High Society: Grace Kelly and Hollywood (17 page)

She had a good professional reason for hurrying home. José Ferrer was preparing to direct and star in a November revival of
Cyrano de Bergerac
at the City Center of Music and Drama, and, on the recommendation of Raymond Massey, Ferrer and producer Jean Dalrymple invited Grace to audition for the role of Roxane. Grace was eager to return to the theatre in a play she knew well, and in a romantic role she had coveted for several years.

On October 15 she read with Ferrer onstage, but she had a severe cold that day, and her voice was not heard beyond the third row of the cavernous theatre on West 55th Street. She had not improved after a second audition, and Ferrer—pressed for time and unimpressed by Grace—engaged another actress. Her failure to land the role of Roxane disappointed her as no other rejection had, and there was no word from her agent about work at Metro or anywhere else. Her weekly salary from the studio continued to arrive, but, as always, she wanted and needed much more than a paycheck.

Grace had missed out on a great theatrical romance, but she
was soon to gain a real-life one. Not long after the New York premiere
of Mogambo
, she had met Oleg Cassini, an internationally renowned clothes and costume designer, recently divorced from his second wife, the actress Gene Tierney (for whom he had designed dozens of movie costumes). Sixteen years older than Grace, Oleg was born and educated in Europe, where his roots were in both the Russian and Italian aristocracy.
^5*

Strikingly handsome, slim, dark-haired and mustached, with an almost princely demeanor and a courtly manner that usually left women breathless and men intimidated, Oleg was multilingual, highly refined and much in demand socially and professionally. He was also in the front ranks of American clothes designers, and eventually he became the primary stylist for First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, for whom he created a look that was imitated worldwide. Oleg spoke proudly of his reputation as a notorious roué; now, at forty, he had the kind of mature but not weathered good looks that deepened his European allure. As she said, Grace was quickly “over the moon” in love.

For the time being in 1953, the bond between them remained platonic. They were frequent dinner companions, but Grace was entirely devoted to her career and he was devoted to the art of conquering other attractive women, a trait she would not tolerate if they were to embark on a serious intimacy. Still, he was in ardent pursuit of her and assailed her with flowers, cards and invitations. “On November 12 [he wrote in a telegram on her twenty-fourth birthday], the Earth became alive for me and created the loveliest thing in the world—you. I love you, my darling—will call you tonight.”

“I saw her only in profile,” recalled Oleg of their first meeting. “I saw the utter perfection of her nose … the long, elegant neck … the silky, diaphanous blonde hair. She wore a black velvet two-piece [outfit], very demure, with a full skirt and a little white Peter Pan collar. Later, when she stood, I noticed that she had a pleasing figure: tall, about five foot eight [!], good, broad shoulders, subtle curves and long legs—a very aristocratic-looking girl … not the sort you simply called for a date.”

Then Grace had a call from Jay Kanter. “Hitchcock wanted me for
Rear Window
,” she recalled. “Paramount had negotiated with MGM to loan me out, and, if I liked the script, I would have to be in Hollywood for wardrobe fittings in late November. But I wanted to stay in New York for personal reasons”—by which she meant Oleg.

Next day, it seemed she could have both a splendid role and continue the dance of possibility with Oleg—without going to Hollywood. Grace received the script of
On the Waterfront
, with an offer to play the role of Marlon Brando’s girlfriend in a film directed by Elia Kazan in New York.

“So I sat in my apartment, with two screenplays—one was going to be filmed in New York, with Marlon Brando, and the other was going to be filmed in Hollywood, with James Stewart. Making a picture in New York suited my plans better—but working again with Hitch … well, it was a dilemma. Finally my agent called me and said, ‘I have to have your answer by four o’clock this afternoon. Which part do you want?’ I told him, ‘I don’t know what to do! I want to stay in New York, but I love working with Hitchcock.’ My agent told me he would give me exactly an hour to make my decision.”

On the Waterfront
was already in production, and Grace would have to join a seasoned cast and director already familiar with the exterior locations in Brooklyn and New Jersey. The story contained unusual and violent material—and she would
have to learn about characters in a crude setting foreign to her.
Rear Window
, on the other hand, was scheduled to start studio filming in December and to be completed in early January. She would, Grace reasoned, be working with a director she trusted, and playing a sophisticated high-fashion buyer, a wealthy former model at the top of Manhattan society—in other words, a character and milieu she knew and understood. On November 23, Paramount Pictures issued a press announcement confirming her forthcoming participation in
Rear Window
.
^6*
With her recent Oscar nomination for
Mogambo
and a Hitchcock picture behind her, MCA could negotiate favorable terms for Grace’s loan-out to Paramount from Metro: she was paid $20,000, prorated over seven weeks from preproduction to the film’s completion, at $2,857.15 per week (before agent’s fees, union dues and taxes were withheld).
†

She returned to Los Angeles on November 21 and stood for wardrobe fittings two days later. Hitchcock had already instructed costume designer Edith Head about the colors and styles of the five outfits for his leading lady. As usual, Hitchcock left no detail of color or line unconsidered, and no costume was completed without his approval. In this case, Grace worked closely with Edith on the final designs for her wardrobe.

Hitchcock told Edith that Grace’s outfits had to advance the conflict in the story and still, as the designer recalled, “make her look like a piece of Dresden china, something slightly untouchable.”

Edith learned that Grace had been a model and that she knew how to wear clothes. “Grace was delightful to work with because she was very well educated and we could talk about anything together—art, music, literature. She enjoyed museums. She would get excited about classical music…. Sometimes she would come into my salon [at Paramount] with her lunch and the two of us would talk and laugh for hours. It was always a pleasure to see her kick off her shoes and relax.

“Off screen, she was not the best-dressed actress in Hollywood, but she was always very fastidious about the way she looked. She wore white gloves and very sheer hose…. People today would call her manner ‘uptight,’ but she wasn’t. Grace had a very cool, reserved demeanor, which tended to put off people who didn’t know her. Actually, she was quite shy. Since she was so beautiful, men were always flirting with her, and she wasn’t especially comfortable with such superficiality.”

As Edith and others observed, people on a production often mistook Grace’s manner for aloofness—“but in fact she couldn’t see anybody who was standing more than six feet away from her” unless she wore her glasses, recalled Judy Quine.

As Grace said, “Hitch told Edith that she had to design a peignoir that could fit in a small handbag. Well, the trouble we had with that peignoir, getting it into that travel case and out and in again! Then we went for a rehearsal, and I wore the peignoir onto the set. Hitch called for Edith—‘The bosom is not right on this,’ he said. ‘We’ll have to put something in there.’ He didn’t want to upset me, so he said this to Edith—and everything had to stop. Edith came to my dressing room and said, ‘Grace, there’s a pleat here, and Mr. Hitchcock wants me to put in falsies.’ I told her I wouldn’t wear them, and Edith said she didn’t know what to do—he was the boss. Finally she said, ‘I’ll try to take it in here and pull it up there.’ So I pulled the peignoir down, and I stood up as straight as I could and walked
back to the set without falsies. Hitch took one look and smiled. ‘There now, Grace—that’s more like it! See what a difference they make?’ We never told him that we changed nothing.”

Hitchcock respected Grace’s opinions as he did few other actors’ notions about their characters. “There’s a moment in
Rear Window
when I went over and sat on the window seat of Jeff’s room during the dialogue rehearsal. [Assistant director] Herbie Coleman said, ‘Look, Hitch, this will cost us a fortune—we’ll have to light up all the apartments in the courtyard in back of her if she does the scene this way. Can’t she sit somewhere else?’ ’ And Hitch replied, ‘Herbie, if that’s where Grace wants to sit, that’s where she will sit.’ I hadn’t even thought of the technical problem involved, and I told Hitch, ‘Oh, don’t bother with that—I’ll sit somewhere else!’ But Hitch said, ‘No, Grace, it’s better your way.’” As it happened, Hitch used an angle and close-up that did not require the full background.

Grace established a lifelong friendship with Edith Head, a formidable talent but a somewhat peculiar woman who had eight Oscar statuettes on her shelf. She created the costumes for more than five hundred movies from 1927 to 1980, but she never shared the credit with her army of assistant stylists, cutters and seamstresses, who did a great deal of the designing and all of the manual labor. While she was working with Grace and Hitchcock on
Rear Window
, Edith walked to and from an adjacent Paramount sound stage, consulting with director Billy Wilder on the costumes for
Sabrina
.
^7*
For that picture, Edith designed some clothes—but she was not responsible for one single item for the star, Audrey Hepburn, who had gone to Paris before filming began and, with the help of Hubert de
Givenchy, had selected all her outfits from his workroom. When the Oscar for best costume design of 1954 was handed to Edith Head for
Sabrina
, she accepted it happily, without ever mentioning Givenchy’s name—nor did Paramount list him in the movie’s credits.

I
T IS
interesting to compare the careers of Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly, who were born in the same year and were high on the list of audience favorites in 1953. Both had appeared twice on Broadway, where they had received Theatre World Awards, and they had both worked as models. Like Grace, Audrey was working with first-rate directors: William Wyler, on her Oscar-winning role in
Roman Holiday;
now with Billy Wilder; and later with King Vidor, Fred Zinnemann and John Huston. Grace and Audrey both had a rare, classic elegance, photogenic beauty and high public esteem. And, contrary to popular expectations, each woman became disillusioned with mere fame and gave up everything for a different life.

Paramount producers like Wyler and Wilder were not as judicious with Audrey’s presentation as Hitchcock was with Grace’s—especially with regard to makeup. Audrey’s eye liner and mascara, for example, were almost comically exaggerated in
Roman Holiday, Sabrina
and
Love in the Afternoon
, while Grace’s makeup was far more natural in all four of her Paramount Pictures (a lesson Metro had learned when it came to their productions of
Green Fire, The Swan
and
High Society).
Until her appearance without the semblance of any makeup at all (in
The Nun’s Story
, filmed in 1958), Audrey was painted with elongated eyebrows and excessive, over-the-lip lipstick. But Grace simply would not go along with the prevailing embellishment of the time: she knew what was right for her look and she prepared it herself. After her Oscar for
The Country
Girl
, Metro was in no position to insist on the cosmetics Grace wore in her last two pictures for them.
^8*

R
EAR
W
INDOW
reveals a great deal about Alfred Hitchcock—and as much about Grace Kelly; indeed, it presents all the evidence needed to cite him as a majestic talent and her as an icon of her time.

“I was feeling highly creative at the time,” Hitchcock said. “I remember thinking that my batteries were fully charged.” So fully charged, in fact, that he was able to produce and direct a movie to satisfy even the most bored, cynical and detached spectator—someone just like the character played by James Stewart.

Based on a story by Cornell Woolrich and a film treatment by Joshua Logan, the sparkling script was written by John Michael Hayes—the first of four he wrote for Hitchcock—and it remains a model of construction, of suspense interlaced with humor, and of a thriller that also has important things to say about life, relationships and moviemaking. The Woolrich story has no female character; Logan had invented one, but the full development of all the roles must be credited to Hayes.

The rear window looks out from a cramped two-room apartment in Greenwich Village, New York. There, a freelance traveling photographer named L. B. Jefferies (Stewart, who was twenty-one years older than Kelly) is confined to a wheelchair, his left leg encased in a plaster cast after a serious injury sustained while on assignment. With little to distract
him from boredom and the emotional predicament he faces in his troubled relationship with his blond girlfriend, Lisa Fremont (Grace), “Jeff” takes to spying on the neighbors in a building across the courtyard. He soon suspects that a traveling salesman named Lars Thorwald (Raymond Burr) has murdered his blond invalid wife Anna (Irene Winston). In an effort to persuade his detective friend Tom Doyle (Wendell Corey) that Thorwald is a killer, the chair-bound Jeff accepts the help of Lisa and of his visiting nurse Stella (Thelma Ritter), who become his “legs.” Jeff is enormously impressed by Lisa’s pluck and daring, but they are both nearly killed when Thorwald learns about the spying.

While the characters are completely absorbed in proving the guilt of the killer, Hitchcock was not: the crime was only another example of his so-called MacGuffin, the pretext for a story that is really more concerned with the difficulties of a romantic relationship. The audience does not see the crime in
Rear Window
, nor do we know anything about the Thorwalds other than his occupation and her bedridden state. Throughout the picture, Hitchcock is more concerned with the reactions of the watchers than with the private life of killer and victim. And he very much liked what he called the “symmetry” of the picture: “On one side of the yard, you have the Stewart-Kelly couple, with him immobilized by his leg in a cast, while she can move about freely. And on the other side there is a sick woman who’s confined to her bed, while the husband comes and goes.”