Grace Kelly

[Sensibility]

More pictures of HSH Princess Grace of Mónaco:

 

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[Josephine]

FAIRY PRINCESS GRACE
Around 70s...

Scanned by Manderly for Flickr.com

Sensibility I LOVE that photo!!!! Thanks so much.

 

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empas

 

[Sensibility]

I´m glad that you like the photo Josephine, It´s my favorite of Grace!

Carolyn.

 

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mptv

 

[Tony Fersen]

oh that's new ! and strange at first look. Thanks

 

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You are welcome.

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[scriptgirl]

Irish Independent
British newspaper recently launched an urgent search for a missing person, but one with a difference. There was no tearful appeal from distraught family members, no sombre statement of intent from police top brass, just a photo of a beaming brunette and the question: "Do you know this woman?"

The story was that the "mystery girl'' in question had turned up at an open audition to find the new face of Wonderbra. When the lingerie people saw the photo, it was love at first sight, but the photographer had neglected to take the girl's name. Cinderella had fled the ball, leaving just a pretty picture as her glass slipper. The paper ran the photo and Cinderella, aka Katie Green, was rescued from the life she'd imagined for herself, pounding the beat with the Police Force.

A cynic may dismiss the yarn as a case of bra-humbug, but the publicity pay-off has already been huge for the newspaper, for Wonderbra's shareholders and for the young woman who has been catapaulted from zero to hero literally overnight.

Stretching back to the era of silent shorts and wind-up gramophones, the myth of the ordinary Joe plucked from obscurity and launched to stardom is deeply ingrained in movies and pop music, but for genuine cases, modelling beats both hands down.

In 1988, Sarah Doukas of the Storm model agency was flying to London from the US when she spotted a striking 14-year-old girl travelling with her father. Doukas later recalled she'd noticed the youngster's "exceptional bone structure" while waiting in the airport concourse, but had failed to act on impulse. When she realised they were on the same flight, she didn't hesitate a second time, and Kate Moss was snapped up for a stellar future.

Fifteen-year-old Naomi Campbell was out window-shopping when a scout from the Elite model agency appeared at her shoulder and opened the door to a career in modelling. Although she'd appeared in the kids' TV show Grange Hill, striding the catwalk was something that had never occurred to the swan-like teenager. A modelling career was even further from the mind of 18-year-old Sophie Dahl when she was spotted in a London street by fashion editor Isabella Blow.

The size 16 Dahl was in floods of tears after a flaming row with her mother, but Blow's radar penetrated beyond skin-deep and she created perhaps the most reluctant and unlikely supermodel of them all (initially at least).

In the worlds of acting and music, reluctant and unlikely stars are far less likely to be born. Every petrol pump attendant in Hollywood is just waiting for that big break, and every roadie humping amps from the back of a lorry onto a stage longs to be up there letting rip.

Which is not to say that some stars haven't taken unorthodox routes to the top. Hollywood's original Oomph! Girl, Ann Sheridan, starred opposite Cagney, Flynn and Bogart, after her sister submitted her photo to a Hollywood Search For Beauty competition without informing her.

Decades later, Farrah Fawcett was a freshman at Texas University when she won the college's beauty contest. As a matter of routine, photos of winners were forwarded to Hollywood, which quickly came knocking at her mother's door.

Lana Turner was a 16-year-old schoolgirl sipping pop at a soda fountain when she was spotted by a studio stringer and asked if she'd like to be in the movies. Her ambitious mother replied: "When does she start?"

The gifted comic actress Carole Lombard (aka Mrs Clark Gable), was spotted as a 12-year-old playing baseball on the street by director Allan Dwan, who immediately cast her as a tomboy in A Perfect Crime.

Dwan was later auditioning 41-year-old Connie O'Shea, but ended up casting her young daughter who was just along for moral support. Renamed Ida Lupino, she went on to star with Humphrey Bogart in the classics High Sierra and They Drive By Night.

But while many Hollywood greats have their own endearing discovery myths, most of them are just that: myths. Being "discovered" and turned into an overnight sensation usually comes at the end of a lot of hard slog.

Erroll Flynn was supposedly discovered by a casting director who happened across amateur footage of Flynn sailing through New Guinea seas infested by headhunter pirates. While Flynn did sail the high seas as an adventurer, the stirring official story omitted mention of his previous "official'' acting stints treading the boards in Northampton, Glasgow and the West End of London.

Rock Hudson's discovery myth was that he was a humble truck driver when another driver suggested he meet a big-wig Hollywood friend of his. In fact, Hudson had already been thrown off a dramatics course because of poor grades.

John Wayne's legend has it that he was a contented prop man at Fox Studios, when he was spotted by director Raoul Walsh one day unloading furniture from a warehouse on to a truck. In fact, Wayne was humping props on the calculation that if he stuck it long enough, he would eventually find himself in the right place at the right time.

Ditto Oscar-nominee Ryan O'Neal, whose myth is that he was discovered by actor Richard Egan when the two worked out in the same gym. Modestly rejecting credit for turning his anonymous exercise buddy into a star, Egan said: "It was just a matter of Ryan himself being so impressive." No mention of the inconvenient fact that O'Neal's mother, Patricia O'Callaghan, was an actress and his father a Hollywood screenwriter.

A similar level of myth-making has attached itself to the rise of Caroline Aherne, who created Mrs Merton, The Royle Family, and several unforgettable characters from The Fast Show. The daughter of an Irish railway navvy, Aherne's myth is that she was working as a lowly secretary at the BBC when a slot had to be filled at short notice on The Frank Sidebottom Show, and the spontaneously funny secretary jumped at the chance.

While this is true, it omits the facts that Aherne had completed a third-level drama course, and was already working with future Royle Family collaborator Craig Cash in radio comedy.

While it may be a disappointment that some of the most enduring myths in showbiz lore don't hold water, it may also be a surprise to learn that some of Hollywood's brightest lights won their stardom in TV talent shows little different to those swamping today's schedules.

Beginning on ABC in 1948, Hollywood Screen Test took unknown actors, let them pitch themselves to the audience, and then pitted them in scenes with established stars. Grace Kelly and Jack Lemmon were amongst those who got their big break on the show.

And while TV talent shows are filling our screens at the moment, the entertainment industry has already identified the internet as the source of the next big things.

The scouts are out in force, scouring YouTube and other open-access sites for signs of talent. More myths are in the making...

- Damian Corless

 

[scriptgirl]

Seattle Times
Princess Grace's hearse among killer exhibits at Houston museum
By Howard Witt
Chicago Tribune


DAVE EINSEL / CHICAGO TRIBUNE
Ingrid and Michael Fake, of Redding, Pa., view a casket designed for three people while visiting the National Museum of Funeral History in Houston.
HOUSTON — Most people probably don't recall that one of the munchkins in "The Wizard of Oz" was a mortician. But Bob Boetticher Sr. knows. In fact, he has a life-size, costumed mannequin of the undersize undertaker perched in his office at the National Museum of Funeral History.

"There are only four munchkins still left, and Meinhardt Raabe, who played the coroner, is one of them," said Boetticher, the museum president. "Once he passes away, then we will probably put him out on display."

You don't have to be dead to get into this museum. But it helps.

Hidden inside a brick building on the north edge of Houston, next door to a school for aspiring funeral directors, the funeral museum is easy enough to whistle right past. But for the 8,000 or so visitors who make their way here each year, the rewards are eternal.

There are few other places, for example, where the public can learn about the history of embalming, which, in the 1920s, entailed the use of a slanted table with a hole in the bottom and a bucket.

There are more than a dozen hearses, from horse-drawn carriages to the 1973 Mercedes-Benz model used to ferry Princess Grace of Monaco to her grave.

The museum, one of only two in the nation devoted to the history of the funeral industry (the other is in Springfield, Ill.), opened in 1992. And although the museum's motto, adopted from a defunct mausoleum company, is humorous — "Any Day Above Ground is a Good One" — the facility strives to maintain a certain level of good taste.

That means empty caskets of all shapes and styles are OK, as are such bizarre artifacts as 19th-century pieces of jewelry fashioned from the hair of deceased loved ones and "ice caskets" used to preserve bodies in the days before chemical embalming was invented.

But other rarities stored in the museum's collection may never see the light of day, such as the table used to embalm Elvis Presley.

"How do you display that tastefully and appropriately?" asked Boetticher, a funeral director for 43 years. "Is it really part of the history of the funeral industry? These are the questions we grapple with."

The Ronald Reagan funeral collection is as deep as it is quirky, including a pair of black leather boots worn by a member of the military caisson team, a red necktie worn by one of the mourners at the funeral and a wind strap — basically a long black rubber band — used to secure the flag on the president's coffin.

This being Texas, the nonprofit museum is huge, featuring 20,000 square feet of exhibit space. A gift shop features toy hearses, chocolate caskets and tie tacks in the shape of tiny shovels.

 

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cnn
JIM BITTERMANN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over He was one of the longest serving monarchs of one of the smallest countries in the world, and Prince Rainier III of Monaco deserves much credit for keeping and putting and keeping his tiny principality on the map. At first, the dashing, young prince used the reflected glamour of the French Riviera to attract growing numbers of tourists to his casino and hotels. But it was his whirlwind courtship and eventual marriage to American movie actress Grace Kelly that gave Monaco the glittering image that continues to draw the cruise liners full of visitors, even today.

Prince Rainier, not always comfortable in public, worked behind the scenes to burnish and benefit from Monaco's glittering image. He fought to keep Monaco independent from France, and to preserve its status as a tax haven -- something that led columnist Art Buchwald to label Monaco a sunny place for shady people.

Members of the Monaco jetset call Rainier the builder for the way he packed the once obscure fishing village Monte Carlo with high-rise apartments to shelter and protect the rich.

STEPHEN BERN, "LE FIGARO" NEWSPAPER: Monaco and southern France are in shock after the surprise announcement of the death of Princess Grace.

BITTERMANN: But that focus on the family turned tragic in 1982, when Monaco's magic came to an end for Prince Rainier. The car carrying his princess plummeted off one of the tiny country's winding roads, and the next day she was dead.

There was shock and sorrow around the world, but no more so than in the royal family itself. At the funeral, Prince Rainier repeatedly broke down in tears. The loss of Princess Grace, the pillar of the family, had a great impact on him, and many said the children, too. Caroline and Stephanie were soon making the covers of all the gossip magazines, their lives rich with scandalous behavior and tragic affairs.

Prince Albert now takes power in Monaco, but the real question is not the succession, but whether Monaco itself can prosper in the same way it did under Prince Rainier, the shy man who fought during more than a half century in power to turn an undistinguished family fiefdom to into a capital of fantasy, wealth and glamour.

 

[scriptgirl]

Forbes
glar, is asked why he came to the French Riviera. "To meet someone as lovely as you," he says, speaking not to Grace Kelly, the woman he'll eventually fall for, but to her less charming and more bejeweled mother. It's a harmless flirtation, really. But it is just the kind of flattery the Principality of Monaco doesn't want nowadays. Don't come looking for the old gal at the roulette table, nursing the Campari and fingering her diamond choker. Monaco wants to be fresh and young, speeding down the Cõte d'Azur in a Sunbeam Alpine roadster with the top down.

The real question, then, is how to change the reputation of this three-mile-long country nestled between the foothills of the French Alps and the Mediterranean. Modern-day Monaco, after all, was built thanks to the economic foresight of the late Prince Rainier and strengthened by the legend of his love for Princess Grace. The answer seems to be "if you build it, they will come." For the first time in 75 years, the principality has opened a new hotel, the $260-million Monte-Carlo Bay Hotel & Resort. Prince Albert II was on hand to cut the ribbon, and the results are, indeed, successfully modern.

To get to Monaco, one usually flies into Nice. From there, it's a quick car ride or helicopter trip to the resort's own helipad. There are certain colors that only look good next to water. Salmon is one of them. From the air, the hotel is a smudge of that perfectly selected hue against the deep blue of the Mediterranean. I didn't want to go inside and had to fight the temptation to spend the day staring at the craggy coastline. The resort makes the transition easier with its airy, impossibly high-ceilinged lobby. Here, the modernization effort is in full force, with bright red walls and black marble etched to resemble the sea itself.

Guest rooms are simple and tasteful--just the right amount of marble--with the requisite 42-inch flat-screen television. I barely noticed it, though, my eyes immediately finding the private terrace--my own fair-weather sitting room and the perfect place to enjoy breakfast while envying the guests brave enough to go for an early October morning swim in the chilly sea.

The hotel encompasses three restaurants and a lounge, but right in its backyard is the Sporting Monte-Carlo, housing the legendary Jimmy'z nightclub. I paid 22 euros (about $27) for a rather dainty gin and tonic and the privilege of partying with Monaco's glitterati on the same dance floor where Paris Hilton met her like-named erstwhile fiancé. I learned quickly not to mention this fact to a Monegasque. They want to be associated with youth and class.

The Monte-Carlo Bay Hotel & Resort has actually not been honestly named--the area formally called Monte-Carlo is a shuttle ride away. The trip is free, since the hotel's owner, Société des Bains de Mer, also runs Monte-Carlo's two most famous hotels: "The Hõtel de Paris is the place to go. The Hõtel Hermitage is the place to stay" is an oft-invoked rule of thumb. Unlike the Monte-Carlo Bay, both are done in classic, Old World style. On my way in to dinner at the Hõtel de Paris, I ogled bottles from the hotel's famed wine cellar--30,000 of its 250,000 bottles are more than 20 years old.

I dined at Le Grill, the lighter of two Alain Ducasse restaurants in the Hõtel de Paris. Don't be fooled. The Monegasques, like the French, never take a meal lightly. I enjoyed six courses, including rouget en filets, pumpkin risotto and filet de Saint Pierre grillé. But the highlight was dessert: Le Grill's renowned soufflé au Grand Marnier. Made to share with a group of four, it alone is worth the seven-hour trip to the Riviera.

After such a meal and an evening spent at the very casino where Cary Grant first drew Grace Kelly's attention by carefully dropping a chip into an unsuspecting gambler's cleavage, the next day calls for lolling about on the Monte-Carlo Bay's grounds. I walked among ten acres of immaculately groomed landscaping, which include 100-year-old olive trees and palms flown in from Morocco. And then there's the pool, the likes of which Monaco has never seen. It begins indoors and flows outside. Half is heated, and half is sand-bottomed, in case the view of the sea from one of the many wooden bridges over it isn't enough.

A fellow guest and I quibbled over whether the grounds were more Vegas or South Beach. Perhaps we were both right. In its makeover Monaco has stumbled upon the ghost of Princess Grace, inadvertently becoming as American as those it seeks to court.--STEPHANIE COOPERMAN

 

[scriptgirl]

San Francisco Chronicle
t was, as the French say, un coup de coeur -- something like love at first sight, but stronger -- when Josephine Baker saw Chateau des Milandes above the Dordogne River in southwestern France.

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It was 1937. She was the black waif from St. Louis who had taken Paris by storm and still reigned supreme, dancing to hot jazz in little more than sequins and feathers. Photographers snapped her picture when she strolled the Champs-Elysées with her pet cheetah, Chiquita; Jean Cocteau celebrated her in verse; mystery writer Georges Simenon fell in love with her; and Alice B. Toklas created a dessert called Custard Josephine Baker.

Most Americans remember her only as the black Cinderella who left a racially segregated United States, and found stardom and acceptance in France. But Baker was more than a Jazz Age siren, as visitors discover at the Chateau des Milandes, the fairy-tale castle where she lived from 1947 until the late '60s, raised 12 orphans and created a theme park dedicated to multiculturalism long before the term was coined.

Baker, a civil rights advocate who refused to perform in segregated American clubs, dreamed big. But she went broke trying to turn the chateau into a showplace for racial harmony and ultimately, she and what she called her "rainbow tribe" had to abandon it.

Privately owned thereafter, the 15th century castle and gardens were purchased in 2001 by Henry and Claude de la Barre, who began restoring them. Now, the chateau is a museum dedicated to Baker, managed by the de la Barres' 30-year-old daughter, Angelique.

I arrived on June 3 for the 100th anniversary of Baker's birth, when a statue of the music hall star was unveiled in the village of Castelnaud-la-Chapelle below the chateau. It was my first visit to the Dordogne, a region of manicured farm fields, mounded hills, placid rivers and meandering back roads about a four-hour train ride from Paris.

At almost every turn is a turreted castle or terrace restaurant specializing in the area's acclaimed cuisine. Markets sell such local delicacies as truffles, foie gras, wild strawberries and mushrooms, farm-raised lamb, plums, white asparagus and Monbazillac wine.

Baker is credited with helping attract visitors to the region, although with its classic French country charm, it was probably destined to be discovered. The English have been especially susceptible to coups de coeur here, converting old stone farmhouses and tumbledown chateaux into vacation homes. English is widely spoken, and shops in villages sell British newspapers along with French lottery tickets.

I rented a cottage at La Grande Marque, an old farmhouse with a tennis court and swimming pool on a wooded hillside overlooking the village of Siorac. Jennifer and Michael Cockcroft, the English owners, spend most of their time cooking for guests or advising them about nearby Michelin-starred restaurants, mowing the lawn or dead-heading roses. (This is shaping up to be a banner year for roses in the Dordogne, with blossoms so big and copious that they strain the bushes.)

I would have been happy enough to simply smell them at La Grande Marque, but I was distracted by other pleasures. I rode a bike to the sleepy village of Berbiguieres, wandered through the medieval market town of Sarlat and spent a long, sunny afternoon kayaking on the Dordogne.

Returning from my rambles with gastronomic prizes, I cooked up feasts in my cottage's kitchenette and ate at a table on the lawn.

My principle objective was to get to know the Chateau des Milandes and the beautiful, headstrong woman who lived here. The late Gothic/early Renaissance castle was built in 1489 by François de Caumont for his wife, Claude de Cardaillac. But like other embellishments, the medallions that honor him on the chimney of the small dining room were added by a later owner, Charles Claverie, who began a full-scale restoration in 1900.

Thanks to him, the building was in relatively good repair in 1947, when Baker married bandleader Jo Bouillon in the chateau's chapel and moved in.

Baker added electricity, modern plumbing, a pool and tennis courts, and decorated the guestrooms in the styles of different countries. The Art Deco bathrooms reflect the taste of the Jazz Age diva -- one is tiled in the colors of an Arpege perfume bottle, the scent she preferred.

De la Barre and daughter found and reassembled much of the Baker-era furniture and memorabilia, including a stunning series of nude art photos of the star known as the black Venus.

The grand salon, devoted to her music hall costumes, has a prize: Baker's risque belt of gold bananas, worn with little else.

Other displays tell stories about less well-known facets of her life, especially her work with the French Resistance during World War II. Before the fall of France, she performed for French soldiers; during the occupation, she is said to have passed important information about German troop movements, written on sheet music in invisible ink. In 1961, her adopted country awarded her the French Legion of Honor for her war efforts.

Unable to have children of her own, Baker began adopting infants and assembling her rainbow tribe in 1954: first, Akio from Korea, Teruya from Japan, Jari from Finland and Luis from Colombia, followed by eight more little ones from around the world. The nursery had a row of diminutive beds and the children were raised speaking the languages and worshiping in the religions of the countries from which they came.

Akio Bouillon, who was at the chateau for the 100th anniversary of Baker's birth, told me that his mother cooked spaghetti for the family every Sunday night. "She was like a rock," he said. "For us, she seemed immortal."

In the kitchen, a 1969 photo of Baker in a bathrobe, shower cap and dark glasses recalls one of the saddest episodes in her life. Fundamentally impractical and profligate with money, she was deeply in debt by the late 1950s. Although Brigitte Bardot, Princess Grace of Monaco and many others tried to bail her out, she kept pouring money into the castle resort, with ever-diminishing tourist receipts. The chateau was sold out from under her in 1968 to pay off creditors. Several months later, she broke into the property and camped on the kitchen steps in the pitiable state depicted in the photo.

Princess Grace ultimately found a new home in Monaco for the self-styled universal mother and her children, and Baker continued to perform, although her star was waning. She died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1975 while launching a comeback in Paris.

Baker still has her fans. They come to the chateau to pay homage to an icon in a banana belt and find, instead, a stubbornly idealistic flesh-and-blood woman who wanted to believe that people could live together, regardless of race and religion. She may have lived in a castle, but the fairy tale ended, leaving her Cinderella again.

If you go

 

[scriptgirl]

ebay

 

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Tranz

 

[Sensibility]

I like your last photo. The Grace´s dress is very fashionable. Now Vogue Spain has published an speciall report of greek dresses.

Best Wishes.
Carolyn.

 

[scriptgirl]

mptv