Two Alumni Win Big at Emmy Awards
September 22, 2009
The HBO movie “Grey Gardens,” co-written, directed and produced by Michael Sucsy (SFS'95), won six awards at the 61st Primetime Emmy Awards on Sept. 20. Lucy Barzun Donnelly (C'95) also won for her role as producer of the film.
Sucsy studied international relations at Georgetown and went on to receive his master's in film from the Art Center College of Design in California. Barzun Donnelly studied English at the university. The two reunited during Reunion Weekend in 2005, just around the time Sucsy was finishing up his "Grey Gardens" script and Barzun Donnelly had started her production company.
“Grey Gardens” tells the story of two reclusive relatives of Jackie Kennedy Onassis. Jessica Lange, who won an Emmy for her performance, plays Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale, and Drew Barrymore plays Beale's daughter and Kennedy Onassis' first cousin, “Little Edie.”
The mother and daughter became the subject of a 1975 documentary that showed the once-wealthy Beales living in squalor in a dilapidated house called Grey Gardens in East Hampton, N.Y. Health inspectors almost evicted the Beales before Kennedy Onassis restored the home for her aunt and cousin.
