Letters to the Dead: Things I Wish I'd Said. Ann Palmer

       GENERAL INFORMATION:

      Grace Kelly’s girlhood was uneventful except for the fact she knew she wanted to become an actress. Her “wealthy” family was actually an immigrant family of bricklayers who had barely a generation of newfound wealth. Grace’s father and brother end up becoming famous on their own as Olympic gold-medal scullers. After high school graduation in 1947, Grace headed for New York City. She worked as a model and made her debut on Broadway in 1949. It didn’t hurt her to have a popular playwright uncle, George Kelly. She attended and graduated from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, New York. She appeared in early television. After relocating to Hollywood, in 1951 at age 22, she appeared in a small part in her first film, Fourteen Hours. Cool and sophisticated, hers was not an easily accessible beauty; it was a constant struggled to keep from seeming aloof on screen. The following year, with a great stroke of luck, she landed the role of Amy Kane in High Noon 1952, a western starring Gary Cooper and Lloyd Bridges which turned out to be a very successful film. In 1953, Grace appeared in Mogambo (1953) a jungle drama with Clark Gable and Ava Gardner and earned her an Oscar nomination as Best Supporting Actress. It was also one of the best films ever released by MGM. She was swept off her feet by Gable. Grace Kelly co-starred with many of Hollywood’s top leading men: Clark Gable, William Holden, Bing Crosby, Ray Milland, James Stewart, and Cary Grant plus crooners Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra. She more than held her own, not only with her breathtaking beauty, but with growing confidence as an actress. Rear Window brought her even more accolades. Grace stayed busy in 1954 appearing in five films. After Green Fire, Dial M for Murder, her next film was The Country Girl and would forever be immortalized by winning the Oscar for Best Actress for her portrayal of Georgie Elgin opposite Bing Crosby. Her final film that year was The Bridges at Toko-Ri with Fredric March, William Holden, and Mickey Rooney. In 1955, Grace was once again teamed up with Hitchcock in To Catch a Thief co-starring Cary Grant. It was being shot on the French Riviera. Grace loved working there. In 1955, she received a call that the French government wanted her to attend the Cannes Film Festival that May. The “The Country Girl” would be shown at the festival. She met Prince Ranier Grimaldi during the Cannes Festival. He needed a wife, because with no heir to the throne after his death, Monaco would again be part of France and its citizens would have to pay French taxes. She had accomplished so much in a few short years that she thought it was time for her to select a husband, one who would finally meet with her parents’ approval. Ironically, in The Swan she played a young woman betrothed to a prince! In 1956, along with Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby she played Tracy Lord in the musical comedy High Society. The film was well received. It was her final acting performance.

      Part of Prince Ranier’s attraction to marrying a movie star was to increase tourism in his tiny, cash-poor principality. The Kelly family was not happy by his demands that a substantial dowry accompany Grace to Monaco. A figure of $2,000,000 was finally agreed upon, which had to be taken from her future inheritance so that her brother and two sisters wouldn’t be shortchanged. Grace’s wedding gown was the most expensive garment that MGM designer Helen Rose had ever made. There was twenty-five yards of silk taffeta, a one hundred yards of silk net and 125-year-old rose point lace that had to be purchased from a museum. There were also thousands of tiny pearls sewn on the veil.

      Her biographers revealed that her life as a princess was not particularly living the “ happily ever after.” Life long friends from Philadelphia and those she had known in Hollywood indicated that she was always happy to talk about her life in America and to be speaking English. By becoming a princess, she gave up her career. For the rest of her life, she was to remain in the news with her marriage and her three children. She never acted again, though she received comeback offers on a regular basis. She sat on the board of 20^th Century-Fox for several years, and occasionally lent her presence to documentaries like The Children of Theatre Street (a 1977 film about the Kirov Ballet School). Grace’s cousin, former US Secretary of Navy John Lehman, Jr. now chairs the Princess Grace Foundation, which supports young performing talent. And then on a cliff road she had known so well since her first visit to the Riviera, there was the fatal crash. The spot is said to be the same spot where the picnic scene was filmed in 1954.