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 Grace Kelly
A
queen of American cinema who became a real-life Princess, Grace
Kelly made fewer than a dozen films, yet captured 2
Academy Awards as well as a place among Hollywood's legendary
performers. A favorite of master director Alfred Hitchcock, Grace Kelly's
life ended after an auto wreck on the same stretch
of highway featured in her final Hitchcock film, "To Catch
A Thief", on September 13th, 1982.
Born into the family of
a self-made millionaire, Grace Patricia Kelly was born on November
12th, 1929 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the daughter of an Olympic
sculler and a former model. Ms. Kelly's father had turned
his inherited brick business into a contracting empire that afforded
his children, Grace and Jack, secure places in society and
private educations- Grace at a Convent school, and Jack at
preparatory schools with outstanding athletic programs. While Jack Kelly became
a champion sculler in the Kelly tradition, Grace Kelly went
against her Irish Catholic family's wishes in pursuit of an
acting career.
Grace Kelly was not without allies in her family,
her uncle, George Kelly was a Pulitzer Prize winning playwright,
and another, Walter C. Kelly had been a famed vaudeville
star. After gaining acceptance to the American Academy of Dramatic
Arts in New York, Ms. Kelly moved to Manhattan and
partially supported her studies as a model. Ms. Kelly's early
stage work in New York included a revival of her
uncle George's play "The Torch Bearers" and August Strindberg's "The
Father". Ms. Kelly's stage and modeling work paved the way
for appearances on premier television playhouse programs "Studio One" and
"The Hallmark Hall of Fame" in New York, which in
turn incited offers from Hollywood. Initially offered typical starlet roles
in low-brow "coed comedies", Ms. Kelly held Hollywood at bay
until accepting a small role in the 1951 film "Fourteen
Hours". Her patience had paid off, and though her part
in "Fourteen Hours" had been small, it sent her from
relative unknown into a lead in the celebrated Gary Cooper
classic, "High Noon".
Portraying a straight-laced Quaker wife opposite Cooper marked
Grace Kelly's first screen success and allegedly was the first
of many romances with her leading men. While "High Noon"
was a box office hit, it took more than a
year for Kelly to find her next film, the John
Ford directed "Mogambo" with Clark Gable and Ava Gardner. In
addition to pairing Ms. Kelly with Gable, "Mogambo" led to
a 7-year signing with MGM Studios and an Oscar for
Best Supporting Actress for her 3rd film role.
Grace Kelly had
no slow spells thereafter, and she proved to be the
ideal, elegant blonde actress Alfred Hitchcock had been searching for.
Cast in "Dial M. For Murder" (1954) Ms. Kelly began
a string of projects for the master director, making "Rear
Window" with Jimmy Stewart the same year. Ms. Kelly was
called away from MGM as a loan to Paramount for
an against type role in "The Country Girl" with Bing
Crosby, her portrayal of the wife of an alcoholic earning
her a second Oscar. "The Country Girl" also launched an
affair between Kelly and the older actor, one they kept
under wraps in light of Crosby's engagement to another actress,
and Ms. Kelly's effort to avoid disapproval from her family
(and domineering director Hitchcock). After Crosby broke off their relationship,
Grace Kelly, 26 years old and twice an Oscar winner,
launched herself wholeheartedly into a 3rd Hitchcock project, "To Catch
A Thief".
Filmed in the French Riviera, "To Catch A Thief"
featured an icy and elegant Grace Kelly and an equally
urbane Cary Grant in thrilling car chases through Monaco and
was one of the biggest hits of the 1950s. The
film also changed the course of Ms. Kelly's life and
career. One year after the release of "To Catch A
Thief", having met Monaco's crown head, Rainier Grimaldi II at
the Cannes Film Festival, Grace Kelly completed "High Society" (a
remake of "The Philadelphia Story" with Crosby and Frank Sinatra)
and "The Swan", a romance in which she co-starred with
Sir Alec Guinness, ironically as a woman who marries an
older Prince. It was announced that Grace Kelly would marry
Prince Rainier of Monaco that year, and the ensuing wedding
proved one of the most lavish, most highly attended and
most reported on events of the decade. Becoming a member
of Monaco's Royal Family, however, meant handing away her crown
as reigning star of Hollywood, and Grace Kelly announced her
retirement from films.
As Princess Grace of Monaco, the former actress
helped revive tourism in her new homeland, served as head
of a number of charitable and philanthropic organizations, and gave
birth to three royal children: Princess Caroline, Crown Prince Albert,
and Princess Stephanie. Prince Rainier banned the showing of his
wife's films in Monaco, and in 1962 forced her to
back out of the leading role in Alfred Hitchcock's film
"Marnie", in which she had agreed to appear with actor
Sean Connery. While Rainier felt that her work as an
actress compromised her role as the wife of a monarch,
Grace did lend her talents to narration of several social
documentaries in the 1970s, and she served as a member
of the board of 20th Century Fox.
In 1982, while traveling
the same scenic highway made famous in the car chase
and picnic scenes of "To Catch A Thief", Princess Grace
lost control of her Rover 3500 P6, the vehicle taking
Princess Grace and her 16-year-old daughter, Princess Stephanie over a
steep 45-foot embankment. While Princess Stephanie survived the accident with
minor injuries, Princess Grace lingered in a coma for barely
24 hours before she died on September 14th, 1982. While
her death was initially attributed to injuries, it was later
determined that the 52-year-old Princess had suffered a stroke, a
stroke which had led to the crash. Princess Grace (Kelly)
Grimaldi of Monaco was interred at the Cathedral of Monaco,
and survived at her death by her husband Rainier III
and her children. Her philanthropic foundation, The Grace Kelly Foundation,
continued under the management of her American family.
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