Grace Kelly

• 1. Introduction

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  Grace Kelly appeared on the cover of Time on the 31st of January 1955, and the magazine already had a name for her. It called her the Girl in White Gloves. The label came from the prim, noticeable gloves she wore in public, and reporters often addressed her as "Miss Kelly" or simply "the lady."

  Time presented her as the top movie star of the moment. In its telling, she was "a startling change" from the smoky sirens and bumptious cuties who had dominated the screen before her.

  The woman on that cover would be married to a reigning prince in April 1956. At the age of 26 she gave up acting altogether.

  That decision raises the questions this documentary follows. What kind of family produces a star who trades Hollywood for a palace? How does an actress who was once called "mousey" by her own director end up with an Academy Award? What does a former film star do with a title, a principality and a large public to answer to? And why does an image built on gloves and calm still shape how people dress and photograph themselves today?

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• 2. Philadelphia Roots

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  Grace Patricia Kelly was born on the 12th of November 1929 at Hahnemann University Hospital in Philadelphia, into a family with both money and public standing. Her father, John B. Kelly Sr., was the son of Irish immigrants and had won three Olympic gold medals in sculling. He also ran a successful brickwork contracting company, well known along the East Coast.

  In 1935 he was the Democratic Party nominee for mayor of Philadelphia and lost by the closest margin in the city's history. Later he served on the Fairmount Park Commission. During World War II, President Roosevelt appointed him National Director of Physical Fitness.

  Theater ran through the family as well. Her uncle Walter C. Kelly was a vaudeville star who also made films for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Paramount Pictures. Another uncle, George, was a Pulitzer Prize-winning dramatist, screenwriter and director. Their brother John built the family home in the East Falls neighborhood of Philadelphia.

  Her mother, Margaret Majer, came from a German line. Before her marriage to John Kelly in 1924, Margaret had taught physical education at the University of Pennsylvania. She was the first woman to coach women's athletics there, and in her youth she also modeled. After the wedding she stayed at home until all her children were in school, then threw herself into civic organizations.

  Margaret's ancestry reached into the German nobility. Her forefather Johann Christian von Majer, who lived from 1741 to 1821, was a political scientist, jurist and theologian from Ludwigsburg. The University of Tübingen elected him its rector five times. In 1808 Frederick I of Württemberg raised him to personal nobility. Through him, Grace descended from the Schenk von Stauffenberg family, best known for Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, who attempted to assassinate Adolf Hitler.

  Grace had two older siblings, Margaret and John Jr., and a younger sister named Elizabeth. The children were raised Catholic in a tight-knit community. Grace was baptized and schooled in the parish of Saint Bridget's, which Saint John Neumann, the fourth Bishop of Philadelphia, had founded in 1853. She kept her faith until she died, and the actress Rita Gam described her as a "deeply religious person."

  Performance came early. At Ravenhill Academy, a Catholic girls' school, she modeled fashions at local charity events alongside her mother and sisters. In 1942, at the age of 12, she played the lead in Don't Feed the Animals, a play staged in East Falls by the Old Academy Players.

  In May 1947 she graduated from the Stevens School in Chestnut Hill, where she had joined the drama and dance programs. Her yearbook listed Ingrid Bergman as her favorite actress and Joseph Cotten as her favorite actor. The class prophecy read "Miss Grace P. Kelly , a famous star of stage and screen."

  The prophecy ran into an obstacle two months later. Bennington College turned her down in July 1947 because of her low mathematics scores. Her parents disapproved of her plan to act anyway, and her father was especially unhappy. He considered the profession "a slim cut above streetwalker."

  She went ahead regardless and signed with the Walter Thornton Model Agency in 1947, which put her on magazine covers. The strongest push toward the stage, though, would come from inside the family, through her uncle George.

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• 3. Stage and Screen Beginnings

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  Her uncle George's play The Torch-Bearers, first staged in 1923, supplied the scene she performed to audition for the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York. The school had already filled its places for the semester. She still won an interview, and George's influence got her admitted. He went on advising and mentoring her throughout her career.

  At the Academy she worked hard and rehearsed her speech with a tape recorder. She made her Broadway debut in Strindberg's The Father, opposite Raymond Massey. At 19, her graduation performance was as Tracy Lord in The Philadelphia Story.

  Her father insisted that she live at the Barbizon Hotel for Women in Manhattan. The John Robert Powers agency hired her as a model, and some of her first jobs were commercials for bug spray and cigarettes. She was reportedly fond of dancing to Hawaiian music along the Barbizon's hallways, and she shocked fellow residents by performing topless. She later wrote of "wonderful memories of the three years I spent at the Barbizon."

  Television gave her steady work. Producer Delbert Mann cast her as the lead in an adaptation of Sinclair Lewis's novel Bethel Merriday, the first of nearly sixty live television programs. Theatre World magazine called her "a most promising personality of the Broadway stage of 1950." Her other stage credits included The Rockingham Tea Set, The Apple Tree and The Mirror of Delusion.

  Henry Hathaway, director of the Twentieth Century-Fox film Fourteen Hours, saw her in The Father and offered her a small part in 1951. She played a young woman considering divorce, in a cast with Paul Douglas, Richard Basehart and Barbara Bel Geddes. Douglas remarked that she had no bad side, since she could be filmed from any angle, and he called her one of the most cooperative people in the business.

  After the film came out, a Grace Kelly Fan Club formed, and local chapters sprang up across the country. Kelly called the club "terrifically amusing." Gary Cooper noticed her when he visited the set. Critics, however, barely registered her performance, and the film did little for her momentum. She went back to the theater and television, though she lacked what one assessment called "vocal horsepower," and a long stage career seemed unlikely.

  Cooper turned out to matter. Producer Stanley Kramer found her at Colorado's Elitch Theatre and offered her the part opposite Cooper in Fred Zinnemann's High Noon. The western was shot in Columbia, California, over a 28-day schedule in the heat of late summer and early fall 1951. She played a young Quaker bride in a demure, vaguely Victorian dress. The film won four Academy Awards and is ranked by some reviewers among the best ever made.

  Her own notices were cooler. Biographer H. Haughland wrote that her acting neither excited critics nor met her own hopes. Some critics scoffed at an ending where Cooper's marshal needed rescuing by her character. One argued that a pacifist who kills a man about to shoot her husband seemed cold and abstract. Alfred Hitchcock later called the performance "rather mousey," lacking in animation, and said she only "really blossomed" in later films.

  Kelly responded by returning to New York for private acting lessons, because she wanted to be taken seriously. She also kept working in theater dramas and TV serials. In the spring of 1952 she screen-tested for the film Taxi, and director John Ford noticed the test. MGM flew her to Los Angeles to audition in September 1952, and Ford said she showed "breeding, quality, and class."

  She got the role and a seven-year MGM contract at a fairly low $850 a week. Her terms were firm. In every two years she wanted one free for theater work, and she wanted to keep living at her Manhattan House apartment at 200 E. 66th Street, now a landmark.

  The film was Mogambo, and the cast reached Nairobi in November 1952. Kelly replaced Gene Tierney, who dropped out at the last minute for personal reasons. Kelly told columnist Hedda Hopper that the film had three attractions: John Ford, Clark Gable and a paid trip to Africa. Had it been shot in Arizona, she said, she would have turned it down.

  She played Linda Nordley, a thoughtful English wife drawn to Gable's character. Filming lasted three months, with costumes by Helen Rose. A pause in the schedule let her and co-star Ava Gardner visit Rome. Released in 1953, the film did well at the box office. It brought Kelly a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress and her first Academy Award nomination. The next phase of her career would belong to a director who had called her mousey.

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• 4. The Hitchcock Years

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  After Mogambo, Kelly starred in the television play The Way of an Eagle with Jean-Pierre Aumont. Then she was cast in the film version of Frederick Knott's Broadway play Dial M for Murder, alongside Ray Milland and Robert Cummings. She played the wealthy wife of a retired professional tennis player. Alfred Hitchcock directed, and he became one of her mentors for the last years of her career.

  MGM lent her out for several Hitchcock pictures, and these became her most celebrated work. Early in 1954 she also began filming The Bridges at Toko-Ri with William Holden at Paramount Pictures. The story, from a James Michener novel, followed American Navy jet fighters stationed to fight in Asia. She played Holden's wife, and Edith Head, who had become a friend, designed her costumes.

  One decision from this period stands out. Kelly turned down a chance to star beside Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront in 1954. Eva Marie Saint took the part and won an Academy Award for it. Kelly went instead to Rear Window, where she played Lisa Fremont. She said Hitchcock had talked about it constantly while they made Dial M for Murder, even before they had discussed her being in it.

  James Stewart, her co-star, was thrilled to work with her. Lisa was a wealthy Manhattan socialite and fashion model who "never wore the same dress twice," unlike anything Kelly had played before. It was her first turn as an independent career woman. Hitchcock introduced her with a slow silhouette, close-ups of the kiss, and a long look at her profile. He also changed her clothes repeatedly, from short evening dresses to a sheer negligee over a nightgown, a full-skirted floral dress and a casual pair of jeans.

  The film opened in October 1954, and Variety noted an "earthy quality to the relationship between Stewart and Miss Kelly." The reception lifted her billing to a level equal to, and beyond, that of Stewart and Hitchcock.

  Her next fight was with her own studio. Jennifer Jones, pregnant, withdrew from The Country Girl, and Kelly wanted the role of Georgie Elgin, the long-suffering wife of Bing Crosby's character. She already knew the play. MGM would again have to lend her to Paramount, and she threatened to pack her bags and leave for New York for good if it refused. The studio gave in, and she also negotiated a better contract.

  In the film, Crosby played a washed-up, alcoholic singer. Her character was torn between him and a second man, played by William Holden. Edith Head dressed her in fashionable clothes at first, then in plain cardigans by the end.

  The performance won her the Academy Award for Best Actress. Her speech was brief. "The thrill of this moment keeps me from saying what I really feel," she said, thanking everyone who made it possible. Her chief rival was Judy Garland, nominated for A Star Is Born.

  Other honors came too. The New York Film Critics Circle named her best actress for her three major 1954 roles: Rear Window, Dial M for Murder and The Country Girl. At the 1955 Golden Globes she won Best Actress in a Motion Picture, Drama. The New York Times called her Country Girl performance "excellent."

  Not every job was glamorous. In April 1954 she flew to Colombia for a ten-day shoot on Green Fire with Stewart Granger, playing coffee plantation owner Catherine Knowland. She told Hedda Hopper it was "awful" and described a miserable village where part of the crew was shipwrecked.

  Her third and last Hitchcock film took her to the French Riviera for To Catch a Thief. It was the fifth time she had been loaned to Paramount. She played a temptress in alluring clothes, opposite Cary Grant as a former cat burglar hunting an imitator. The two admired each other. Years later Grant was asked to name his favorite actress, and he said that, with respect to Ingrid Bergman, he preferred Grace, because "She had serenity."

  In 1956 she rented a house from Bill Lear in the Pacific Palisades during filming. She played Princess Alexandra in The Swan, directed by Charles Vidor, opposite Alec Guinness and Louis Jourdan. Her last film was Charles Walters's High Society, a musical remake of The Philadelphia Story, in which she played Tracy Lord again. Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra and Celeste Holm shared the leads, and Kelly and Crosby sang the duet "True Love."

  Variety, reviewing the July 1956 release, called her a pleasant comedienne and said it was possibly her most relaxed performance. By then the performer it praised was already a princess.

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• 5. A Palace Wedding

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  In April 1955, Kelly led the American delegation at the Cannes Film Festival. During the festival she was invited to a photo session with Prince Rainier III, sovereign of the Principality of Monaco, at the Prince's Palace. Delays and complications got in the way. She finally met him at the palace on the 6th of May 1955.

  She was not unattached beforehand. In 1954 she had dated and been engaged to the designer Oleg Cassini, after his divorce from Gene Tierney, whose place she had taken in Mogambo.

  The courtship with Rainier lasted a year. It was described as having "a good deal of rational appraisal on both sides." They married in April 1956.

  The wedding needed two ceremonies, because the Napoleonic Code of Monaco and Catholic Church law each required its own. The civil ceremony took place on the 18th of April 1956 in the Palace Throne Room and lasted just 16 minutes. A reception that day drew 3,000 Monégasque citizens. During the proceedings, officials formally recited the 142 titles she gained by marrying, which matched her husband's.

  The church ceremony followed the next day at Saint Nicholas Cathedral, with Bishop Gilles Barthe presiding. Over 30 million viewers were estimated to have watched on television. Biographer Robert Lacey, writing in 2010, called it "the first modern event to generate media overkill."

  Her wedding dress came from MGM's Helen Rose. Three dozen dressmakers spent six weeks on it. That night the couple left on a seven-week honeymoon cruise around the Mediterranean aboard the prince's yacht. When it ended, the actress who had spent years learning to be taken seriously had a different job to learn.

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• 6. Duties and Causes

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  Princess Caroline, the couple's first child, was born on the 23rd of January 1957. Prince Albert, the heir to the throne, followed on the 14th of March 1958. Princess Stéphanie, the youngest, was born on the 1st of February 1965.

  During the marriage Grace stopped acting and took on the daily duties of a princess, along with philanthropy. She became President of the Red Cross of Monaco, with her sister Peggy Davis and her sister-in-law Princess Antoinette as Vice-Presidents. She was also Patron of Rainbow Coalition Children, an orphanage run by the former dancer, singer and actress Josephine Baker. Each year she hosted a Christmas celebration with gifts for Monaco's orphaned children. She presided over the Garden Club of Monaco and chaired the organizing committee of the International Arts Foundation. Dual American and Monégasque citizenship kept her tied to the United States.

  Ireland drew her as well. She and Rainier visited three times, and in 1976 she bought her family's ancestral homestead in Drumilra, near Newport, County Mayo.

  In 1963 she saw the plight of Vietnamese children, and that experience led her to found AMADE Mondiale. The Monaco-based nonprofit is recognized by the United Nations. According to UNESCO, it protects the "moral and physical integrity" of children everywhere, regardless of race, nationality or religion. It has consultive status with UNICEF, UNESCO and the U.N. Economic and Social Council, and participative status with the Council of Europe. Today it has cooperating branches across Europe, Asia, South America and Africa.

  The arts got her attention too. In 1964 she formed the Princess Grace Foundation to support local artisans. A year later she accepted an invitation to become an honorary member of La Leche League, the mother-to-mother support group focused on breastfeeding. She spoke at its 1971 conference in Chicago, to 1,400 mothers and 1,600 fathers and babies. She was a known advocate and had successfully breastfed her own three children.

  In 1975 she helped found the Princess Grace Academy, the resident school of the Monte Carlo Ballet. Later she campaigned to preserve the principality's Belle Époque architecture. Her American roots stayed visible at home. She hosted a yearly American Week in Monaco, with baseball and ice cream, and the palace celebrated American Thanksgiving every year.

  In 1962 Alfred Hitchcock offered her the lead in Marnie. She was eager, but Monaco's public protested at the idea of their princess playing a kleptomaniac, and she reconsidered and turned it down. Director Herbert Ross later tried to interest her in a part in The Turning Point in 1977, but Rainier dismissed the idea.

  That same year she returned to the arts in another form, through a series of stage poetry readings and her narration of the documentary The Children of Theatre Street. That became her final film role, and it was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. Earlier she had narrated the ABC television film The Poppy Is Also a Flower in 1966.

  In 1976 she joined the board of the 20th Century-Fox Film Corporation, one of its first female members. In 1980 she published My Book of Flowers with Gwen Robyns, on floral aesthetics, symbolism and flower pressing.

  One project never reached an audience. In 1979 she and Rainier made Rearranged, a 33-minute independent film. After its Monaco premiere in 1982, ABC executives showed interest, on condition that it be lengthened to an hour. She died before more scenes could be shot. The film was never released or shown publicly again.

  In the early 1980s she also designed bed linens with the now-defunct Springmaid Company under the label GPK, her maiden-name initials. The line included tablecloths, napkins and placemats. A new Springmaid stylist, Neil Mandell, found her designs in a People magazine article about a Paris gallery exhibition. She earned over $1 million in royalties and gave it all to her favorite charities.

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• 7. The Mountain Road

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  On the 13th of September 1982, Grace was driving back to Monaco from her country home at Roc Agel when she suffered a mild cerebral hemorrhage. She lost control of her 1972 Rover P6 3500, which left the steep, winding road and tumbled 30.5 meters down the mountainside. Her daughter Stéphanie, in the passenger seat, tried and failed to regain control of the car.

  The Princess was taken to Monaco Hospital, later renamed the Princess Grace Hospital Centre. She had injuries to the brain and chest and a fractured femur. That afternoon the diagnosis was a cerebral hemorrhage, and she was expected to recover fully. Then a second, more severe hemorrhage struck in the hospital, and she was declared brain dead.

  With no reasonable hope of recovery, she died the following night at 10:55 p.m. after Rainier decided to turn off her life support. She was 52.

  The palace press office first blamed brake failure. Police investigators found nothing to support that. Rover sent engineers from Britain to inspect the car, and they reached the same conclusion. The company then demanded a retraction, and the palace withdrew the claim on the 20th of September.

  The engineers did find one thing. She had left the car in its Standard drive mode on the descent, instead of the Mountain setting. Rover had installed that setting as a safety gear for twisting roads and sharp gradients. Robert Lacey argues that using it would have "slowed her descent significantly."

  The funeral took place on the 18th of September 1982 at the Cathedral of Our Lady Immaculate in Monaco-Ville. After a Requiem Mass she was buried in the Grimaldi family vault. More than 400 people attended, among them Cary Grant, Nancy Reagan, Danielle Mitterrand, Empress Farah of Iran and Diana, Princess of Wales.

  Stéphanie could not attend. She had suffered a light concussion and a hairline fracture of a cervical vertebra in the crash. Rainier never remarried, and when he died in 2005 he was buried beside Grace.

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• 8. Style and Memory

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  Her own stated wish was simple. "I would like to be remembered as someone who accomplished useful deeds, and who was a kind and loving person," she said, adding that she hoped to leave the memory of a human being with a correct attitude who did her best to help others.

  Cinema history has been more specific. She is often seen as an influential figure, and she is closely tied to the "Hitchcock blonde" archetype. One author described her screen image as defined by elegance and glamour. Hitchcock's biographer Donald Spoto asked her to write a foreword for his book The Art of Alfred Hitchcock, and she did so in appreciation of her three films with him. Twenty-five years after her death he published a biography of her, High Society: The Life of Grace Kelly.

  Irish America claimed her too. She has been called one of "30 Irish-American Women Who Changed Our World," "Irish America's poster girl" and "an understated Irish-American icon." Katherine Boyle of The Washington Post argued that she changed how Americans saw Irish Catholic immigrants in the 1950s. In Boyle's words, America seemed to pardon her "tainted blood" and tuned in to her televised nuptial Mass in droves.

  Her fashion legacy began with an accident of pregnancy. In 1956, while expecting Caroline, she was often photographed clutching a leather Hermès bag called the Sac à dépêches. It probably shielded her midsection from paparazzi. The pictures made the purse famous, and it has been known ever since as the Kelly bag.

  Honors followed. In 1955 the Custom Tailored Guild of America named her "Best-Tailored Woman," and in 1960 she entered the International Best Dressed List Hall of Fame. The Philadelphia Museum of Art showed her wedding dress in 2006, for the 50th anniversary of the marriage. In 2010 London's Victoria and Albert Museum held a retrospective of her wardrobe, titled "Grace Kelly: Style Icon," with 50 of her outfits. It continued at Australia's Bendigo Art Gallery in 2012. In 2009 a plaque on the Rodeo Drive Walk of Style recognized her contributions.

  She is remembered for introducing a fresh-faced look, bright skin and natural beauty with little makeup, and for simple "college-girl" everyday dressing. Designers Tommy Hilfiger and Zac Posen have cited her as an inspiration. In 2016 Forbes included her among 10 fashion icons and the trends they made famous.

  The influence reaches into screens and red carpets. The look of Betty Draper in Mad Men owes much to her, and other characters compliment Betty for resembling her. Elle Fanning wore a mint-green Gucci gown by Alessandro Michele to the 78th Golden Globe Awards, inspired by a gown Kelly wore to the 27th Academy Awards. According to Vogue, Billie Eilish wore a red Oscar de la Renta gown to the 2021 Met Gala inspired by Kelly's gown in To Catch a Thief.

  Photography shaped the image as well. In Jamaica in 1955, Howell Conant photographed her without makeup in a natural setting, breaking from the usual portrayal of actresses. A shot of her rising from the water with wet hair made the cover of Collier's. After her marriage, Conant became the unofficial photographer of the House of Grimaldi, and in 1992 he published the book Grace. Andy Warhol and James Gill also depicted her, and Warhol made a limited-edition silkscreen portrait for the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia in 1984.

  The house on Henry Avenue also entered the record. Her father built it in 1929, and she lived there until 1950. Rainier proposed to her there in 1955. The family sold it in 1974, Prince Albert later bought it, and in 2012 it became a Pennsylvania historic landmark.

  Her charitable work continues. In 1982 Rainier founded the Princess Grace Foundation-USA, to carry on the support for emerging theater, dance and film artists she had given anonymously. Through the Princess Grace Awards, it has given over $15 million to 800 artists at more than 100 U.S. institutions. Caroline became president of the foundation and of AMADE Mondiale, with Albert as vice president. The original Monaco branch, Fondation Princesse Grace, still aids students and children around Monaco and France.

  Monaco filled itself with her name. A rose garden in the Fontvieille district, opened by Rainier in 1984, holds 4,000 roses and a statue by Kees Verkade. A hybrid tea rose, Rosa 'Princesse de Monaco', also honors her. The Princess Grace Irish Library holds her personal collection of over 9,000 books and sheet music. Avenue Princesse Grace has been called the most expensive street in the world. Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo, founded in 1985 according to her wishes, gave its first performance on the 21st of December.

  Elsewhere the tributes multiplied. In 1993 the United States and Monaco released stamps with her image on the same day. In 2007 Monaco hosted the exhibition "The Grace Kelly Years, Princess of Monaco," and issued €2 coins bearing her image. In 2003 the Henley Royal Regatta renamed its Women's Quadruple Sculls the Princess Grace Challenge Cup. Henley had invited her to present the prizes in 1981, easing the ill will left when her father fell afoul of its amateurism rules in 1920. Hotels have named suites for her, and a yacht in Monaco carries her name. A monument to her and Rainier stands in Yoshkar-Ola, Russia.

  On-screen portrayals have had mixed fortunes. Cheryl Ladd played her in a 1983 television film to mixed reviews. Nicole Kidman played her in Grace of Monaco in 2014, directed by Olivier Dahan. Many viewers, including Monaco's princely family, found it melodramatic, historically flawed and shallow.

  Brand-building continues too. On the 15th of July 2021, the Princess Grace Foundation-USA launched Grace de Monaco, a luxury brand planned since 2019. Its first fragrance, Promenade sur le Rocher, was named for the princely family's residence of more than seven centuries. And in November 2022, the Monnaie de Paris issued silver and gold coins for the 40th anniversary of her death, with the consent of Prince Albert II.

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