Ilene Beckerman Opens Heart To Talk, Life, Loss And 'Gingy's Diaries'

SOUTHAMPTON, NY — Ilene Beckerman will be turning 90 this June. But some things never change — no matter where she goes, you can be sure she'll be wearing lipstick.

Beckerman, who also authored "Love, Loss and What I Wore," is the voice behind a brand-new show, “Gingy’s Diaries,” that's set to shine at the Southampton Arts Center this weekend.

The show is adapted for the stage and directed by Michael Disher; taken from the literal pages of Beckerman’s diaries, the work is a deeply moving tour de force, a veritable celebration of life.

The gem of a show shines a light on the highlights of Gingy’s life, what she’s seen, what she’s lived and what she’s learned — a glorious whirl of memories, wit, and observations.

Beckerman traverses a landscape rarely explored — a woman facing 90 who’s lived a lifetime but still faces each day with audacious energy and sass, chatting about sex, motherhood and the moments that have defined us all, as we look back on decades well-lived. And always, always with the a swipe of vibrant lipstick before she sets out into the world.

"Gingy's Diaries," in workshop form, will be presented on May 2 to 4, 2025 at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. at the Southampton Arts Center. Each woman in the cast represents a portion of the pages of Gingy's diaries.

Shattering all misconceptions that women of a certain age can't begin again, Beckerman wrote her first memoir, "Love, Loss and What I Wore" at 60 — about her life before children.

"My children never thought I had a life before I was their mother," she told Patch.

The play became an Off-Broadway hit. Next, she published her second book, "What We Did For Love," at 62. "I had been looking for Prince Charming but I never found him. Cinderella did," she wrote in her bio.

She wrote a third book at 65, "Mother of the Bride: The Dream, The Reality, the Search for the Perfect Dress," and at 70, she debuted her fourth book, "Makeovers at the Beauty Counter of Happiness."

Beckerman says she's still searching for the ever-elusive perfect mascara.

When she was 75, her book, "The Smartest Woman I Know," hit the shelves; she also wrote two theater pieces with Disher, "Sex: What She's Really Thinking," a raunchy, laughter-filled romp, and "Mom, It's My Wedding."

Despite reaching dizzying heights — according to her bio, her books have been translated into a rainbow of languages; she's written for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Los Angeles Times, and she's even been profiled by Oprah —what makes Beckerman immediately approachable and endearing is how clearly she's able to see straight into the hearts and minds of women everywhere. And then, paint her observations with wit, empathy and love, on the universal canvas.

Beckerman grew up in Manhattan. "It's a very fancy neighborhood but basically, I grew up above my grandparents' store," she said. The store sold newspapers, magazines, and fountain pens.

From the first, her life was colored by equal parts of love and unimaginable loss. Her mother died at 42 and she and her sister were raised by her grandparents.

The loss of her mother echoed. "It changed me a lot," she said. "In those days, no parents ever died or got divorced." Or if they did, it wasn't spoken about freely, she said.

But from that painful life experience, an inner resolve emerged. "If you want something, you don't wait for somebody to give it to you," Beckerman said. "You've got two hands and a brain."

Beckerman attended the Hunter College Elementary, and Junior and Senior High Schools. Like any child, Beckerman and her sister, five years older, had sibling squabbles. "She was a talker," Beckerman remembered. "I didn't talk till I had children. I talk too much now because I saved up all those words."

Her best friend Dora lived across the street. "Her mother was a dress designer for fancy ladies like the mayor’s wife," she said. "Her goal in life was for her daughter and me to marry rich Jewish guys. She’s the one who told me to go to Boston because she knew I had to work. She told me, 'You’ll learn how to speak properly — and you’ll marry someone from Harvard med.' It didn’t happen."

Beckerman headed to Simmons University in Boston, and it was there that she met her first husband, a professor 20 years older. "There was no such thing as harassment in those days," she said. "There was no #MeToo. That marriage lasted four years."

But she also began paving the way toward her professional ascent. She got a job at Harvard, doing her internship at the business school and then summer work at the Harvard University Press. Her first "real job" was at the graduate school of education, she said.

"Once you get in anyplace, if you do a good job, you get the next job," she said, a life lesson instilled from her earliest days.

"I had a nice background because I was a good girl," Beckerman said. "We were all virgins. We didn't do pot." She laughed recalling a drummer she knew at the time who smoked pot. "We thought he was a bad guy."

Eventually, Beckerman's path wended its way back to New York City, where she lived with her best friend Dora and worked for the American Standards Association, located at Grand Central Station.

"My friend Dora was beautiful, she was an actress. I had to do a show at Grand Central and I had no idea of how to do it. She told me, 'Talk to this guy,' so I did. And we got married."

Her second husband Beckerman was a "good, good guy," she said. Although he forged his career in advertising, he was a passionate artist who'd hoped to become an abstract expressionist.

"He worked at good agencies in the city," she said. "It was not like 'Mad Men'. He didn't drink and he didn't fool around at work."

The young couple, newly married, moved to New Jersey, and ultimately ending up living in Connecticut. "I had a baby right away," she said. "My daughter Isabelle."

And then came the loss that transcended any other grief in a mother's life: She lost her toddler son David, at just two years old, after he contracted a 48-hour intestinal virus. "I lost my baby," she said, her voice breaking with tears.

"I had six children in seven years," she said. "They were my best years. But when we lost David, our son, my relationship with Al changed. We were in our 20s — we couldn't handle it."

Beckerman and her husband did their best to survive, holding on tightly to their family — their remaining children. They went into business together in New Jersey. "We sent the kids to Harvard colleges. They were good times. Al and I never did anything for ourselves. Everything was for the kids."

Summer days spent hiking in the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge, bundling up little babies in snowpants, the kaleidescope of memories tumble forth as Beckerman remembers every magical, blessed moment. "The kids loved coming to my house because I had Yodels, and their mothers wouldn't let them have any," she laughed. "They were good times."

When the kids were young, the family lived in a very suburban Livingston, NJ, "which I hated, coming from Manhattan," she said. "There were no men around during the day. The women moved around in tennis dresses. There were no grandparents, no minorities."

Working alongside her husband in the advertising agency, she said: "It was a good marriage. He focused on new businesses and I did copywriting — and cleaned the toilets. That's what women do. If nobody else is going to do it, you do it."

There were Sunday trips to the zoo, but the extras such as souvenirs and lunches added up. Then, when the couple decided to buy a summer house, a second home in Newtown, "That meant I had to go back to work again," Beckerman said.

Heading back to the workplace meant closing the chapter on the halcyon days of young motherhood. "Those 12 years when I was home, I tell you the truth, I didn't shave my legs!" she laughed. "I went to the pediatrician and the food store, and that was it. And I was never happier."

Venturing out into the workplace, Beckerman got a job at the Livingston Mall where they had "mothers' hours" to allow women to get home in time to care for their children after school.

"It was nice. Because until that time, I'd always been someone's wife. Al's wife. Isabelle's mother, or Lily's mother, going down the list. I still have a friend from that job, because she knew me, knew who I was."

Next, Beckerman got a job as the communications director at what was then called the Y and is now the JCC.

"I liked every job I ever had. I was a Kelly girl, an office temp. I like a project," Beckerman said. "I liked starting with nothing and making something. I wasn’t a good cook. I wasn’t a good cleaner. But give me a piece of blank paper or a job to do— I rewarded myself by feeling good because I did the job."

Working with her husband at the advertising agency was a lesson in collaboration, she said: "Al and I were a good team. I only liked the process; I didn't care about the result. He liked the result."

Even today, working with Disher, Beckerman said: "Michael did a masterful job with this show, but it was the process — laughing with him and finding out things, sharing stories about the past — I love that best."

Eventually, Beckerman said, her husband had three open heart surgeries; she cared for him lovingly until the end of his life. When he died, she married her third husband, Stanley.

And then, Beckerman said, came the night that changed the course of her life forever.

"I'd been working at the Y and when I got home, I couldn’t sleep; the television was crappy. A dress came into my mind. My mother sewed all of our clothes, my sister's clothes and my clothes, because she had no money. She made our clothes because, she said, 'She didn’t want us to look like we come from Brooklyn.' In those days Brooklyn wasn’t hot like it is now," she said.

The dress that her mother had made for her shimmered in her memory, and then, like a veritable fashion show, all the dresses Beckerman had known and loved danced through her mind and heart.

"In those days, you didn't take pictures every minute like we do now. You had to get film, you had to send it away, and two weeks later, the photos came back — and it cost money. I thought, 'I'd better draw the dresses because otherwise, I'm going to forget them.' I didn't know how to draw, but I just did it."

Looking at the depictions, Beckerman said, "I thought, 'Oh, wow, this tells the story of my life. I'll give this to my kids.' So I went to Staples and made copies — in those days, you didn't have a printer or computer. I made 10 copies. I gave them to my kids, my best friend, my sister — and I was done."

But it was only the beginning.

"Months later, my friend Dora called me up and said, 'This woman wants to publish your book. She's going to call you. Be nice to her.' So I am an accident."

She got the call fom Algonquin Books, "a very nice press," and went for a meeting. "It was surrealistic. I was a 60something-year-old woman from New Jersey. I hadn't done anything. I hadn't saved the rain forest. I hadn't embezzled. I was nobody. But she identified with me — because she had lost a child, too."

The book, placed on a shelf at Algonquin, sparked interest. "The women in the publishing house kept taking it down and putting little Post-it notes on it that said, "I have that sweater,' things like that."

At first, her drawings didn't draw applause, so she was asked to submit new renderings. "In those days, Lord & Taylor was doing ads with beautiful artwork and I tried to copy it, which I couldn't. They hated the new drawings so we kept the old ones, and they published my book."

Next came the book tour. "It was unreal. I was very, very shy. I'd always been shy, until I had children. Because you do things for your children that you would never do for yourself."

Describing the book tour, Beckerman described the rush of excitement. "In those days, if you went to a big city, they had someone meet you at the airport. She was holding your book and she took you all around. They were so glamorous."

She added: "There were famous people on this book tour! We spoke to the 'ladies who lunch' charities, and they would take three or four authors."

The whole thing felt like a dream, she said.

"Then the tour finished and they said, 'What's your next book?' I didn't know what they were talking about!" she said, her voice still incredulous.

Reflecting on her life, Beckerman said, "When I was married to the professor, I was always the youngest. Then when the book came out, I started to be always the oldest."

And with age, came a deep realization of exactly how her life's mission had taken shape: "When I was on that book tour, women would come up to me privately afterward and talk to me the way they used to talk to cab drivers in the city. You’d get into a a cab, you didn’t know the guy, but he was smart, and he knew everything and you could tell him your troubles. He wasn’t a relative, he just listened."

Beginning with the book tour, Beckerman said: "I started to feel a kinship with women and that has grown to be very important to me. I never liked groups, I don’t want to say I’m a feminist or anything like that. But, hearing from the women who have told me their stories — we are so under-appreciated. To be a wife, to be a mother, to have a job, to take care of your own mother and grandmother — it’s an impossible task, particularly when we're supposed to look good and we’e suppose to do this, and supposed to do that."

Maybe the new generation is different, Beckerman speculated. "But the women over 60 never think they’re good enough. They have lousy self-esteem. I related to that. I knew how uncomfortable I'd always felt, because I thought I was never 'right.'"

And in that emotion, came conviction: "I just wanted to make women feel better."

She added: "I wanted to tell them: 'You’re too hard on yourself.' And, the thing was, most of those women were terrific. But they had no self-confidence; they were put down in every magazine."

Even later in life when she taught a memoir writing class, Beckerman saw the older women, women with rich life stories, plagued by self-doubt because they felt they couldn't spell or were shaky with grammar. "All we do as women is put ourselves down," Beckerman said.

As she grew in her vision, her writing career took wings. Her publisher and editor Elisabeth Scharlatt became a very good friend. "I didn't need an editor because it takes me a long time to write so little," Beckerman smiled.

Seeking a blurb for her book, Scharlatt sent the book to the renowned Nora Ephron, who said, "This book doesn't need anything," Beckerman said. "She said, 'This is perfect.'"

A few years later, Ephron optioned the book, along with her second work. Next, came the Off-Broadway success that was "Love, Loss & What I Wore," sprinkled with the brilliance of Ephron, who changed the casts monthly, with a rotating array of top names including Rosie O'Donnell and Brooke Shields starring in the show.

No matter how much she achieved, Beckerman says her "real" life was marked by sorrows and heartbreak; she later lost a daughter 10 years ago and her family has faced challenges, like any other.

"My life is no different than the woman in front of you in Shop Rite," she said.

Her own journey has given her the empathy to care deeply about the women touched by her work. "If I were to meet you in real life, I'd want you to go away feeling better because we had a conversation. I'm not a therapist — but I want you to feel better."

One of the highlights of her past years has been working with Disher. "I want this show to be a credit to Michael. We're a team. I want people to appreciate what this man has done. And not only is he talented, he's a good person that you can trust. And he does know women!"

She added: "I think that Michael is one of the best guys that I’ve ever met. Michael and I have absolutely nothing in common in our backgrounds. He’s from North Carolina, and I’m from midtown Manhattan — and yet we have everything in common. I think we were separated at birth. I have never met a guy that I could be so myself with. He finishes my sentences. In my late life, he’s a gift to me."

Their bond has deepened with time, Disher agreed. “We laugh as much as we think. And we do both in great quantities. This is our fourth collaboration. Ours is a friendship that always picks up exactly where it was last left. Most will call her Gingy. To me, she is Ilene. Though inseparable, I think I am privy to the often unspoken and unwritten side of her. She holds my secrets — and I hold hers in a deep vault,” Disher said.

Beckerman said despite the many twists and turns life has taken, she's gone forward, always, armed with a bright lipstick. "At the supermarket, I'd see a lot of older women who were very attractive but they'd faded out. I'd always want to put a little color in their faces. You don’t have to be a blond, dye your hair — but you can always wear lipstick. Even if I get up at night to use the bathroom, I'll put lipstick on," she laughed. "You are a woman at any age."

Her message to women, Beckerman said, remains steadfast: "You’re not alone. And, however you’re putting yourself down — don’t do it."

The Southampton Arts Center is located at 25 Jobs Lane in Southampton. For additional information and tickets, click here.