Grace Kelly

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Classic Movie Guide

Since TCM is having their annual 31 days of Oscar, I am going to have my 31 days of Oscar facts. I am little late, but better late than never. For the next few days I will try to find out something not widely known to fans about an Oscar winning classic movie.
Today TCM is featuring “Country Girl,” (1954) the sad story of an alcoholic actor/singer trying to make a comeback. Bing Cosby plays the role of the alcoholic, and Grace Kelly plays his frumpy, and depressed wife. It's hard to believe that Edith Head managed to make Grace Kelly look depressed and frumpy. Here are some facts you may not know about:


  • Grace Kelly's impeccable beauty made it difficult for Edith Head. It was a feat to make this angel look anything but beautiful. It took 24 sweaters before they settled on one that made her look “dowdy”. But that wasn't quite enough, Edith got a drab dress, and big spectacles which were pushed back on Kelly's forehead, a basket of laundry, put her in front of an ironing board and achieved the look of a depressed wife who lost all respect for her husband.

  • Grace Kelly was having an on again, off again, love affair with William Holden who plays Crosby's friend/manager in the movie. She had just broken off with Crosby and “out of respect” Holden broke up with Kelly for good. Kelly resumed her relationship with Crosby, and he actually wanted to marry her. She didn't marry him. It is said by her sister that Kelly “loved” him, but wasn't “ “in love” with him. Wow, I am still shocked at what Holden did “out of respect.” My, my what a different world it used to be.
  • It was well known that Crosby had problems with drinking. But now remember, he had to play a drunk, while sober in this movie. Crosby had his sons stay up with him on the night before he had to play the scene where he is blasted out his mind with “drink.” He wanted his sons to stay up with him all night, so that he wouldn't fall asleep. He managed to not sleep and did the scene with blood shot eyes and all. The scene was so real that his mother who was present during the take, ran out the studio inconsolably.
  • Although Grace Kelly won the Oscar that year for her role, it was this movie that showed the world that Crosby could act and not just sing.
 
MSN
MSN Movies Legend #46 - Grace Kelly


A Hitchcock blonde who went on to become a fairy-tale princess, Grace Kelly was her generation’s Diana – right down to the tragic car crash that ended her life 25 years ago at the age of 52. A vision of patrician elegance, Philadelphia-born Kelly cut her teeth on stage before relocating to Hollywood in the early ’50s to star opposite the likes of Gary Cooper and Clark Gable. However, she remains best remembered for the three films she made with the Hitch (Dial M For Murder, Rear Window and To Catch A Thief) and her final role in beloved musical High Society.

true star always leaves them wanting more. So it was with Grace Patricia Kelly, who quit Tinseltown at the height of her career to become wife of Monaco’s Prince Rainier, whom she’d met during a visit to the Cannes Film Festival in 1955. For the rest of her life Princess Grace was an international figure: feted, adored, her every move dissected. Luckily she’d already assembled a distinguished body of work that ensured she could turn her back on Hollywood with her head held high.
Indeed, considering her film career lasted a mere five years, it’s remarkable how many winners she managed to fit in. There’s 1952 western High Noon, which saw her young bride offer moral support and unflinching devotion to Gary Cooper’s dogged lawman. There’s her Oscar-nominated role in Mogambo, an exotic African-set romance that saw her battle with Ava Gardner for Clark Gable’s affections. And then there were the three thrillers she made with mentor Alfred Hitchcock, the last of which – 1955’s To Catch A Thief – would see her shooting on the same French Riviera that would soon become her stomping ground. (It was long rumoured, erroneously, that the road she and Cary Grant had their celebrated car race on was the same one where she would eventually perish.)

For many, though, nothing in her life as an Academy Award-winning actress became her like the leaving of it: High Society, a musical version of The Philadelphia Story that saw her reprise one of her earliest stage roles, flighty heiress Tracy Lord, beside her Country Wife co-star Bing Crosby. And with that she was off, to a new life as royal companion, fashion icon and doting mother of three. Asked to remark on her altered circumstances, Hitchcock said he was “very happy Grace had found herself such a good part.”

Finest Hour
Kelly won her Oscar for playing Bing Crosby’s long-suffering spouse in The Country Wife. If anything, though, the finest performance of her career came in a film she made the same year: Hitchcock’s Rear Window. As the well-bred socialite sucked into James Stewart’s obsession with a neighbour he suspects of murder – a role she turned down a part opposite Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront to accept – Grace exudes poise, cool and a sultry, earthy allure that is felt by everybody except Stewart’s commitment-phobic photographer. She also looked like a million dollars, courtesy of Hollywood’s foremost costume designer Edith Head.

In Her Own Words:
“I hate Hollywood. It's a town without pity. I know of no other place in the world where so many people suffer from nervous breakdowns.”
 
Hubpages
Her Serene Highness

Grace Kelly was Hollywood's beautiful, elegant and glamorous fairy-tale princess who upon marriage to Rainier III, Prince of Monaco in 1956, became Her Serene Highness The Princess of Monaco, but was generally known as Princess Grace of Monaco. She also won 2 Best Actress awards for her work.
Both as an actress and as a Princess, Grace brought a sense of style and class to everything she did, setting the fashion standards for the next decades. The American Film Institute ranked her #13 amongst the Greatest Female Stars of All Time.
She was one of the most intriguing American women of the 20th century. Despite her untimely death at the age of 52, her legacy lives on today.

Early Years

Grace Kelly was born in Philadelphia, on November 12, 1929 into a wealthy family. With two sisters and a brother, she spent her childhood in the Kelly home on the hill above East Falls, 3901 Henry Avenue.
She started school in the autumn of 1934, at the Academy of the Assumption, Ravenhill, Philadelphia, in the parish of St. Bridget's. Whilst there she modelled fashions at local social events with her mother and sisters. In 1943 she transferred to the Stevens School in Germantown, where she graduated in May 1947. Her graduation yearbook listed her favorite actress as Ingrid Bergmann.
She left for New York City where she and worked as a model and attended the American academy of Dramatic Arts.
After making her stage debut in Strindberg's The Father Kelly caught the eye of television producer Delbert Mann, who cast her as Bethel Maraday in her first of nearly 60 live television programs. Television success eventually brought her a role in the 1951 film Fourteen Hours which led to many offers. She was performing in Colorado's notable Elitch Gardens when she received a telegram from Hollywood producer Stanley Kramer, offering her the starring role opposite Gary Cooper in High Noon. According to biographer Wendy Leigh, at age 22 Kelly had an off-set romance with both Cooper and director Fred Zinnemann.

Hollywood Stardom

Her next film, Mogambo (1953), was a drama set in the Kenyan jungle which centers on the love triangle portrayed by Kelly, Clark Gable, and Ava Gardner. Whilst filming this movie she had an affair with Gable later memorably commenting "What else is there to do if you're alone in a tent in Africa with Clark Gable?" The movie earned Kelly an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress, but the award went to Donna Reed for her role in From Here to Eternity.
Grace was now an established actress but it was her work with director Alfred Hitchcock, which began with Dial M for Murder in 1954, which made her a star. Her standout performance in Rear Window (1954) brought her to real prominence. As Lisa Fremont, she was cast opposite James Stewart, who played a crippled photographer who witnesses a murder in the next apartment from his wheelchair. In 1955, she was awarded the Academy Award for Best Actress for The Country Girl. While it was being filmed, she was romanced by co-star Bing Crosby, a fellow Irish Catholic, (who had recently lost his wife) but Kelly always denied that they had an affair.






In 1955, Grace once again teamed with Hitchcock in To Catch a Thief (1955) co-starring Cary Grant. In 1956, she played Tracy Lord in the musical comedy High Society (1956) which also starred Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby. The whimsical tale ended with her re-marrying her former husband, played by Crosby. The success of the song "True Love" from the movie earned Grace a gold record and in 1956, she was voted the Golden Globe's World Film Favorite Actor, Female.
High Society was well received and has proved to be a perennial favourite. It also turned out to be her final acting performance.She had recently met a handsome Prince Charming who was about to change her life forever.


Royal Marriage

Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier met in May, 1955, when Grace was attending the Cannes Film Festival and had agreed to be photographed with the Prince for "Paris Match." She was 26 years old. The Prince was just a few days shy of being 32 and had recently broken off plans to marry a film actress girlfriend because she was apparently infertile. (She later married and had a baby.) After the photo shoot, the Prince, known as the wealthiest bachelor in the world, and Grace visited the Prince's gardens and small zoo.
Their second meeting was a dinner date and a meeting with Grace's family.
In December, 1955, the engagement of Grace and Prince Rainier was announced. He first gave her an friendship ring of diamonds and rubies. Her engagement ring was a twelve-carat emerald-cut diamond ring.


The Prince wanted a substantial dowry from Grace's wealthy family. $2,000,000 was the final amount the Kelly family agreed to. So that her brother and two sisters wouldn't be shortchanged, the funds were diverted from Grace's inheritance.
Grace was required to take a fertility test prior to their wedding and was advised not make any more movies after the marriage. Grace also signed a marriage agreement in which she agreed that if they divorced, she would relinquish all rights to their children.
The wedding, which actually comprised two ceremonies on successive days, proved one of the most lavish and reported social events of the decade.








April 18, 1956 was the civil ceremony in the palace's baroque throne room. Grace wore a pale pink taffeta dress with cream-colored Alencon lace, white kid gloves, and a Juliet cap. Rainier wore striped trousers, a white vest, gray tie, and a black morning coat. They exchanged their vows in French. There were only 80 guests at the civil ceremony. They held a reception for the citizens of Monaco after the ceremony so that each one could shake hands with the new princess.
April 19, 1956, at 9:30 a.m., 600 guests at the St. Nicholas Cathedral witnessed the religious wedding ceremony at a high mass that was celebrated by the Bishop of Monaco. The flowers decorating the altar and church included white lilacs, hydrangeas, lilies, and snapdragons. It was called "the wedding of the century" by the press. It is estimated that 30 million people watched the wedding on television.
The matron of Honor was Grace's sister, Peggy. There were six bridesmaids. They all wore yellow organdy dresses. The six junior attendants (4 girls and 2 boys) were all dressed in white.
Guests included Cary Grant, Aga Khan, David Niven, Gloria Swanson, Aristotle Onassis, Ava Gardner, heads of state, and diplomats.
The people of Monaco gave the couple a cream and black Rolls-Royce convertible. The luncheon reception was held in the Palace Court of Honor. They sliced the six-tier wedding cake with the Prince's sword.
Their honeymoon was a cruise aboard the "Deo Juvante II" with stops in Villegranche, Spain, and Corsica. Grace reportedly was frequently seasick.
Prince Rainier wore a Napoleonic military type of uniform that he designed himself.
Grace's wedding gown was a gift from the MGM Studio and designed by Helen Rose. It was a high-necked, long-sleeved gown with a fitted torso and billowing skirt made of twenty-five yards of silk taffeta, one hundred yards of silk net, peau de soie, tulle and 125-year-old Brussels rose point lace. She wore a Juliet cap that was decorated with seed pearls, orange blossoms, and a veil of 90 yards of tulle. The chief hairstylist at MGM Studios, Sydney Guilaroff, styled Grace's hair for her wedding. Grace carried a small Bible and a bouquet of lilies-of-the-valley.
Her Legacy

In 1982, Princess Grace lost control of the vehicle in which she and her daughter were travelling. While Princess Stephanie survived the accident with minor injuries, Grace lingered in a coma for barely 24 hours, before she died on 14th September. It was later determined that the Princess had suffered a stroke which had led to the crash.
Actor Jimmy Stewart, left, gave Kelly's eulogy at her highly publicized funeral, saying, "Grace brought into my life as she brought into yours, a soft, warm light every time I saw her, and every time I saw her was a holiday of its own. No question, I'll miss her, we'll all miss her."
 
LA Times

Worst robbery since Brink's!" cried Groucho Marx when Judy Garland ("A Star Is Born") lost best actress of 1954 to Grace Kelly ("The Country Girl"). But Groucho was wrong. It was worse than Brink's.
 
The Guardian

State of Grace



[FONT=arial,helvetica,sans-serif]Curvy dresses, prim white gloves and the Kelly handbag ... more than 50 years after her Hollywood heyday, the effortlessly stylish Princess of Monaco is still inspiring the world's top designers. Bronwyn Cosgrave reports[/FONT]

[FONT=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]Friday July 27, 2007
The Guardian

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'Why not sing about Audrey Hepburn?" a reporter asked the pop star Mika, as his single Grace Kelly topped the UK charts earlier this year. No one, the singer replied, could resist the blonde superstar who managed to seduce the lead actor on almost every film she made - a roll call that reportedly included Gary Cooper, Clark Gable, Ray Milland, Bing Crosby and William Holden. Mika also confessed that he penned Grace Kelly's provocative lyrics - "Am I too dirty? Am I too flirty?" - after enduring an hour-long meeting with record company executives "telling me how I should change to be more commercial".

Twenty-five years after Kelly's death, no fashion legend - not effortlessly chic Hepburn, sultry Elizabeth Taylor or glamorous Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis - can rival her pulling power. Half a century after she used a Hermès saddlebag to shield her pregnancy bump from a Life magazine photographer, the "Kelly" - as the accessory became known - remains an international bestseller. The Princess Grace aura also bolstered Gucci's flagging fortunes when in 2005, the brand's incoming creative director, Frida Giannini, resurrected "Flora" - a perky floral pattern created in 1966 for her Royal Highness as the motif adorning a handbag range and a cruise-wear line. Both became must-haves. And 53 years after Life proclaimed 1954 the "year of Grace" - because of the release of five of her hit films, including Alfred Hitchcock's thrillers Dial M for Murder and Rear Window - the fashion scene is dominated by looks inspired by her glacial glamour.
Next month, Louis Vuitton will debut its autumn 2007 campaign, featuring an ice-cool Scarlett Johansson emulating Kelly as the expertly groomed 50s Hollywood debutante. And Calvin Klein will launch designer Francisco Costa's autumn/winter collection with curvy dresses inspired by Helen Rose, the MGM costumer for the 1955 fairytale High Society. The preppy, elegant wardrobe for the film so pleased Kelly that it became part of the extensive trousseau she sported in 1956 during her wedding to Rainier III, Prince of Monaco. The Prada turban - 2007's most controversial accessory - owes a lot to Kelly too. In her decadent "turban period" - when freewheeling, fortysomething Princess Grace, reportedly separated from Rainier, divided her time between Paris and Monaco in the "company of younger men" - she proved women could look cool on a bad-hair day.
The Grace Kelly Years, a grand exhibition that runs at Monte Carlo's Grimaldi Forum until September 23 and is set to travel to London, attempts to put Kelly the icon into some sort of context. Tracing, chronologically, the origin and impact of her classic style, it presents for the first time a stunning array of screen costumes, lavish Paris couture and luxury accessories in tandem with personal memorabilia, film and sound recordings. The personal finery makes particularly fascinating viewing because Kelly was a power shopper who fastidiously preserved her possessions in a personal archive at the Monte Carlo palace. After her death, a devoted aide fulfilled the duty for a quarter of a century. "She was like a super-governess - a great lady who, charged with the custody of the princess's 250 dresses, took them out every year, ironed them, aired them and made them fresh," explains the exhibition's curator, Frédéric Mitterrand, a former actor and nephew of former French president François Mitterrand. He spent two years inspecting the Princess's wardrobe and selecting the best items for display, including paparazzi-wowing red-carpet Hollywood numbers as well as the couture by Balenciaga, Chanel, Christian Dior, Madame Grès and Yves Saint Laurent that the princess wore while undertaking official duties for the Monégasques.
But by dividing Kelly's life into neat stages, the show glazes over the struggles that she faced. Growing up in Ravenhill, a salubrious part of Philadelphia, Kelly strove to earn the approval of Jack Kelly, her cold-hearted property tycoon father. Kelly's formidable mother, Margaret, who headed the physical education department at the University of Pennsylvania, can take much of the credit for her daughter's commitment and her lithe, dancer's frame.
The scope of Kelly's fashion legacy is underscored in the exhibition by the ice-blue satin ensemble in which Kelly claimed her Oscar for her part in Country Girl. In its sweep and innocent pastel shade, it can claim to be the forerunner of the ceremonial attire created by Prada, Gucci and Ralph Lauren for modern stars as Uma Thurman, Helen Hunt and Gwyneth Paltrow. But the true heart of the exhibition is the Hitchcock room. "Hitchcock was the first director to realise Grace Kelly's talent and make her feel like she was a great actress," Mitterrand explains.
The portly master-craftsman, whose movie contracts included a clause stipulating that he controlled the look of his films - including the costumes - dispatched Kelly and Paramount's expert designer, Edith Head, to the Hermès flagship shop at 24 rue du Faubourg Saint Honoré in Paris. There, the pair would acquire accessories for Kelly's star turn as Frances Stevens, the oil heiress vacationing in Cannes at the Hotel Carlton in To Catch a Thief. "People dress here," explained Hitchcock to his location chief on the film. "It's the place where style is created. So do it."
And at some point as Kelly peeled off her trademark white cloth gloves, and slipped in and out of the butter-soft suede models and hand-embroidered leathers offered up to her on a silver tray at Hermès, she became hooked on the label. Meanwhile, Head discovered Kelly as a perfect muse. "Grace Kelly and I were her pets," confirmed Arlene Dahl, the Paramount actress, describing their relationship with Head. "Edith taught us everything from the bottom up, from the inside out, how to stand and how to hold the train of a dress." In 1954, Head spent $4,000, a then-astronomical sum, acquiring French satin for Kelly's Oscar dress. Like a fond picture postcard, the cloak and dress recalled the fun they had in Paris prepping To Catch a Thief. Its light aquamarine satin dusted with mother-of-pearl beads matched the colour of Kelly's eyes. It was the sort of sugar-spun shade Hitchcock felt best suited his ideal blonde and also evoked the imperious spirit he asked Head to capture while making Kelly's Rear Window wardrobe. "Make her look like a princess," Hitchcock told her.
 
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