This Side of Paradise

Sun, 24 Aug 2025 04:00:00 +0000

Unpredictably, as most of my lifes key events have been, for a period of several years of late sixties and early seventies, I had the fortune to spend some time, mostly during the summers, with Jackie Kennedys and her sister Lee Radziwills families and children. Cinema was an integral, inseparable, as a matter of fact, a key part of our friendship. The time was still very close to the untimely, tragic death of John F. Kennedy. Jackie wanted to give something to her children to do, to help to ease the transition, life without a father. One of her thoughts was that a movie camera would be fun for children. Peter Beard, who was at that time tutoring John Jr. and Caroline in art history, suggested to Jackie that I was the man to introduce the children to cinema. Jackie said yes. And thats how it all began

That Summer

Fri, 19 Sep 2025 04:00:00 +0000

Albert and David Maysles’ classic GREY GARDENS immortalized the estate of Edith and Little Edie Beale, relatives of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, who lived in alarmingly poor conditions. But there is more to the story: it was Lee Radziwill and Peter Beard who first brought the Maysles to the Beales, when the two set out to make a film about Radziwill’s childhood. The reels of that first contact were shelved for 45 years. This documentary recovers the lost footage. Anchored in Beard’s recollections and artistic vision, we are returned to “that summer” in 1972, a seductive dream world and collage of radically unconventional creative personalitiesWarhol, Bacon, Jagger, Capotepracticing the art of living amidst oppressive forces of class expectation and prejudice.

Lee Radziwill – MRQE

This Side of Paradise

That Summer