High Society: Grace Kelly and Hollywood (33 page)

Grace tried to make frequent visits to America to visit
family and friends, but that became difficult after the birth of her three children—Caroline in 1957, Albert the following year and Stéphanie in 1965. She and Rainier returned to Philadelphia when her father died in June 1960. According to the press, his fortune was estimated at $18 million. The truth is that his will distributed the sum of $1.1 million among his wife and four children.

E
VERYONE WHO
knew the Grimaldis, as well as casual visitors and those who had a glimpse of the family at home or away, realized that Rainier and Grace were devoted and attentive parents. “I didn’t ever want them to be strangers relegated to the other end of the house,” Grace said, refusing to copy the ways of parents she had seen in Hollywood and in many European homes. She got down on the floor or the grass to play games with them; they always took their meals with their parents; Grace helped them with homework; and a certain discipline prevented them (at least until their teenage years) from imitating the worst habits of spoiled, wealthy children. Skillfully and unselfconsciously combining her American ways with a palace lifestyle, she was loved and respected by both her children and her “subjects,” whom she greeted warmly, as if they were old acquaintances.

A
DECADE AFTER
the marriage, Monaco’s economic situation and its public image had much improved. Before Grace arrived, there had been a decline in tourism; the lucrative casino had deteriorated; doubtful characters were buying up real estate and funneling ill-gotten gains into their accounts in Monaco’s banks; and the attitude toward Rainier of most Monégasques was as suspicious as that of most Europeans.

But Grace’s presence, and her close collaboration with her husband on every project (which he came to welcome), changed everything. By the late 1960s the government had a large surplus; tourism increased from 77,000 visitors a year to ten times that number; and she revived the principality as a major center for opera, ballet, concerts and plays. “She brought in poets and dramatists,” recalled the British writer Anthony Burgess, a resident of Monaco. “She also made it a center of cultural conferences, with an annual television convention, amateur drama festivals and poetry readings.” And there were her beloved flower festivals, to which she invited people regardless of their talent or financial status—the only requirement was a love of flowers and a desire to create something pretty.

In 1954, 95 percent of Monaco’s budget came from gambling; by 1965 that contribution was less than 4 percent, for the Grimaldis together had shifted the income from the casino to tourism, banking, real estate and culture. Grace had the idea of opening the palace for guided tours during the summer, when she and the family were away; and for the first time in many years, middle-class tourists joined European high society as they returned to Monaco in great numbers. More important, in 1962 Rainier announced that he and his council had drawn up a new constitution that greatly reduced his power and ended autocratic rule; the old constitution, he said, had hindered the administrative and political life of the country.

In the 1970s, Grace dismissed the bodyguards who tracked her every step—and within days, locals felt comfortable in going right up to their princess, greeting her and asking about the family. To the horror of some die-hard conservatives, it was not unusual to see Grace and one of her children, or Grace and a visiting friend or relative, sipping tea or a glass of wine at a local café. More shocking still was the sight of her and the children at the public beach. But eventually the idea of a family in
the palace took hold, and the residents of Monaco approved. Even when Grace’s daughters entertained a youthful, freewheeling lifestyle, their mother was held in such affectionate respect that people said, “Well, she’s got the problems all mothers have these days.” It’s no exaggeration to say that in comparison with some other ruling families in Europe, Grace was far more important to her adopted country, and much more loved. Always hating to drive a car, she preferred local taxis to official limousines. “She spoke with five popes and I don’t know how many world rulers,” a Monégasque taxi driver said, “and yet she knew immediately how to put me at ease. She spoke with people on their own level.”

By 1963, to the surprise of journalists from Paris, Grace was fluent in French. But she was always aware of people’s feelings. During our first visits, Grace always addressed her staff in English out of deference to me as a fellow American. But when she realized that I spoke French, too, she reverted to that language out of deference to her staff. After that, we frequently laughed over the complexities of this or that French idiom or syntax. During one hot August afternoon, she asked a palace attendant to bring us cold drinks. For a moment we both forgot how to say “sparkling water” in French—and so Grace simply turned to her helper and said in English, “Oh, Pierre, please bring us some fizzy water.”

When she offered me a tour of the private quarters, I was surprised at its simplicity. There were 250 rooms at the
palais princier
, but the family occupied only one small portion of it: a living and dining room, a small library doubling as Grace’s office, three bedrooms and baths, two dressing rooms and a small kitchen, where Grace cooked breakfast for her children and (more often than the staff expected) prepared dinner, too. The nursery adjoined the bedroom, and after Stéphanie’s childhood,
it was converted into a family room. The entire residence was not much larger than a suburban apartment.

In addition to full-time motherhood, Grace revived and personally directed the principality’s Red Cross and supervised the renovation of a crumbling local medical facility. When it was completed, it was a first-rate hospital. She passionately defended breastfeeding and became a representative for the international organization La Leche. Very close to her heart were the Garden Club of Monaco, the International Arts Foundation and her Princess Grace Foundation, which encouraged young people’s involvement in the arts.

Grace also set an example of volunteerism by regular visits to patients, and to the homes of the elderly, where she sat and chatted; she never merely walked through a ward or clinic with a wave and a smile. Anthony Burgess became a friend of Grace, who took every opportunity for a serious talk about books and the arts. “I observed her concern for the older and poorer Monégasques,” Burgess recalled, “all of whom she knew by name. She spoke not only French, but also the local dialect. The kisses she bestowed on the old ladies seemed tokens of genuine affection. There was nothing glacial about her.”

Grace’s fundamental compassion is well illustrated by her friendship with Josephine Baker. Years after the infamous racist incident at the Stork Club, Baker’s career foundered in bankruptcy. Hounded by creditors, the singer was ill and in desperate circumstances by the end of 1974. When she heard of this, Grace brought her from Paris to Monaco, where she offered Josephine a villa and financial support for her and her dozen adopted children. Grace was a constant visitor to her old friend, encouraging her to return to the stage in a revue of her great songs. Grace then enlisted the participation of Jacqueline Onassis, and together they financed Baker’s triumphant Paris
comeback in early April 1975. The Rainiers were at the sold-out performance, along with many admiring celebrities.

Soon after, Josephine Baker was found lying peacefully in bed, surrounded by clippings of her rave reviews. She had gone into a coma after a massive stroke, and two days later she died in a Paris hospital, on April 12. She was sixty-eight. After the funeral at the Church of the Madeleine, Grace paid all expenses and arranged for the remains to be brought down to Monaco for burial.

Just as any talk of prejudice had angered her as a child, so her rage against racism was always evident in adulthood. In addition to her strong friendships with Josephine Baker, Coretta Scott King and Louis Armstrong (who appeared with her in
High Society)
, lesser-known men and women were helped by the long arm of Grace’s friendship.

L
IKE THAT
of Audrey Hepburn and Jacqueline Onassis, Grace’s stardom depended on a mysterious amalgam of presence and reserve—of accessibility and distance. These women gave themselves to the camera, but they knew that they had to hold something of themselves back. This was not hypocrisy—it was merely self-preservation.

Stardom or no, these women did not enjoy unalloyed bliss in their marriages. For a period in the 1970s, friends of the Grimaldis knew that the couple had grown apart. “There’s absolutely no doubt about that,” said Gwen Robyns, who knew Grace well. “They put up a façade that they were together, but they were not.” Grace loved ballet, opera, theatre and the arts, and she had a serious interest in horticulture that extended farther than the occasional pastime of a wealthy matron. Rainier, meanwhile, was preoccupied with matters of state and finance—he had to keep Monaco running.

Whatever her private difficulties, her beauty remained undiminished. When the writer Roderick Mann asked Grace the secret of her beauty at the time of her fortieth birthday, she replied that she never thought of herself as “a great beauty. I think I’m quite nice-looking, but that’s about it. Frankly, I’ve always hated being known for my looks. I’d much rather be known for my ability. One of my few regrets is that I wasn’t able to develop more fully as an actress. I stopped acting before I could do that. But that was my choice. I just hope I’ve developed as a person, instead. That’s what’s important to me—to fulfill my role as a wife and mother and princess—not [to be] beautiful, but whether I have more character than I used to [have].” She was not, she added, “terribly pleased at being forty … because I feel I should be so much more grown-up and wiser about the world than I am.”

By 1980 the Grimaldis were, according to Robyns, “enjoying one another on a completely different level from before.” However tested the marriage had been, “it was certainly going to work out for the future.” Grace was “the pivot and center of that family, and no one realized how much she had given all of them until she was gone.” Those were sentiments with which Grace’s longtime friends wholly agreed; they were never out of the orbit of her life for very long.

The entire program of her private and public life was not easy. She had left everything—her family, her country, her friends and her profession—and she had left them for something of which she knew absolutely nothing. For years she had to fit in, submit, make do, conform, deny herself, learn a language and antique customs, and do everything with a smile. The births of her children gave her the most joy and sense of purpose, just as her several miscarriages pitched her into black depressions from which she emerged only after many months of withdrawal from public appearances.

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PISODES OF
profound depression were infrequent. But there were many periods of melancholy and of loneliness, despite her efforts and her good works, and these feelings came upon her more often as the years passed. As early as the autumn of 1965, at the time of her thirty-sixth birthday, she told an interviewer, “I don’t expect to be happy, and I don’t look for happiness. So perhaps I am content in life, in a way. I understand myself, but I also argue with myself, all the time. So I guess I’m not really at peace. But I have many unfulfilled ambitions in life, and if I can keep my health and strength and manage to pull myself out of bed in the morning, some of them may be realized.” After 1970, letters to friends were often pointed requests for news “of where I am not,” and mild complaints that she felt “out of things.”

At such times, she turned to her friends and her faith. “She was basically a deeply religious person,” Rita Gam said, “and she understood the true role of religion in modern life. She did everything by example, to make it important for others, without referring to any particular denomination. And she had no neurotic religious guilt. She was very tolerant of people, and very liberal—not politically, but humanly. That was a part of her authentic piety.”

Grace’s melancholy and her loneliness derived from the fact that she desperately missed her career—especially after her children were grown and were away at school. She might indeed have “hated” Hollywood, as she said. But she also “loved acting,” and she retained, as she always said, happy memories of the work, which outweighed her unpleasant recollections of the place.

Despite Rainier’s early insistence that she give up her career, Grace never believed that her “Mediterranean husband, the head man, the one who says yes or no” would impose a permanent
ban. “She never thought she would have to give up acting forever,” Rita continued, “and she often spoke about finding the right moment to return to the movies. With each year, she missed it more and more, something awful. She needed some of her old life back, and she was hungry for good conversation.”

In June 1962, Rita won the best actress award at the Berlin Film Festival for her performance in
No Exit
, and after the honors she visited Grace in Monaco. “Her excitement about my success typified all that was so special about her. But I sensed behind her loving and generous celebration a tinge of actor’s envy.” That same year, the photographer Eve Arnold came to Monaco to work on a CBS documentary. “I got the distinct feeling that Grace felt trapped,” Arnold recalled. “It wasn’t the fairy tale one had expected.” As Oleg Cassini later said, “They were living in a gilded cage, but she wanted to be respected as an actress.”