Grace Kelly

[nmyngan]

corbis

 

[Sensibility]

On the occasion of the Christmas holidays, we could do a tribute to the princess at Christmas. What do you think about it?​

here a photo from Tasha Page:​

"Mónaco, 1972"​

 

[MeCari]

Nice styles so much as and her grandchildren! I love them!

 

[scriptgirl]

newscom

 

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corbis

 

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dvd emporium

 

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ebay

 

[scriptgirl]

Forbes
It was the tabloid newspaper story that had everything.

A gorgeous doomed heiress in an irreversible coma, her charming rogue of a second husband under suspicion for putting her there. An earlier playboy prince and a car crash. Newport society. A controversial photo of a leather-clad Claus in Vanity Fair. Harvard law professors. Reporting by Dominick Dunne. Celebrity witnesses including Truman Capote. Enormous wealth, feuding children, an "other" women being a stunning actress and a curious maid who unearthed a sinister black bag.

There was also a mansion so splendid that Hollywood borrowed it for the set of a Crosby-Sinatra-Grace Kelly film called High Society, musically accompanied by Louis Armstrong.

 

[scriptgirl]

The Hindu
CARY GRANT once quipped that everybody wanted to be Cary Grant. "Even I want to be Cary Grant."

This, in essence, is what Grant was all that he made himself to be. Grant, born Archie Leach some 100 years ago, created a completely new person, and perfected, over the years, being that person.

An exception


Those who have watched Grant closely say that unlike most actors who are not very different from their screen images, Cary was an exception. Grace Kelly, the legendary Princess of Monaco, remarked when she was shooting Hitchcock's masterpiece, "To Catch A Thief", that "the accent, the walk, the double takes — he invented them all".

Grant himself said that often. "I was very conscious of my lack of education when I started. I did not want it to show, so I invented an accent. The walk I got from my days as an acrobat. The rest I stole from Noel Coward."

 

[scriptgirl]

The Independent
Piers Morgan: My favourite moments on Planet Tabloid
You couldn't make it up... Piers Morgan recounts some of his most outrageous edit-and-tell revelations from a decade spent at the grubbier end of Fleet Street
Monday, 5 September 2005

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Hunter S Thompson once described the music business as "a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side."

It was such a great line that, like all good plagiarists, I promptly nicked it to use as the basis for my own view of Fleet Street: "Journalism is full of lying, cheating, drunken, cocaine-sniffing, unethical people. It's a wonderful profession." And so it is.

When I was so unceremoniously and cruelly turfed out of the Mirror - oh, all right, I know you all found it terribly funny - I immediately resolved to spend my new spare time writing a book about newspapers.

When I looked back over the diaries of my 11-year editing career, I simply felt amused. Most of it was hilarious. I decided to write it in a way that reflects the bizarre planet of tabloid newspapers, incorporating heroes and villains, and a few oddities that just made me smile. These are some of my favourite moments:

BEST TIP RUPERT MURDOCH EVER GAVE ME:

In the week Ronnie Kray died, we got a brilliant exclusive photo of him lying in his coffin. I laid out the front page in funereal black borders with a whacking image of Ronnie's corpse under the headline RONNIE KRAY - THE LAST PICTURE. I had no doubts it would sell papers on the shock value alone.

At 5pm, the proprietor called for his weekly chat, and I was very confident he'd be pleased.

"We've got a great splash, Mr Murdoch. The only picture of Ronnie Kray lying in state."

"What? Dead? You're splashing on a dead body?"

"Urm, yes, Mr Murdoch."

Pause.

"Look, it's not my job to edit the papers, Piers, but one thing I can tell you is that stiffs don't sell papers. They sell American magazines. The National Enquirer sold out twice with Elvis's corpse, but not papers. Ring your mate Kelvin and ask him about Grace Kelly then call me back."

I rang Kelvin MacKenzie and he chuckled. "Bloody Grace Kelly. Ha! Trouble is, he was right. I thought the photos of her lying in state would sell buckets of papers but the bloody sale fell off a cliff. And he'd warned me not to do it, so when he saw the figures he went mad. I'd ring him back and say you've had a rather dramatic rethink and decided not to splash on Ronnie Kray's rotting body if I were you."

I did. Unfortunately, I hurriedly replaced it with a photo of Earl Spencer's wife in a clinic and ended up with the biggest public rebuke ever handed to an editor by a proprietor. The same Mr Murdoch who had told me NOT to splash on Ronnie Kray's dead body.

 

[scriptgirl]

6abc
Tam Edwards Shows Us Grace Kelly's Bridal Dress
Friday, June 09, 2006 | 11:17 AM
By Tamala Edwards
April 27, 2006 -- Wedding season is almost here... So Action News is starting an occasional series, on all things bridal.

We begin this morning, with a wedding dress, fit for a princess. It is a fairy tale dress designed for a fairy tale wedding. It's the gown worn by Philadelphia's Grace Kelly in her wedding to Prince Rainier of Monaco 50 years ago this month. It's the centerpiece of a new exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Kristina Haugland/Phila. Museum of Art: "It's very detailed, but very simple... high neck, low sleeves... and was designed to really set off her beauty." Every top designer offered to make the dress, but the actress chose her team in Hollywood.

It was finally unveiled just two days before the wedding. Within 24 hours, copies of it could be found at every price point. But the original is home here in Philadelphia, a gift from a princess to her hometown. It continues to influence brides a half century later.

You can also see what her bridesmaids wore and even see a hidden secret inside her shoes! The exhibition continues until May 21.

 

[scriptgirl]

Columbus Dispatch

Museum shows Grace Kelly?s gown
Fifty years ago, film star Grace Kelly married Prince Rainier III of Monaco, head of Europe?s oldest ruling family. The wedding on April 19, 1956, brought together the worlds of monarchy and celebrity.

Of special interest was the silk and lace bridal gown designed for Kelly by Academy Award-winning designer Helen Rose. To commemorate the anniversary of the royal wedding, the Philadelphia Museum of Art is presenting "Fit for a Princess: Grace Kelly?s Wedding Dress" through May 21.

 

[scriptgirl]

Jamaica Observer

he political danse macabre which attended the US courts' decision to let Terri Schiavo's useless body follow her long-disused mind had hardly begun to subside when the Vatican announced that the long ailing Pope John Paul II had finally given up the ghost; and in the US the political circus flared anew (as did, the world over, what was clearly genuine grief). Between them, they quite dwarfed two other noteworthy passings. The Nobel Prize-winning American novelist Saul Bellow died last week; and so did Monaco's Prince Rainier.

Rainier (since the last shall be first) ruled a kingdom about the size of UWI's Mona campus. The tiny principality was nearly bankrupt when the Prince - the latest in a royal line which has survived unbroken for 700 years - succeeded his grandfather, Louis II, in 1949.

Within 10 years he had turned things around, rescuing Monaco's image by marrying the ineffable blonde goddess of Hollywood, Grace Kelly, and rescuing its bottom line by luring the Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis to invest in it.

Under Rainier, Monaco boomed afresh. It did so in step with the founding of Disney World in the US, and was in fact the transatlantic, upmarket version of that epochal cultural innovation of the fifties: the notion that life should be 'fun'. Monaco is best known today for its legendary casino at Monte Carlo (and, by the paparazzi, for the 'Sex and the City' antics of Rainier's and Grace's daughters, Caroline and Stephanie).

But more significantly, Grace Kelly's marriage to Rainier marked the moment when, for the first time, Hollywood stardom proved powerful enough to lift one of its denizens off the silver screen and into affairs of State. Just a couple years later, another blonde sex goddess, Marilyn Monroe, was slipping into John F Kennedy's bed - in a nice incestuousness, the US president's widow would herself marry Rainier's backer, Onassis, before too long - and a dime-a-dozen cowboy actor called Ronald Reagan was already eyeing a larger, real-life role for himself. Never before in human history had a penchant for pretence (for what else is acting?) been acclaimed to be sufficient preparation for public life.

 

[scriptgirl]

The Australian
allet that mixes sex and Grace
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Corrie Perkin | September 19, 2006

Article from: The Australian
THERE are no evil fairies nor a swan in sight. The Australian Ballet's Raymonda, which has its premiere in Melbourne tonight, doesn't even have a tutu on stage until act three.


Glamour: Kirsty Martin and Damien Welch in Raymonda. Picture: Stuart McEvoy

What the $1 million production lacks in ballet tradition, however, it makes up for in glamour and sex. And if the warm response at the preview yesterday is an indication, audiences will enjoy the elaborate sets, the 160-plus costumes, the music and the storyline.
In devising his three-act ballet, choreographer Stephen Baynes turned for inspiration to the real-life courtship between Hollywood siren Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier of Monaco in the 1950s.

"Grace Kelly, Diana Spencer and even Mary Donaldson - they are fabulous stories, and they're very real stories," said Baynes, a resident choreographer at the AB.

"And while Raymonda is not a profound story, it is possible that when a modern career woman marries into royalty, she has to make huge adjustments to her life."

Baynes's Raymonda is light years away from the original 1898 Marius Petipa production, originally performed by the Russian Imperial Ballet. Petipa's version is a medieval love story between a beautiful girl, Raymonda, and the bold knight who adored her.

While the knight is away fighting in the Crusader holy wars, a charismatic Saracen warrior tries to seduce her.

The knight arrives home just in time, kills the warrior, and marries Raymonda.

"The plot, well, that's all done with by one-third of the way through the second act, and the rest of it is literally dance, dance, dance," said Baynes, who saw his first Raymonda as a young boy in the 1960s.

"As far as ballets go, Raymonda was always one of the less dramatic ones," said AB artistic director David McAllister. "I love Stephen's choreographic style and language, and I thought that this was the kind of music he'd do something wonderful with."

And therein lies the secret to a ballet that New York magazine described in 2004 as "something of an ugly duckling among the classics".

Baynes describes Russian composer Aleksandr Glazunov's score as "what everyone imagines - well, (what) I imagine - ballet music to be ... It's up there with Tchaikovsky".

In the AB's current version, which will travel to Adelaide and Sydney after its Melbourne season, Raymonda is a beautiful actress in 1950s Hollywood who falls in love with the prince of a small European country.

On the eve of their wedding, Raymonda knocks back a couple of drinks to calm her nerves, passes out on the sofa and dreams that her glamorous movie life collides dramatically with the life of royalty that she is about to embark on.

"It won't have the drama of Onegin or the potency of Swan Lake," said Baynes. "But I hope the audience will like it."

 

[scriptgirl]

San Diego Tribune

MONACO – Prince Rainier III, who reshaped this Riviera backwater into a sparkling hide-out for the rich, is 81 and ailing. And some wonder whether after his reign ends, medieval-modern Monaco's fate will be to melt away into neighboring France.

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Such talk, heresy to most Monegasques, is uttered only in hushed tones, and no crisis is necessarily imminent. The line of succession, on which Monaco's independence hangs, is assured through Albert, Rainier's popular 46-year-old bachelor son. And if his shy, retiring nature drives him to abdicate, sisters Caroline or Stephanie can step in.

But the world is changing fast around Monaco. Its French neighbors now belong to a 25-nation European Union bent on eradicating old anomalies and harmonizing its tax laws to undercut fiscal havens like Monaco. To survive, the tiny principality will likely need a tough-minded ruler.

For many close to the inner circle, such as Nadia Lacoste, Albert is plainly up to the job. Lacoste was palace spokeswoman in the heady days of Princess Grace, the actress Grace Kelly, who married Rainier in 1956 and was killed in a car crash on a hairpin bend in 1982.

"Albert will be a wonderful prince," she told The Associated Press. "On his own, he'll show a dynamic personality and effective leadership."

Albert himself outlined his dilemma in a rare interview with the Paris daily Le Monde: "If I say something against my father, people think I'm impatient to replace him. If I say nothing, I'm seen as an imbecile."

Still, other insiders expect Albert to withdraw from public life. None agree to be quoted by name, fearing regal wrath. Despite its velvet trimmings and elected legislature, they say, Monaco is run by fiat as it has been for nine centuries.

Rainier was hospitalized twice this year. For three weeks, he was treated for "general fatigue." In March, he spent 12 more days in the hospital for what the palace said were heart problems.

In Paris, authorities refuse comment on such a touchy issue as the status of Monaco. If assured of anonymity, however, some wonder aloud how much longer the principality can survive intact.

European Union officials are equally tightlipped about the fate of Monaco and other quirks of European history and geography such as San Marino in Italy, the Channel islands between England and France, and Andorra in the Pyrenees. But in private conversations, Monaco's future is a question.

Although no bigger than Central Park in New York, Monaco has all the trappings of an independent state – a seat at the United Nations, a passport and postage stamps, and a Legislative Council that drafts bills for the prince to sign.

But the French shadow is everywhere. Monaco's language is French, the currency was French francs and is now the euro, and visitors can breeze down the Riviera highway and into the principality without even realizing it.

The prince chooses his prime minister from among three French officials selected in Paris.

In 1962, President Charles de Gaulle resolved an economic dispute with a bald show of force. Rainier backed down in a face-saving compromise, but no one missed the broader message – Monaco exists at France's pleasure.

In 2000, three French auditors declared that Monaco was too lenient on money launderers. Now, quietly but increasingly, people speculate that a future French government will be tempted to exert sovereignty in the absence of a strong leader.

Whatever happens, Rainier's shoes will be hard to fill.

The prince has spent half a century remaking Monaco. His marriage to Grace Kelly at the peak of her Hollywood fame ("High Noon," "Rear Window," "Dial M for Murder") brought Monaco into the realm of fairy tale. After her death, Rainier channeled his grief into yet more public works.

Monaco's population of 32,000 includes only 7,080 citizens, but it has grown by 20 percent on land reclaimed from the Mediterranean.

A $328 million floating breakwater expanded the harbor capacity by a third to accommodate luxury cruise ships.

After high-rise apartments climbed up the mountainside, builders dug deep for underground office space and yet more parking for Ferraris and Lamborghinis.

Old Monaco perches on a looming rock, with the prince's storybook palace, the cathedral where Grace's remains are entombed, and a few narrow cobbled streets of government ministries and tourist shops.

Below is Monte Carlo and a small port choked with the giant white yachts of European industry kings and Middle Eastern potentates.

An exotic botanical garden, vibrant bougainvillea and lush flower beds splash the concrete with color. The fanciest designer names label downtown shops. Banks are ubiquitous; litter is not.

But with all of its transformation, the principality has yet to shake the epithet from pre-World War II days: A sunny place for shady people.

Monaco offers access to the enlarged European Union with few of its legal constraints. It levies no income tax and depends heavily on sales taxes, though the French and Americans are subject to their home country's taxes. Monte Carlo's fabled gaming tables are still awash in money.

The principality says little about its finances, but official U.S. estimates put the gross domestic product near $900 million, making the per capita income of more than $27,000 among the world's highest.

Private international watchdog groups have faulted its bank secrecy and EU authorities have pressed it to be more transparent. In December, the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development named only five countries as uncooperative tax havens: Andorra, Liberia, Liechtenstein, the Marshall Islands and Monaco.

Ariane Picco-Margossian, head of Monaco's special unit to quash financial fraud, recently briefed a news conference on money laundering.

She said 110 cases were investigated in 2003, and 19 were prosecuted. After rigorous questioning, she estimated the total under suspicion at about $120 million over four years.

But reporters pressing for details – such as whether Russian criminal money was involved – were answered with a smile, a shrug or silence.

"I love Monaco because it's not really part of the world," photographer Helmut Newton told The Associated Press just before his death in December. "It's a happy corner at the edge of everything."

Although he often traveled to his native Berlin, Newton made his headquarters here, along with Swedish tennis legend Bjorn Borg and a range of international notables.

If the ornate old casino and Cafe de Paris slot machines bring in only 4 percent of Monaco's wealth, they set the tone. All night, high-rollers in black tie mingle with sloppily dressed tour-bus crowds.

Elaborate remodeling has revived the grandeur of the Hotel Metropole, a Belle Epoque landmark that Rainier refused to let Aristotle Onassis demolish when the Greek shipping magnate was a major investor in Monaco.

Still, the principality's character has changed dramatically over the years.

"Visitors came for an entire season," said Jacques Ferreyrolles, 83, whose family has run the Balmoral Hotel since 1896. "They had style, a sense of class. Now they just come and go in a few days."

Although a fortunate few pay $100 for wild asparagus risotto at Alain Ducasse's three-star Louis XV restaurant at the Hotel de Paris, many more go for beer and burgers at the dockside Stars 'N' Bars.

Ferreyrolles misses the Princess Grace era of glamour and excitement. "It is tragic," he said. "The Americans now, they don't even change for dinner."

Monaco's government clearly feels the need to adapt to this new European order, shifting away from its image as a private family business run as a millionaires' playground. Also, it needs a broader tax base.

"Without any doubt, we must diversify, bring in new industries and businesses that go beyond casinos and tourism," Frank Biancheri, the economy minister, said in an interview.

The old attraction is waning. Perpetually jammed traffic dampens the Mediterranean mood. Prices are high. A two-room fixer-upper can cost more than a million dollars.

The royal mystique is wearing thin for many Monegasques.

Caroline's third husband, Prince Ernst August of Hanover, has been in trouble for punching out a German photographer and a hotel owner. Caroline runs her mother's charities, while waging a long court battle to keep journalists from prying into her life.

Stephanie, with two children born out of wedlock, periodically scandalizes Monaco. She divorced her husband of 18 months when he was pictured with a Belgian stripper. She then married a circus acrobat.

On the back streets, some Monegasques are downright rude about the ruling family, which they blame for high prices and a wasteful lifestyle. But others see a different picture.

Lucie Rinaldi, a ship chandler in the old port for 40 years, shrugged when asked what she thought about the future.

"We don't know much about what happens up on the rock," she said, "but we know what the prince has done for Monaco. We will miss him and, whatever happens next, the place won't be the same."

 

[scriptgirl]

Box Office Prophets

6) To Catch a Thief

While I always appreciate Alfred Hitchcock as an auteur and one of the most stylish directors who ever worked in the realm of cinema, I believe that his best films were the ones that featured the resplendent Grace Kelly. Of the three films she did with the famed helmer, I prefer Rear Window, but we're not talking about thrillers this week. No, our topic is romance, and although To Catch a Thief contains a fair share of intrigue and mystery, its centerpiece is the sparks that fly between Kelly and Cary Grant.

Grant portrays John Robie, a former cat burglar who has retired from crime, but soon finds himself the prime suspect in a series of crimes taking place on the French Riviera. As he sets about trying to prove his innocence (and assisting an insurance investigator in his attempt to solve the crime), he encounters Frances Stevens, the lovely daughter of one of the vacationing noveaux riche. The chemistry between them is instantaneous, and the banter that they toss about is laced with innuendo and keen wit. Frances does become suspicious of John's motives (and justifiably so – he has lied to her about his identity and occupation), but that doesn't stop one of the iconic romantic scenes in movie history to occur. It may seem trite to those who have been watching romantic movies for years and years, but Hitchcock was the originator of the deep, heartfelt kiss that takes place against the backdrop of a massive fireworks display.

And yet, surprisingly enough, that's not even the film's climactic scene. That comes a fair ways later in the film, as John and Frances conspire to force the real criminal to reveal himself. The perceived heat between them plays heavily into their plans, and leads to an end scene that is giddy, humorous and altogether charming. Grant and Kelly really are among the best of the best. (Kim Hollis/BOP)



Whenever I am asked to name my favorite movie of all time, I inevitably receive the same awkward pause after I answer "To Catch a Thief." People look me up and down for a moment, trying to determine what my angle is. After all, a conformist would answer something stubbornly populist such as Star Wars, The Godfather or The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. Those are nice, safe answers that casual acquaintenances deem acceptable. A cinephile would mention some Eastern European film no one can pronounce or reference some arcane title from the dawn of movie making. It makes them sound smart for some reason I've never quite understood. Even a Hitchcock elitist would answer something more legendary such as Vertigo, Rear Window or Psycho. Those are his most lauded creations, the safe selections as it were.

I have no problem with any of the options offered above. It's merely that I don't see the point in lying about the topic. None of them is my favorite. What I love is a classic Hitchcock romance which oozes wit and starpower. The movie that moves me like no other is To Catch a Thief.

The timing is the key. Rarely did Hitchcock delve into the world of shameless commercialism, but he had reached a crossroads in his career after Dial M for Murder and Rear Window. It was time to do something lighter, an entire movie extension of the flirtatious scenes from Rear Window. To accomplish this, he was going to need the most debonair man in the acting world. So, the first step was to reunite with the star of his 1946 release, Notorious. Fortunately, Cary Grant was available after a couple of Howard Hawkes projects. Meanwhile, Grace Kelly was ready to follow up the raves she had received for Rear Window by proving once and for all that she was the archetype for the ice queen blonde bombshell Hitchcock preferred. They are, in my opinion, the greatest male and female stars in Hollywood's long and illustrious history. With them signed on, the stars had aligned literally and figuratively for To Catch a Thief.

All that was left was a screenplay, and that was a snap since David Dodge's novel of the same title was recently released. Dodge was a famous mystery writer whose quirky entry into the industry is a popular anecdote in publishing circles. He grew so frustrated with the lackluster novel he was reading that he bet his wife he could write a better mystery. From there, a franchise was born as James "Whit" Whitney's Death and Taxes became a huge hit in the 1940s. It was his Hitchcock work that has proven to be his most lasting contribution, though.

To Catch a Thief tells the story of a reformed thief and World War II veteran whose war buddies suspect he is up to his old tricks once more. As a series of heists occur across the French Riviera, an insurance adjuster arrives in time to figure out if he owes a payout to a victim. He also hopes to prevent another rich widow from losing her jewels to the man known as The Cat. That woman proves to be the mother of a headstrong, impossibly gorgeous daughter who finds herself drawn to the man under investigation for the crimes. And the sparks fly from there.

I referenced in the listing for Notting Hill that it had one of the two most romantic scenes in movie history. To Catch a Thief is the other, and it's the scene that has become more legendary than the movie itself. The couple fences with words as they sit on the couch of a suite overlooking the French Riviera. It's a dance with danger for Kelly's character, Frances Stevens, as she boldly celebrates her attraction to the bad boy. For Grant's character, John "The Cat" Robie, it's a battle against temptation as he resists the urge to allow himself to be seduced by the American debutante he refuses to let in. As the two finally give in to their temptation and celebrate the glory of the moment, fireworks explode in the background. This was a hallmark cinematographic accomplishment of its era that has been copied innumerable times in the half century since its release.

I have seen over 10,000 movies in my lifetime. I have never seen one with the romantic chemistry possessed between Cary Grant and Grace Kelly in To Catch A Thief. That alone justifies its presence as one of the ten most romantic movies of all time. (David Mumpower/BOP)

 

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Hulton

 

[nmyngan]

family pic in 4506 is so lovely

alamy

 

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Scope