by Donald Spoto
There are three constellations of characters in The Swan—a celestial metaphor reinforced by frequent references to telescopes, stars, astronomy lessons and the vastness of the universe. Beatrice and her household represent an old and now inadequate way of life. Albert and his mother stand for a kind of royalty that can still be relevant in a modern world—a working family mindful of the need for a new social order. And Nicholas and Alexandra (a noteworthy choice of names in light of the couple then still reigning in Russia) represent the unlikely lovers.
Like the play, the film sparkles with delicate humor that leavens the gravity with which it explores the nature of romantic love in a rapidly changing world dominated by class struggles. In this regard, Alexandra is not simply a foolish, inexperienced young woman. She is a sympathetic soul who, in the course of the story, moves through the stages of a moral education, comporting herself at first with charming awkwardness, then relying on her idea of what it is to be a love-struck maiden, and finally accepting that her ambitions and her vocation require sacrifices she has not yet considered.
In 1923 the great Eva Le Gallienne created the role for the American premiere, and then the play was indifferently adapted to the screen in 1925 and 1930. It lay all but forgotten until—at the instigation of a judicious uncle and his shrewd niece—Metro transformed it into a lush Technicolor film that remains an acutely touching and alluring adult romance. The Hungarian director Charles Vidor, admirably familiar with the literary sensibility of his compatriot Molnár, also understood the tangle of characters, and he never lost sight of the complexities in his deceptively simple, uncluttered management of the actors in their vast and lavish settings.
The performances are uniformly first-rate. In his American movie debut, Alec Guinness portrays the prince with the proper combination of wry bemusement, astuteness and comic gentility. Jessie Royce Landis (also Grace’s mother in To Catch a Thief) had no equal in her ability to convey hollow pomposity as only an amusingly venial fault. Louis Jourdan, as the lovesick, mistreated academic, knew how to play a young man at the mercy of his emotions. His love scenes with Grace in the carriage by moonlight and on the terrace are lessons in the fine art of making such moments both credible and affecting. Estelle Winwood, in a role that could easily have been relegated to mere comic relief, gave Symphorosa a daffy wisdom as she insists, “I don’t like the twentieth century.” And Brian Aherne, improbably cast as Beatrice’s brother, a worldly-wise Franciscan monk who has abandoned the world but not his wisdom, turns the character of Father Hyacinth into a new Friar Laurence from Romeo and Juliet. He reminds everyone that compassion is the best axis for any romantic constellation.
For much of her time onscreen, Grace remains silent, or speaks but a few words. But we see her listening, we watch her subtle reactions and confusions, and her muted passion is the cyclorama against which everyone must play. The performance is like a pantomime in a silent movie: she communicates every emotion with only the slightest changes in facial expression. Some of this subtlety she learned from her trio of Hitchcock films, but much of it came from a deep understanding of Alexandra—“a woman I thought I really had under my skin,” as she told me. Certainly she was never more lovingly photographed than in The Swan.
It was perhaps no wonder that the industry’s trade journal The Hollywood Reporter proclaimed that with this achievement she was “on the threshold of becoming the next Garbo,” for this was a performance of deep repose and admirable tranquillity. Grace’s features were neither immobile nor masklike, and perhaps it is no exaggeration to assert that she acted with markedly more warmth than Garbo. It was precisely this tenderness that raised her portrait of Alexandra above the level of a thesis-character. She made it impossible, for example, to discount her declaration of love to Nicholas: “I’ve never seen a man in love—and he happens to be in love with me. Oh, Nicholas, if I am afraid of you, I want always to be afraid. I want to be so good to you. I want to tell you everything that’s in my heart. I want to look after you and spoil you and—oh, here—eat something!” Rarely has a standard love scene been so gently and movingly lifted above stereotypes. In The Swan, Grace is at last, as Hitchcock had hoped she would one day become, “the character around whom the whole film is built.”
BEFORE THE FIRST scenes were filmed, Dore Schary summoned assistant director Ridgeway Callow and told him, “I want Grace Kelly treated like a star.” Callow hadn’t the remotest idea what that meant, and so he decided to treat Miss Kelly the way he would treat a good friend who had a difficult assignment—using practical jokes to relax her, and refusing to behave as if she were … well, a princess. “We gave her a dog’s life on the picture,” Callow recalled, “and she loved every minute of it. We short-sheeted her repeatedly in her hotel room when we were on location in North Carolina. We played many tricks on her, she played many tricks on us, and after the picture was over, she wrote a note to Dore Schary, saying that she enjoyed the picture tremendously. We played more tricks on her than anybody we ever worked with. She certainly was not temperamental. She wasn’t regal at all—she kidded around all the time.”
Howell Conant, who documented the making of the film in a brilliant set of color photographs for Metro and for Grace, also recalled her sense of fun. Aware that Guinness had received a rather bold letter from a fan named Alice, Grace had “Alice” page him repeatedly in the hotel lobby.
Guinness decided on suitable retribution. Jessie Royce Landis had given him a tomahawk from a local souvenir shop, and when he departed for a brief holiday, he tipped the concierge to slip the weapon into Grace’s bed. “It became a sort of running gag between Grace and myself,” according to Guinness, “although neither of us ever mentioned it. A few years after she had married Prince Rainier, I returned home from an evening performance in London and, getting into bed, found the identical tomahawk between the sheets. My wife knew nothing about it. I waited two or three years and then, hearing by chance that Grace was going to do a tour of poetry readings in the U.S. with the English actor John Westbrook, whom I had never met, I telephoned him to ask if he would be prepared to help me with a little scheme. Sportingly he agreed, so I got the tomahawk to him through a third party [and] the thing was placed in Grace’s bed. I had almost forgotten about it until I went to Hollywood in 1979. Grace was in Monaco, but after the ceremony, I found the tomahawk in my bed at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel.”
And so it went until Grace’s death. “She had this extraordinary sense of humor,” according to Louis Jourdan, “first of all, about herself, never taking herself seriously.” But Conant also recalled another side of Grace that autumn: she was often “remote, quiet, pensive.” Her colleagues, and visiting friends like Judy Kanter and Gant Gaither, believed that her moments of reserve, and even her sudden brief periods of withdrawal into an atypical solitude, had to do with concern over her next picture. On November 27, Metro announced that Grace was joining Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra in the cast of High Society, a musical remake of The Philadelphia Story. The production of High Society was scheduled for early 1956, and that seemed to be the source of Grace’s apprehension. Metro’s executives were finally coming to their senses in the matter of Grace Kelly, but time had run out for them: unknown to everyone, her epistolary romance with Rainier was moving her in another direction—away from Metro and out of Hollywood forever.
The reason for her “remote, quiet and pensive” manner was clarified after The Swan was completed. During the film’s production, no one in America knew that, in late October, Rainier had privately decided to ask Grace Kelly to be his wife. “I knew what I wanted to do,” the prince said years later. “But I couldn’t just assume she’d marry me. I had to ask her. So I went to the States to see her.”
He arrived in New York on December 15, accompanied by his chaplain and his personal physician—traveling companions whose presence briefly seemed to support Rainier’s stated insistence that he was going to Johns Hopkins University Medical Center for an annual checkup, and was then
going to visit friends in Baltimore. The press, picking up the scent of imminent news about the eligible bachelor prince, bombarded him with questions about a secret romance with some American girl, but Rainier laughed and said no, they were off the track.
For once, of course, they were very much on the track, and their suspicions were leading them in the right direction. But so far they had no clues as to who might be Rainier’s inamorata. In November he had spoken with the proper authorities in Monaco, for his possible marriage was an affair of state and not merely a personal matter. But Grace’s name was not mentioned.
Rainier proceeded to Johns Hopkins for a three-day medical examination. In Baltimore he stayed with friends of the Kellys whom he already knew, and together with them, he was invited to Henry Avenue for Christmas dinner. Grace, having just finished The Swan, had raced home to join her family and was seated next to the prince at the holiday table. Still, there was silence about any romance.
On December 27, Rainier and Grace popped up among holiday crowds in Manhattan. He was seen entering and leaving her Fifth Avenue apartment at all hours, and on December 28 he put to her the question that had prompted his long journey. According to Rainier, it was very simple: “Will you marry me?” And she replied, “Yes.”
Rainier had everything Grace had ever loved in a man—and he was so much more, as she confided to a close friend. “He’s enormously sweet and kind. He’s very shy but he’s also very strong. He wants a close and loving family, just as I do. It’s even more important to him than to most men, because he had a terribly lonely childhood. He’s very bright, has a wonderful sense of humor, makes me giggle and is very, very handsome. I love his eyes. I could look into them for hours. He has a beautiful voice. He’s a good person. And I love him.”
As Rainier began to share stories about his royal ancestors, Grace might have been amused to learn that she would not be the first American to marry a reigning prince of Monaco. The second wife of Rainier’s great-grandfather, Prince Albert I, was Mary Alice Heine, daughter of a prosperous New Orleans building contractor and the wealthy widow of the Duc de Richelieu. She was sharp at business and helped her husband put the principality on a sound financial footing; and she turned Monaco into a world-class European cultural center, founding and supporting its opera, theatre and ballet companies. Princess Alice was also, it seems, a feisty and independent little number, and was widely suspected to be the mistress of the composer Isidore de Lara. Whether factual or not, this intrigue caused her acrimonious separation from Albert, but they never divorced. She subsequently lived in splendid banishment at Claridge’s Hotel in London, where Isidore de Lara also took a suite.
GRACE’S FATHER addressed Rainier bluntly: “Royalty doesn’t mean anything to us. I hope you won’t run around the way some princes do, because if you do, you’ll lose a mighty fine girl.” As usual, brother Kell had only sports on his mind when asked his opinion of Rainier: “I don’t think we can make a sculler out of him. He’s not tall enough.”
As for Margaret Kelly, she insisted that the marriage be performed in Philadelphia: “That’s how it is in America,” she said. “The girl’s parents arrange the wedding, and Grace always promised me she wanted that.” But Rainier—and, for the first time, Grace—explained that theirs would not be an ordinary wedding: Grace would become Princess of Monaco, wife of a head of state, and she would assume responsibilities to the government and to the citizens of Monaco.
“I made up my own mind and didn’t ask my parents for permission to marry Rainier,” Grace said later. “I had asked them once or twice before, and it hadn’t worked out. This time, I knew I had to make my own decision—and I did.” The announcement to the press and the world had to be delayed until Rainier petitioned Grace’s parents and obtained the proper permission, demanded by protocol, from his Monégasque council and the Minister of State. The official proclamation of forthcoming nuptials was made on Thursday, January 5, 1956—first in Monaco and then, a few hours later, by Jack Kelly at a Philadelphia luncheon. Next day, the matter was front-page news all over the United States.
Grace did not want her closest friends to learn of her engagement from news reports. “She rang me in New York and invited me over to her apartment for drinks,” recalled Rita. “And she said, ‘I want you to meet my prince’—so of course I thought she simply meant the man of her dreams. Well, I was soon in for a surprise.”
“Neither of us was a child,” Rainier said years later. “We both understood what marriage meant. Both of us had gone through difficult times, but both of us had learned from those difficult times that what we were looking for was marriage. We discussed it and we thought about it, and after we saw each other again in Philadelphia, I think we both realized that what we wanted was to make our lives together.”
At Cartier in New York, Rainier bought Grace a 10.47-carat, emerald-cut diamond engagement ring, mounted in platinum. She wore it as her character’s engagement ring in High Society, and director Charles Walters favored it with a sparkling close-up. Metro at once announced that Grace’s entire wardrobe from High Society would be hers to keep—and that they would also pay for her wedding dress, commissioning Helen Rose to confer with Grace and to create whatever she desired, at whatever cost. “Of course I was very grateful for the studio’s generosity,” Grace said years later, “but I must admit that Rainier and I would have been happy to be married in our own ordinary, casual clothes in a secluded chapel somewhere. After all, I would have married him even if he was some small-town mayor.”
As the news continued to fill the front pages throughout January, February and March, Margaret Kelly twittered away to the press. She signed off on a series of syndicated newspaper articles, written with her permission but (as she admitted) without her first reading the text. Margaret and her amanuensis, Richard Gehman, trumpeted some facts about Grace’s early years, her love life and her temperament. Grace was furious. She did, however, have to laugh aloud when her mother circulated the news, “My daughter is going to marry the Prince of Morocco!” Peggy and Lizanne corrected her—“Monaco, Mother dear—Monaco!” But Margaret was adamant: “I just can’t imagine Gracie riding camels in the deserts of Morocco!” The girls opened an atlas, there was a brief geography lesson, and the matter was clarified. But until the main event—“the wedding of the century,” as news editors were insisting—Margaret Kelly was not entirely confident that her daughter was not relocating to the sands of North Africa.
The press began to gather round during Christmas week, and the Kellys decided to give only one group interview, at their home, with Rainier present.
What would be Grace’s married name?
Grimaldi, Grace replied: “The Grimaldi family occupies the royal house of Monaco and has ever since the thirteenth century.”
“But that sounds Italian!” Margaret Kelly whispered to Peggy. “I thought he was French!”
“Well, you see, Mother, he’s neither Italian nor French. I’ll explain the background to you later.”
“Never mind that!” Margaret shot back. “Tell them what your name will be, Grace, dear.”
“Grace Grimaldi,” her daughter replied.
Actually, it was more complicated than that, interjected Father Tucker. She would be Her Serene Highness Princess Grace of Monaco—legally, Grace Kelly Grimaldi.
What about her movie career?
“Well, I still have a contract with MGM, and I have to do two more pictures. Of course I’m going to continue with my work—I’m never going to stop acting!”
“I think it would be better if she did not attempt to continue in films,” Rainier said quietly but firmly. “I have to live there in Monaco, and she will live there. That wouldn’t work out.” As for films in Europe: “I don’t think so. She will have enough to do as Princess. But she will not be involved in the administration of Monaco.”
Would the couple have a big family?
Grace smiled and hesitated, so her mother obligingly chirped, “I should say a l
ot! I’m a grandmother and I love a family.”
And with that, Rainier decided to end the media intrusion for the day. “After all,” he said to Father Tucker as they repaired to Jack Kelly’s den for a drink, “I don’t belong to MGM.”
1* Contrary to popular usage, the proper spelling of Monte-Carlo must include the hyphen.
2* Monaco is a principality, not a kingdom—hence its sovereign is a prince, not a king, and his spouse is a princess, not a queen.
3* In 2008, a report by Forbes magazine listed Prince Albert II of Monaco (son of Rainier and Grace) as the ninth-richest monarch in the world, with a personal fortune estimated at $1.4 billion; most of it was derived from real estate, art, antique cars, stamps and a large share of the Société des Bains de Mer. Queen Elizabeth II of England was placed lower—twelfth on the list, with a personal fortune of merely $650 million.
PART III
Fade-Out
1956 — 1982
Grace Kelly Grimaldi—HSH the Princess of Monaco, age fifty. (PRINCE’S PALACE ARCHIVES, MONACO)
TEN
High Society Rearranged
I don’t want to be worshiped—I want to be loved!
—GRACE (AS TRACY LORD) IN HIGH SOCIETY
I LOVED ACTING—WORKING IN THE THEATRE AND IN PICTURES. But I really didn’t like being a movie star. I loved working at my craft, but I didn’t like everything that went with the public’s idea of what a movie star ought to be.” Grace endured but never enjoyed the publicity that attended her movie stardom. Just so, she tolerated but took no pleasure in the exposure that attended her engagement, her marriage—and, indeed, that dogged the rest of her life.