Newkirk's New Book Pays Tribue To Edith Bouvier Beale

 memoraBEALEia : A Private Scrapbook about Edie Beale of Grey Gardens , a new book by Walter Newkirk, celebrates and pays tribute to Edith "Little Edie" Bouvier Beale.  Miss Beale was the first cousin of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and is best known for her participation  in the famous documentary Grey Gardens (1976).
 
The book was specifically produced for fans of Edie Beale and the film Grey Gardens.
 
A new movie about Edie Beale and her mother, also called Grey Gardens, starring Drew Barrymore as Little Edie and Jessica Lange as her mother Big Edie. is scheduled for release in Fall 2008.  Jeanne Tripplehorn, best known for her current role on the HBO television series
Big Love ,plays Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in the film.   Ken Howard, Arye Gross, Malcolm Gets and Daniel Baldwin  co-star in supporting roles.
 
On April 22, 1976 college journalist Walter Newkirk traveled to Grey Gardens, the Beale estate on Long Island, to interview Edie Beale about the movie documentary Grey Gardens, for his college newspaper, The Rutgers Daily Targum.
 
In the 1970s, Edie Beale and her mother Edith Bouvier Beale -- the respective cousin and aunt of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis — former society ladies — were living in a cat-infested, filthy, crumbling estate called Grey Gardens in East Hampton on Long Island. The film Grey Gardens about their reclusive lives together in that house inspired a Tony Award winning Broadway musical during the 2006-2007 season by Doug Wright, Michael Korie and Scott Frankel, also called Grey Gardens, which fictionalized the back story and decline of the women.
 
The interview for the Rutgers newspaper was conducted shortly after the release of the film. Newkirk and Beale kept in touch for several years, by phone and by mail. After the estate was sold and her mother died, Beale moved to New York  for three years (1980-1983) and the author escorted her to luncheons, parties and special events.  "Little Edie" later moved to  Florida, and died in January 2002.
 
memoraBEALEia contains never-before-seen photographs of Edie Beale and Grey Gardens, the Rutgers Targum interview along with a few other obscure newspaper clippings, reproductions of letters written by Little Edie (and cards created by her) along with art inspired by Grey Gardens.  There are also essays about Edie and Grey Gardens by photojournalist/paparazzo Ron Galella,  former literary agent Pat Loud  (An American Family, PBS TV series, 1973) and the artist Maria Manhattan.
 
The documentary Grey Gardens is now available on DVD.  Little Edie Live!  A Visit To Grey Gardens,  a 72 minute interview with Edie Beale which was the basis for the Rutgers University newspaper article in 1976, is now available on amazon.com.
 
Author Walter Newkirk is the founder of Walter Newkirk Public Relations LLC. A graduate of Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ, he worked on publicity for the film Roseland (1977), with director James Ivory and producer Ismael Merchant, and now primarily books interviews with authors for satellite TV tours, including titles by Martha Stewart,Valerie Bertinelli, Jenna Bush, and Tom Clancy.
 
Previously, Newkirk was  a publicist for The Whole Theatre in Montclair, NJ, where Academy Award winning actress Olympia Dukakis was Artistic Director.   He also worked in public relations for The Newark Museum in Newark, NJ; and the John Harms Center For The Arts in Englewood, NJ - which has since been renamed Bergen PAC; Bergen Performing Arts Center on projects with His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama, Sarah Jessica Parker, Charles Osgood, and Eartha Kitt.

 
For further information about memoraBEALEia, please visit www.greygardensbook.com.  The book is now available for purchase on www.authorhouse.com, www.amazon.com and in bookstores nationwide.  It is a collaborative effort with Walt Radomsky and Jeff Holtzman, both alumni of Rutgers University and Rutgers Daily Targum.
 
The website for the CD Little Edie Live! is www.greygardenscd.com  The CD is only available on www.amazon.com.