High Society: Grace Kelly and Hollywood (30 page)

The reason for her “remote, quiet and pensive” manner was clarified after
The Swan
was completed. During the film’s production, no one in America knew that, in late October, Rainier had privately decided to ask Grace Kelly to be his wife. “I knew what I wanted to do,” the prince said years later. “But I couldn’t just assume she’d marry me. I had to ask her. So I went to the States to see her.”

He arrived in New York on December 15, accompanied by his chaplain and his personal physician—traveling companions whose presence briefly seemed to support Rainier’s stated insistence that he was going to Johns Hopkins University Medical
Center for an annual checkup, and was then going to visit friends in Baltimore. The press, picking up the scent of imminent news about the eligible bachelor prince, bombarded him with questions about a secret romance with some American girl, but Rainier laughed and said no, they were off the track.

For once, of course, they were very much on the track, and their suspicions were leading them in the right direction. But so far they had no clues as to who might be Rainier’s inamorata. In November he had spoken with the proper authorities in Monaco, for his possible marriage was an affair of state and not merely a personal matter. But Grace’s name was not mentioned.

Rainier proceeded to Johns Hopkins for a three-day medical examination. In Baltimore he stayed with friends of the Kellys whom he already knew, and together with them, he was invited to Henry Avenue for Christmas dinner. Grace, having just finished
The Swan
, had raced home to join her family and was seated next to the prince at the holiday table. Still, there was silence about any romance.

On December 27, Rainier and Grace popped up among holiday crowds in Manhattan. He was seen entering and leaving her Fifth Avenue apartment at all hours, and on December 28 he put to her the question that had prompted his long journey. According to Rainier, it was very simple: “Will you marry me?” And she replied, “Yes.”

Rainier had everything Grace had ever loved in a man—and he was so much more, as she confided to a close friend. “He’s enormously sweet and kind. He’s very shy but he’s also very strong. He wants a close and loving family, just as I do. It’s even more important to him than to most men, because he had a terribly lonely childhood. He’s very bright, has a wonderful sense of humor, makes me giggle and is very, very handsome. I love his eyes. I could look into them for hours. He has a beautiful voice. He’s a good person. And I love him.”

As Rainier began to share stories about his royal ancestors, Grace might have been amused to learn that she would not be the first American to marry a reigning prince of Monaco. The second wife of Rainier’s great-grandfather, Prince Albert I, was Mary Alice Heine, daughter of a prosperous New Orleans building contractor and the wealthy widow of the Duc de Richelieu. She was sharp at business and helped her husband put the principality on a sound financial footing; and she turned Monaco into a world-class European cultural center, founding and supporting its opera, theatre and ballet companies. Princess Alice was also, it seems, a feisty and independent little number, and was widely suspected to be the mistress of the composer Isidore de Lara. Whether factual or not, this intrigue caused her acrimonious separation from Albert, but they never divorced. She subsequently lived in splendid banishment at Claridge’s Hotel in London, where Isidore de Lara also took a suite.

G
RACE’S FATHER
addressed Rainier bluntly: “Royalty doesn’t mean anything to us. I hope you won’t run around the way some princes do, because if you do, you’ll lose a mighty fine girl.” As usual, brother Kell had only sports on his mind when asked his opinion of Rainier: “I don’t think we can make a sculler out of him. He’s not tall enough.”

As for Margaret Kelly, she insisted that the marriage be performed in Philadelphia: “That’s how it is in America,” she said. “The girl’s parents arrange the wedding, and Grace always promised me she wanted that.” But Rainier—and, for the first time, Grace—explained that theirs would not be an ordinary wedding: Grace would become Princess of Monaco, wife of a head of state, and she would assume responsibilities to the government and to the citizens of Monaco.

“I made up my own mind and didn’t ask my parents for
permission to marry Rainier,” Grace said later. “I had asked them once or twice before, and it hadn’t worked out. This time, I knew I had to make my own decision—and I did.” The announcement to the press and the world had to be delayed until Rainier petitioned Grace’s parents and obtained the proper permission, demanded by protocol, from his Monégasque council and the Minister of State. The official proclamation of forthcoming nuptials was made on Thursday, January 5, 1956—first in Monaco and then, a few hours later, by Jack Kelly at a Philadelphia luncheon. Next day, the matter was front-page news all over the United States.

Grace did not want her closest friends to learn of her engagement from news reports. “She rang me in New York and invited me over to her apartment for drinks,” recalled Rita. “And she said, ‘I want you to meet my prince’—so of course I thought she simply meant the man of her dreams. Well, I was soon in for a surprise.”

“Neither of us was a child,” Rainier said years later. “We both understood what marriage meant. Both of us had gone through difficult times, but both of us had learned from those difficult times that what we were looking for was marriage. We discussed it and we thought about it, and after we saw each other again in Philadelphia, I think we both realized that what we wanted was to make our lives together.”

At Cartier in New York, Rainier bought Grace a 10.47-carat, emerald-cut diamond engagement ring, mounted in platinum. She wore it as her character’s engagement ring in
High Society
, and director Charles Walters favored it with a sparkling close-up. Metro at once announced that Grace’s entire wardrobe from
High Society
would be hers to keep—and that they would also pay for her wedding dress, commissioning Helen Rose to confer with Grace and to create whatever she desired, at whatever cost. “Of course I was very grateful for the studio’s generosity,” Grace
said years later, “but I must admit that Rainier and I would have been happy to be married in our own ordinary, casual clothes in a secluded chapel somewhere. After all, I would have married him even if he was some small-town mayor.”

As the news continued to fill the front pages throughout January, February and March, Margaret Kelly twittered away to the press. She signed off on a series of syndicated newspaper articles, written with her permission but (as she admitted) without her first reading the text. Margaret and her
amanuensis
, Richard Gehman, trumpeted some facts about Grace’s early years, her love life and her temperament. Grace was furious. She did, however, have to laugh aloud when her mother circulated the news, “My daughter is going to marry the Prince of Morocco!” Peggy and Lizanne corrected her
—“Monaco
, Mother dear
—Mon
aco!” But Margaret was adamant: “I just can’t imagine Gracie riding camels in the deserts of Morocco!” The girls opened an atlas, there was a brief geography lesson, and the matter was clarified. But until the main event—“the wedding of the century,” as news editors were insisting—Margaret Kelly was not entirely confident that her daughter was not relocating to the sands of North Africa.

The press began to gather round during Christmas week, and the Kellys decided to give only one group interview, at their home, with Rainier present.

What would be Grace’s married name?

Grimaldi, Grace replied: “The Grimaldi family occupies the royal house of Monaco and has ever since the thirteenth century.”

“But that sounds
Italian!”
Margaret Kelly whispered to Peggy. “I thought he was
French
!”

“Well, you see, Mother, he’s neither Italian nor French. I’ll explain the background to you later.”

“Never mind that!” Margaret shot back. “Tell them what your name will be, Grace, dear.”

“Grace Grimaldi,” her daughter replied.

Actually, it was more complicated than that, interjected Father Tucker. She would be Her Serene Highness Princess Grace of Monaco—legally, Grace Kelly Grimaldi.

What about her movie career?

“Well, I still have a contract with MGM, and I have to do two more pictures. Of course I’m going to continue with my work—I’m never going to stop acting!”

“I think it would be better if she did not attempt to continue in films,” Rainier said quietly but firmly. “I have to live there in Monaco, and she will live there. That wouldn’t work out.” As for films in Europe: “I don’t think so. She will have enough to do as Princess. But she will not be involved in the administration of Monaco.”

Would the couple have a big family?

Grace smiled and hesitated, so her mother obligingly chirped, “I should say a lot! I’m a grandmother and I love a family.”

And with that, Rainier decided to end the media intrusion for the day. “After all,” he said to Father Tucker as they repaired to Jack Kelly’s den for a drink,
“I
don’t belong to MGM.”

1*
Contrary to popular usage, the proper spelling of Monte-Carlo must include the hyphen.

2*
Monaco is a principality, not a kingdom—hence its sovereign is a prince, not a king, and his spouse is a princess, not a queen.

3*
In 2008, a report by
Forbes
magazine listed Prince Albert II of Monaco (son of Rainier and Grace) as the ninth-richest monarch in the world, with a personal fortune estimated at $1.4 billion; most of it was derived from real estate, art, antique cars, stamps and a large share of the Société des Bains de Mer. Queen Elizabeth II of England was placed lower—twelfth on the list, with a personal fortune of merely $650 million.

PART III

Fade-Out

1956 — 1982

Grace Kelly Grimaldi—HSH the Princess of Monaco, age fifty. (PRINCE’S PALACE ARCHIVES, MONACO)

TEN

High Society Rearranged

I don’t want to be worshiped—I want to be loved!

      —GRACE (AS TRACY LORD) IN
HIGH SOCIETY

I
L
OVED ACTING—WORKING IN THE THEATRE AND IN PICTURES
. But I really didn’t like being a movie star. I loved working at my craft, but I didn’t like everything that went with the public’s idea of what a movie star ought to be.” Grace endured but never enjoyed the publicity that attended her movie stardom. Just so, she tolerated but took no pleasure in the exposure that attended her engagement, her marriage—and, indeed, that dogged the rest of her life.

On January 6, the day after the announcement of her engagement, the long leading story on page one of the
New York Times
began the media frenzy: “Prince of Monaco to Wed Grace Kelly” ran the headline—with the subtitle “Movie Star Will Live in Principality—No Date Is Set.” The story ran to several columns. Following that account, four months of stories began to flood the American press. Tidbits ran daily in newspapers from coast to coast. There were feature stories in
weekly and monthly magazines. Interviews were conducted with anyone who, it seemed, had even a remote connection or had sold her a newspaper on a street corner. Everyone had something to say.

On January 16,
Time
magazine, usually far cooler about such things, published a long story (“The Philadelphia Princess”) and then somehow managed to justify another feature or at least an item about Grace every week during the first seven months of the year. On April 9,
Life
put her on its cover, in costume for
The Swan
(“Grace Kelly—Education of a Princess, for a Movie and for Real”) and ran a seven-page photo essay about the preparations for her departure.