Grace Kelly: an enduring style icon
Dr John Wallace
The past year has seen a number of events celebrating the life of Grace Kelly, who died in 1982. To commemorate the 25th anniversary of her death, Prince Albert, Grace Kelly's son, opened the palace archives in Monaco to provide manuscripts, photographs and other objects for a new book that attempts to give an insight into her personality.
Grace Kelly kept ‘mementoes’ all her life and a wide range of these have now been collected from around the world. This book attempts to evoke her domestic world over a twenty-year period and includes letters from Alfred Hitchcock, Bing Crosby, Cary Grant, Jacqueline Kennedy and Greta Garbo.
Classic photographs of the actress are also reproduced here by Cecil Beaton, Richard Avedon and the actor Yul Brynner who, apparently, was a keen photographer.
Grace Kelly was born in Philadelphia in 1928. Her grandfather had left Ireland in 1867 and she was the daughter of a wealthy Irish businessman who made his money in the building industry. Her parents, although ‘serious people’, were broadminded and were happy with whatever career Grace chose.
White gloves
Initially, she trained at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Like James Dean and Steve McQueen, she did television work before turning to Broadway. Her film debut was in Fourteen Hours in 1951 and she caused some surprise when she turned up for her interview with MGM wearing white gloves.
Her subsequent film career was short, but highly successful. She was in and out of Hollywood in just six years. Her big break came in 1951 with High Noon, directed by Stanley Kramer.
Between 1951 and 1955, she appeared in 11 films, usually as a cool, elegant ‘beauty’.
When Alfred Hitchcock came on the scene, looking for a successor to Joan Fontane and Ingrid Bergman, she made three masterpieces with him. As she said later: “Hitch taught me everything.”
‘Hitch’ was born in London in 1899 and moved to Hollywood in 1939. He specialised in the suspense thriller, in which he often appeared, briefly and wordlessly. Hitchcock’s greatest works were Rear Window, Vertigo, The Birds and To Catch a Thief.
High class
In three of Hitchcock’s films, Grace Kelly had memorable scenes that were suggestive of high class. For his contribution to film, Hitchcock was knighted in 1980, the year of his death. Grace Kelly was perceived as articulate and graceful. She played the Quaker wife opposite Gary Cooper in High Noon, directed by Fred Zinnerman. She also starred with Ray Milland in the diabolical Dial M for Murder.
She was excellent opposite James Stewart, encased in plaster, in Rear Window. And she dealt with Cary Grant in a regal manner in the comedy-detective story, To Catch a Thief, filmed on Monaco’s doorstep on the French Riviera.
The most important actor in the history of cinema, Cary Grant was a box-office draw for thirty years. He was born in Bristol and initially worked with a troupe of acrobats and jugglers, until moving to America in 1920. A suave, debonair performer, he specialised in sophisticated, light comedy, opposite actresses like Grace Kelly.
He retired from the screen in 1966 and was given a special Oscar, in 1970, for his unique mastery of screen acting. Grace Kelly’s last film was High Society, with Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby, for MGM.
Her final official appearance in the movie world was as a presenter, with Audrey Hepburn, at the 28th Academy Awards in 1956. Though she hated Hollywood, ‘a town without pity’, she won an Oscar, in 1954, for her role in Country Life.
Relationships
Grace Kelly’s first serious attachment was to the talented fashion designer, Count Oleg Cassini. He had previously been married to actress Gene Tierney who, like Vivien Leigh, suffered from depression.
However, it was during the shooting of To Catch a Thief, on the Côte d’Azure, in the spring of 1954, that Grace Kelly first discovered the principality of Monaco. Olivia de Havilland’s husband arranged her first meeting with its prince on May 6 1955, during the Cannes Film Festival.
In April 1956, 1,500 journalists covered Grace Kelly’s wedding to Prince Rainier III at St Nicolas’ Cathedral, Monaco. Her father felt that the ceremony was like “a Cecil B. de Mille spectacular” and the tiny police force was overwhelmed by the amount of jewellery on display.
After the marriage, watched by thirty million viewers on Eurovision, Grace Kelly retired from the screen. She went on to distribute prizes for the Monaco Grand Prix and host charity events to which high society flocked. The couple had three children, Princess Caroline, Princess Stephanie and Prince Albert. Unusually, she brought up the children herself and tried to protect them from over-exposure in the media.
She had a reserved personality given to discreet ‘melancholy’ and she took her official duties seriously. She was interested in making a comeback to play Marnie with Sean Connery in 1962, but her royal status prevented this. Instead, the part went to Tippi Hedren.
High society
Grace Kelly had a timeless style and two of her dresses were recently bought by Newbridge Silverware for €170,000 in an auction hosted by David Niven’s son. They have recently gone on display at the company’s visitor centre in County Kildare. She wore one of these dresses in 1961 on an official visit to Ireland with her husband.
Grace Kelly was killed in a tragic car accident in 1982, almost 26 years ago, on roads very close to those filmed in To Catch a Thief with Cary Grant and directed by ‘Hitch’. For a brief period, Grace Kelly, whose grandfather had come from Mayo, made Hollywood believe in itself.
Irish Medical Times