High Society: Grace Kelly and Hollywood (4 page)

It was perhaps inevitable, then, that a senior family servant named Godfrey Ford became something of a father figure. Addressed as “Fordie,” he was the Kelly chauffeur and factotum, evoking enormous affection from all the youngsters—and especially from Grace. “He kept their cars polished,” recalled the Kellys’ childhood friend Elaine Cruice Beyer. “He could serve, put on a big party, supervise bartenders and buffets and keep the gardens in beautiful condition.” Grace’s respect and fondness for the African-American Fordie instilled in her a lifelong hatred of racism.

On Thursdays, when the children’s nanny was off duty, Fordie was entrusted with the task of putting the children to bed. “Gracie asked my opinions about this and that,” he recalled years later. “I’d tell her what I thought, and she’d usually follow my advice.” Later he gave her driving lessons in front of the house and in the long driveway, “but she was never good at parking.”

S
HORTLY BEFORE
Grace marked her sixth birthday, in November 1935, she began her education, joining Peggy at the Ravenhill Academy, a convent school for girls less than a half-mile away, on School House Lane. Built in the nineteenth century as
a family home by the millionaire William Weightman, Ravenhill is a grand High Victorian Gothic mansion with dark paneling, ornate fireplaces, dramatic staircases and formal parlors. Weightman’s daughter later donated the vast residence to the Roman Catholic archdiocese of Philadelphia, and when Dennis Dougherty was appointed archbishop in 1918, one of his first acts was to invite the Religious of the Assumption—an order of teaching nuns with whom he had worked as a bishop in the Philippines—to come from Manila and establish a school for girls at Ravenhill, which they did in 1919. Admission was strictly controlled, and at its peak there were but fifty students in the entire first through twelfth grades.

“They were remarkable women,” Grace said, “and I was enormously fond of them. They were strict about our studies, but also very, very kind. Their long black habits were simply the formal garb of an exceptional group of teachers, and however rigorous their religious life, the nuns understood young girls and devoted themselves completely to our educational and spiritual welfare.” The nuns insisted, among other elements of proper decorum, that the girls wear white gloves to and from school—a convention already familiar to Grace from her mother’s home training.

At Ravenhill, Grace’s teachers encouraged her wide reading, her drawing, her hobby of learning to arrange flowers for classroom and chapel, and her custom of filling a notebook with simple lyrics:

Little flower, you’re the lucky one—
you soak in all the lovely sun,
you stand and watch it all go by
and never once do bat an eye
while others have to fight and strain
against the world and its every pain of living.

But you too must have wars to fight
the cold bleak darkness of every night,
of a bigger vine that seeks to grow
and is able to stand the rain and snow
and yet you never let it show
on your pretty face.

In 1943, Grace began four years of high school at the nearby, nonsectarian Stevens School. At that time it was unusual for a Catholic family to send a child to a non-Catholic school, especially after the years at Ravenhill. But the Kellys were not particularly devout. “Aside from going to Mass on Sundays and saying our prayers before going to bed, we didn’t do anything else,” Lizanne recalled. “We didn’t eat meat on Friday, but even then Mother wasn’t too demanding. She said, ‘If you happen to be visiting someone and it’s Friday and they serve meat, eat it. I don’t want them feeling uncomfortable because of you.’” To Margaret’s credit, this was good religious common sense—and such a “liberal” viewpoint was not the common attitude of the day among American Catholics.

“My dad was not a very great religious person,” Kell said years later. “He attended church more for the children, my sisters and myself, rather than for great sincerity in his beliefs. My mother, of course, was not a Catholic until she married my father. She went through the routine and did the basic minimum, but she is not an active Catholic today [1976]. People who don’t know her are inclined to think she is [devout]. But she is not upset over my separation from the Catholic religious point of view—except that it makes her look like something
less than a perfect mother.” As for Grace, thanks to both her family and the wise nuns at Ravenhill, she never had the neurotic, haunted sense of guilt that often afflicts the scrupulous. On the other hand, she always took her faith seriously—even more so as demands and disappointments accumulated.

At fourteen she had nearly reached her full adult height of five feet, six inches; blue-eyed, lithe and poised, with blond hair turning light brown, she had mostly outgrown her childhood respiratory ailments, but they had left her with a flat, nasal tone it would take years to counter.

As local hospitals were crowded with World War II casualties, volunteers appeared from every station in life, and many schoolgirls devoted several hours each week to helping overworked nurses and aides. Shy and sensitive, Grace was nevertheless coolly efficient when dispatching indelicate chores in the wards. In addition, she quickly understood how much her presence meant to the young men, for she was, after all, a disarmingly attractive young woman.

The Stevens School, located on Walnut Lane in the adjacent neighborhood of Germantown, had been established “for young matrons who are interested in establishing ideal, satisfying homes and in administering them efficiently and scientifically.” This rather grandly stated agenda, written at the turn of the twentieth century, was effectively the program for little more than a finishing school for the daughters of wealthy Philadelphians, although by Grace’s time things had taken a somewhat more academic turn. She did well in her four-year course of studies, except in science and mathematics, which bored her.

“She is one of the beauties of our class,” states the school yearbook for 1947. “Full of fun and always ready for a good laugh, she has no trouble making friends. A born mimic, she is well known for her acting ability, which reached its peak this
year in her portrayal of Peter Pan in our Spring Play.” Grace was also a member of the glee club and the hockey and swim teams, she excelled at modern dancing, and she was named “Chairman of the Dress and Good Behavior Committee,” which must have pleased her mother. Her favorite actress and actor, she said that year, were Ingrid Bergman and Joseph Cotten, who had appeared together in
Gaslight
, a picture she saw many times. “Ingrid Bergman made an enormous impression on me,” Grace said. “I couldn’t imagine where that kind of acting talent came from.” Her favorite summer resort was Ocean City, the family’s summer residence; her preferred drink was a chocolate milkshake; among classical music selections, she loved Debussy’s “Clair de Lune”; her favorite orchestra was Benny Goodman’s; and she especially liked the singer Jo Stafford.

But it was acting with the school drama society, and the parts she played with local amateur groups, that most appealed to Grace. Her parents were almost mute with astonishment as their shy, retiring daughter flourished not by competing, but by participating in the joint effort that a cast makes onstage to create a memorable impact on an audience. As it happened, she drew her primary inspiration from one of her father’s brothers.

H
ER THEATRICAL
mentor was not, as is commonly believed, her uncle Walter Kelly, who was sixteen years older than Grace’s father. The family had seen him act onstage and in a few films, but he was something of an embarrassment. A nationally known vaudevillian, he had made his fame in a series of monologues that could not be performed in later decades, for they were openly and frankly racist. Dough-faced and corpulent, Walter Kelly played “The Virginia Judge” in a constantly changing series of sketches in which he mimicked not only the judge but also a legion of black men characterized as ignorant and slothful.
Both the magistrate and the malefactors, all played by Kelly, appeared in a mock court where the “colored folks” tried unsuccessfully to defend themselves against various specious accusations.

Walter’s sketches about “darkies” and “pickaninnies” (his words) were a staple of clubs, theatres and music halls for over twenty-five years. He also made a number of wildly successful recordings, and he appeared in seven Broadway shows and a half-dozen movies. Grace saw some of his acts and a few of his pictures, but she found only one production both amusing and oddly congruent: the 1935 film
McFadden’s Flats
, about a successful bricklayer who earns his fortune as a builder of apartments. Walter Kelly died in January 1939, succumbing to in juries after being hit by a speeding truck on a Los Angeles street. He was sixty-five, had never married, and, owing to his sumptuous living, had depleted a fortune.

The mentorship offered to Grace came from another of her father’s brothers, whose fame has more deservedly survived—George Kelly, who became Grace’s theatrical guru and lifelong champion. First as an actor and then as one of America’s most successful playwrights, George was a completely different man from Walter; indeed, they had so little in common that they never made any efforts to keep in touch.

“George Kelly was a very gracious, highly educated person,” recalled Rupert Allan, “well read and very witty, but also exceptionally elegant and cultivated. Grace just adored him.” Rita Gam agreed: “George was a perceptive and enormously kind man, and he took a great interest in Grace’s youthful dramatic escapades.”

George Kelly was born in 1887 and toured nationally as an actor from 1911 on. After military service in France during World War I, he wrote, directed and starred in his own one-act plays, several of which
(The Flattering Word, Poor Aubrey, Mrs.
Ritter Appears
and
The Weak Spot)
have stood time’s test and are occasionally presented in repertory and by school and amateur groups. His first full-length Broadway play,
The Torch-Bearers
(1922), which he also directed, is a mordantly funny indictment of amateur theatricals and self-absorbed nonprofessionals. The play reflects George’s profound respect for the stage and his lightly veiled contempt for untalented amateurs; ironically, ever since its premiere it has been most often performed by precisely the nonprofessional “little theatre” groups it skewers. “I loved that play as much as I loved Uncle George,” Grace said, passing over any mention of Walter when she discussed family history.

Two years after
The Torch-Bearers
, Kelly directed his play
The Show-Off
, which had a Broadway run of almost six hundred performances and was staged with equal success in London; like
The Torch-Bearers
, it has been revived very often. This was soon followed by his production
of Craig’s Wife
, which won the 1926 Pulitzer Prize for drama and was the basis for the 1950 movie
Harriet Craig
, which gave Joan Crawford one of her most intense roles as the archetypal middle-class, middle-aged, domineering wife who places domestic perfection above all relationships.

More plays followed, but the last decades of George Kelly’s life, while comfortable and personally fulfilling, were professionally static. His plays were neither epigrammatic nor vulgar, and audiences had to sit patiently, listening to long acts in which both characters and social commentaries were revealed through dialogue. He was, in other words, a man of a specific kind of theatre, ferociously moralistic and poorly suited to the later different styles of (for example) Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams and William Inge. “I won’t put my plays out for production because the theater has changed so much,” he said in 1970. “I just don’t want to become involved [in an era] that is frightful,
shallow and sensationalistic.” The truth was that the styles of popular comedy and drama had moved beyond him, and he had no desire to keep up with changing theatrical fashion.

One might presume that Margaret and Jack Kelly took pride in their connection to George. But in fact they were less than enthusiastic about him, for he was exclusively homosexual, living for decades with his partner, William Weagley. At that time, having a gay relative was too terrible to contemplate for all but a few enlightened American families, and a man who was “sensitive” (the tip-off code word) could be endured only if the most insistent silence about the awful truth was maintained. When George died in 1974, Weagley was not invited to the funeral; he crept into the church and took a back seat, weeping quietly and completely ignored. He died a year later.

During her childhood and adolescence, Grace heard the whispers and cruel giggles about Uncle George. These she deeply resented, cherishing his visits to Henry Avenue, when he advised her on plays to read, cued her lines when she was in rehearsal, made lists of roles she might undertake in the future and was the only one in the family to take her acting aspirations seriously. “I am so proud of my niece Grace,” he said toward the end of his life. “She is not only a very fine actress but is a human being with considerable qualities. Had she stayed on the stage and continued her career, I think we would have seen some very fine performances from her.”

Even on his deathbed, George could give quite a performance on his own. When another niece came to visit him, he addressed her with words worthy of Oscar Wilde: “My dear, before you kiss me good-bye, fix your hair—it’s a mess.”

“To me, he was the most wonderful person,” Grace said. “I could sit and listen to him for hours, and I often did. He introduced me to all kinds of things I would never have considered
or been exposed to—classic literature, poetry and great plays. He loved beautiful things and refined language, and these he shared with me in ways I never forgot. He was also one of the few people who stood up to my father, disagreed with him, contradicted him. I thought Uncle George was fearless.”