years ago, the MGM Grand Hotel got a rise from Diamond by offering him his own tennis court and a suite of rooms to be permanently called "The Neil Diamond Suite," plus the all-time high salary. But while the singer-composer liked the idea of getting more money than anyone else, he refused to appear in a nightclub.

THE BRAND NEW, $10-million Alladin Theater for the Performing Arts is very much a theater, however, and Diamond will be its premiere attraction for three shows, July 2, 3, and 4. The structure is near completion on the grounds of the Alladin Hotel and reserved seats will sell for $20 and $30 apiece. Dia MONDAY, MAY 17, 1976 AT JJi30 CM. Tirir 1 nudie shows are all right by Vegas standards, four-letter words are not. Kris Krislof-ferson was scheduled to make his Vegas debut at the Riviera until the talent booker heard the singer four-letter wording with every other sentence.

By mutual agreement, Krislofferson bowed out. Even this policy appears to be softening, however, because at Caesar's Palace' Bette Midler had been using the same undeleted expletives that prompted the Riviera to cancel Kristoffer-son's booking. The big question around Las Vegas is: now that Bette Midler and Neil Diamond have said "I Will," will other rock performers follow suit? JEWISH SINGLES DANCE MAY 16 P.M. RAMADA INN Of EAST BRUNSWICK. ROUTE SCHOOLHOUSE LANE.

EXIT 9. N.J. TURNPIKE, EAST BRUNSWICK N.J. LIVE DISCO MUSIC JEWISH SINGLES PO BOX 196. RAHWAY, J.

0704S PRICE Dinner Menu DESSERT COFFEE AND ENGLISH mm" COCKJAX IOUNCI tjji? OA is GinLtniojlHSEIil' CAN BE BEA BIT ONLY BY SIR WALTER'S REVOLUTIONARY 95 FULL COURSE WEEKDAY DINNERS ENGLISH ROAST BEEF WITH MONDAY YORKSHIRE PUDDING TUESDAY spatch WEDNESDAY fish chips THURSDAY steaks kidney pie That allowed us to achieve a stereo effect." AFTER THE SUCCESS of "That's Entertainment," other studios searched the vaults with the thought of releasing their own musical nostalgia. All failed. There simply wasn't enough entertainment value for theatrical release. Why was Leo the Lion king of musicals? "I think it was an historical accident," opined Melnick, who is production chief at MGM. "Warners made the first talking picture, so MGM tried to catch up by making the first big musical, 'Broadway It was a big hit and MGM kept on making musicals." ALL INCLUDE OUR FAMOUS "GROANING BOARD SALAD BAR SOUP SECONDSONSIR If ALTER JUST FOR THE ASKING ALSO KEATl RIN; Ol FAMOI LI Mill EON CKOANIX, BOARD HI FFKT With Boiled Shrimp in a 2.ft.t Jl MHO SANDWICHES 1 .50 HOT PLATTERS M.ft.l BICENTENNIAL By BOB THOMAS LOS ANGELES (AP) -The astonishing thing about 'That's Entertainment, Part 2." MGM's new-old musical compilation, is the mobility and unchanged grace of Gene Kelly at 63 and Fred Astaire, 76.

Mind you, they don't do any somersaults or flying leaps: they are troupers but not idiots. In introducing the nostalgia of MGM's musical past, they do some turns Ensemble In Concert On Friday HOLMDEL TOWNSHIP -Helen Benham, pianist, will be the guest artist in the final concert of the season for the Monmouth County Wind Ensemble at 8 p.m. Friday at Holmdel High School. Mrs. Benham, a member of the music faculty at Brookdale Community College and the Mannes College of Music in New York, will perform the Stravinsky Concerto for Piano and Wind Orchestra.

The Ensemble will play the New England Tryptich by William Schuman, Victor Ewald's Symphony for Brass, and the Serenade for Winds by Strauss. Tickets will be available at DANCE use a little movement in Before we knew it, Fred was doing knee drops." Having Kelly and Astaire as guides through the musical history gives a sense of unity tb 'That's Entertainment, Part 2" that was missing in the first version. The new film affords an equal amount of wonders; it is marred only by a tendency to ridicule part of Hollywood's past the MacDon-ald-Eddy operettas, songwriter biographies, James A. Fitzpatrick's Traveltalks. A SEQUEL WAS inevitable after the worldwide hit of the 1974 "That's Entertainment." Produced for $1.2 million, it attracted $50 million through box-office win-Sheen Joining Brando, Duvall LOS ANGELES (AP) -Martin Sheen has replaced Harvey Keitel in Francis Ford Coppola's "Apocolypse Now," now filming in the Philippines.

Keitel left the Vietnam War movie April 16 after a dispute with Coppola. Other stars are Marlon Brando and Robert Duvall. Bartender's, Hotel A Restaurant Employees Union Local No. 1 93 AFL-CIO ANNUAL BUFFET DANCE and SHOW (9 to 1 1 p.m.) (8:30 to T) AT THE DORIAN MANOR U.S. Hwy.

No. 9, Old Bridge, N.J. STEAK PUB -T I I PRIME niDO Rgj CHAriP AG WEDNESDAY NIGHT 3 to IOPM 3f including our APPETIZING BAR I with cHrry Hwiw and thrimp I MoTThrTTCJrTJo 10 I M. to 12 Sot. 4 to 13 1 tun.

I PM. to 10 Ml. 00 CORNER FIS4C UwY mo Tl CIPICI I MONDAY, MAY 17, 1976 AT t30 P.M. Music by SAL RUSSO with luv onAAD DDI TEC" ROUT! 9 oAYVHtf 349-5523 TICKETS CAN BE PURCHASED AT THE DOOR the duor. MaooJ -iff.

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