High Society

by Donald Spoto

  These were respectable projects, but appearing in them did not mean acting a role. “Privately, she harbored a sense of loss,” said Judy Quine in 1989, adding that Grace felt that one day the pressure would ease, and she would be able to return to movie acting—“but it never did.”

  From the 1960s to the time of her death in 1982, journalists, interviewers and friends put to Grace the same question, time after time: When would she return to the screen? A selection of her replies reveals her wisdom and experience.

  In October 1969: “I certainly do miss acting, whether it’s in Hollywood or in the theater. I loved acting. I loved my job as an actress. But if you want to do it well, acting is something that takes a great deal of time and concentration and there’s a great deal of competition. When you’re acting, you have to think of yourself first, and when you’re a mother, you just can’t do that. My situation is even more complicated, being Princess of Monaco and married to a head of state. But it is very nice, when one approaches my advanced age [forty!], to think they would still like to have me.”

  In June 1982: “My former agent, Jay Kanter, sent me the script [for the movie The Turning Point] and told me I could have either of the two parts, which were eventually played by Anne Bancroft and Shirley MacLaine. He hoped I would return to the screen, but my answer was ‘no.’ The acting profession isn’t looked on in Monaco as it is in the United States. In America, performers can have public and private lives and keep them apart. But as the wife of Prince Rainier, I can have but one public life—that of being his princess.”

  In July 1982: “I’m flattered that people could think I could go back to the theatre or making pictures. But that would be a very difficult decision to make after twenty-six years of being away from it all…. It’s all changed very much. I’m not sure I could work there anymore.”

  Would she never return to perform again? She smiled. “I still have my original makeup kit from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. It’s buried in one of my closets, probably covered with dust. Perhaps one day I will take it out again—and then, maybe I won’t.”

  The closest she ever came to a reinvolvement with old Hollywood came in the spring of 1976, when she was offered and accepted a position to join the board of directors of Twentieth Century-Fox. This kept her coming and going from Monaco or Paris (where she resided during the girls’ schooldays) to New York or Los Angeles for about two years. To their surprise, the Fox executives found that her questions at the meetings raised significant issues, for Grace had developed a finely sharpened business sense; likewise, her creative ideas were never to be summarily dismissed.2*

  She could not, however, accept movie offers—roles that included the empress in Nicholas and Alexandra. In her continuing frustration over her feeling that she had not been fully responsive to her talent, Grace had further periods of dark melancholy as the children grew and went off to their own lives. When her old friend Peggy Lee sang “Is That All There Is?” Grace knew the heartache behind every phrase. “It should not be forgotten,” runs the text of the official family celebration of her career, “that behind that perfect ease in the exercise of her role [as princess] were hidden a delightful sense of humour and, at times, discreet bouts of melancholy. Protocol and duties weighed heavily on her existence.”

  Rainier was aware of his wife’s unhappiness, as he said as early as 1966. “There have been times when the Princess has been a little melancholy—which I understand—after having performed an art very successfully, only to be separated from it completely. She has been prevented not only from acting herself, but also from watching other actors, whom we do not have much occasion to see here. If we lived in New York or London or Paris, she would still be able to keep up with acting activities. But she found herself cut off from this.”

  IN SEPTEMBER 1976, Grace made (as the New York Times raved) a triumphant return to the entertainment world, at the Edinburgh International Festival. With the actors Richard Kiley and Richard Pasco, she participated in “The American Heritage,” prepared in honor of the U.S. bicentennial. Grace recited poems by Anne Bradstreet, Carl Sandburg, Ogden Nash, T. S. Eliot and Robert Frost. This engagement was so successful (“it was just sheer fun, that’s all,” she told me) that Grace continued her stage appearances in a program devised by John Carroll that played on stages in Pittsburgh, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Princeton, Harvard and Washington, D.C.

  That program was called “Birds, Beasts and Flowers,” and Grace alternated with Pasco in reading texts that drew attention to the World Wildlife Fund. As the New York Times critic wrote wistfully, “Perhaps it will encourage Princess Grace to attempt a real performance.” The critic suggested she play Lady Anne to Pasco’s Richard III, or Titania to his Oberon.

  The staged poetry readings continued sporadically from 1976 through 1981 and were a source of great pleasure for Grace and her audiences. She canceled them early in 1982 when she suffered the first of a series of severe headaches that seemed to be migraines but were not. No cause or remedy could be found, except that her blood pressure was abnormally high, and she could not tolerate the side effects of most antihypertensive medications then available to her. The headaches came and went, but her blood pressure was not well controlled. These ailments were the first signs that she was suffering from a vascular disease, just like several members of her family.

  The headaches were almost paralyzing during the summer of 1982, when she had a demanding schedule of travel and activities both professional and familial. As she was driving down with Stéphanie from Rocagel to Monaco on September 13, 1982, she apparently felt a piercing pain in her skull, and for a second or two she blacked out. Her car swerved violently, and when she fully regained her awareness, she was momentarily disoriented. Instead of the brake, Grace pressed her foot on the accelerator (or had perhaps lost the use of her legs). Just at that moment, there was a hairpin turn on the roadway, and the car careened straight ahead and over a precipice. Stéphanie survived the crash, but Grace did not. While driving, she had suffered a slight brain hemorrhage, the incident (called a transient ischemic attack) that often precedes a larger, morbid event; the second stroke, a massive one, was caused by the violent tumble and crash of the car.

  Grace was placed on mechanical life support at the hospital in Monaco. Next day, a team of doctors concluded that she had suffered catastrophic, irreversible brain damage. Her family made the agonizing but necessary decision to remove the artificial devices maintaining her heart and lungs. On September 14, 1982, Grace Kelly Grimaldi, Her Serene Highness the Princess of Monaco, wife of Rainier and mother of three children, was pronounced dead. She was fifty-two years old.

  SHE HAD been feeling well two years earlier, in 1980, just when an idea for a magnificent professional project came along.

  Jacqueline Monsigny is a successful French novelist, the author of more than two dozen books and once the presenter of a popular TV talk show in Paris. Invited to a television conference in Monaco, she and her husband, the actor Edward Meeks, had been introduced to Grace, who was delighted to meet a talented French television hostess and another American living in France. She had also seen Edward on television, most recently in the dramatic series Les Globe-Trotters. A friendship was established, and many times in the coming years, Grace invited Jacqueline and Edward to Monaco if there was a benefit or a movie event, or to dine at her Paris apartment on the Avenue Foch. Often Rainier and the children were present.

  In Grace’s Paris apartment, early in 1980, Grace told them she would like to appear in an original movie, probably produced for international television, in which she would act opposite Edward as her leading man. It was to be directed by Robert Dornhelm (who had directed The Children of Theatre Street)—and Grace would like the screenplay to be written by Jacqueline. “This was like a dream come true for us,” Edward and Jacqueline said in 2007, “but it wasn’t an easy task. What sort of thing did she have in mind?”

  They discussed the theme and plot for some time. Jacqueline
knew at once that it wouldn’t be appropriate for the project to be a love story or a thriller—that might be going too far with Rainier. “But then Grace came up with the perfect idea for a story about the annual Monaco Flower Show, at which she always presided. The princess would play herself in a comedy of mistaken identity.” In short order, Jacqueline came up with a fast-paced screenplay that celebrated the flower show while telling a hilarious story.

  The plot concerns an internationally famous astrophysicist from America named Professor Nelson (played by Meeks), who has come to Monte-Carlo for a scientific conference. He is met at the Nice airport by a limousine driver, who tells him, “The princess will be so delighted to meet you at last.” The professor is surprised but gratified at this unexpected reception.

  Nelson is taken at once to the palace gardens, where Princess Grace mistakes him for a journalist named Wilson, who writes travel articles. She welcomes him most warmly and does not pause for breath as she enthusiastically describes the annual flower show and the contestants in various competitions of floral arrangements—“Why, even my husband is trying his hand!” (as we see later, when Rainier makes a wordless cameo finishing a decoration). Each time Nelson tries to tell her who he is, she chatters on about the competition and the joy that everyone can take from beautiful flowers and simple plants. Finally he manages to say that he really doesn’t have an atom of talent for floral arrangement, and he’d better move along to his other business.

  “Nonsense,” says Grace with an irresistible smile. “You will do very well, Professor Wilson. We know all about your great talent as a journalist.” Once again, we hear Nelson’s thoughts off-camera: “Talent? She thinks I’m some journalist named Wilson, representing the press! How do I get out of this?”

  The film’s irresistible humor is derived from the situation of authentic high comedy: no one understands anyone else—languages are confused, words within the same language have equivocal meanings, and identities shift and change. Jacqueline Monsigny wrote in the finest tradition of light French farce: one thinks of the jumbled characters in Molière, for example, and the hilarious episodes in the comedies of Feydeau. Edward Meeks, trained as an American actor, played Nelson/ Wilson with absolute gravity, the straight man to Grace’s comic role—as herself. The result is a masterpiece of underplaying. It is, in other words, the stuff of great comedy, right up to its very warm and human conclusion.

  Nelson learns that the scientific conference has been postponed for a few days, and so, because he is at the benevolent mercy of Princess Grace, there is nothing for him to do but to enter into the spirit of the flower show. As he had predicted, he does not come up with anything very attractive or even presentable, and he tries to escape. But Grace and her driver catch up with him, and their final dialogue in her car is a fitting coda to her career:

  PROFESSOR NELSON (EDWARD MEEKS). I should have told you from the beginning, but let me put it straight now. I am not the journalist Wilson. I am not interested in flowers, vegetables or, for that matter, anything else that grows on this earth. At least I wasn’t until I met you, ma’am. I tried to tell you so many times—my field is astrophysics: stars, comets, satellites, space research. And my name is—

  GRACE. Yes—it’s PROFESSOR Nelson.

  PROFESSOR NELSON. You knew my name?

  GRACE. Everybody knew your name. Why, you’re as famous as Sarah Bernhardt. But when I heard that your lecture was postponed until Monday, I decided to rearrange things. I know it was naughty of me, but I don’t regret it. Tell me, Professor, why can’t a scientist—especially one who studies the stars and the heavens—find a little bit of glory in a simple flower, or a lovely bunch or grapes, or even a carrot?

  PROFESSOR NELSON. But you saw my flower arrangement!

  GRACE. It was an effort from the heart, wasn’t it? And don’t tell me you didn’t enjoy feeling your heart beat just a little bit faster for a change. I saw you! You enjoyed what you were doing. You became involved. Why, you noticed things you never even saw before. And that, Professor, was what I was hoping would happen. Even disappointment is better than no emotion at all. So don’t regret it—even if you did make a mistake.

  AND WITH THAT, the movie called Rearranged ends. It was less than a half hour long, but additions were planned.

  The film was made entirely in Monaco. There were, as Jacqueline and Edward recalled, no problems with unions, and just a small crew attended. “Grace was involved in everything and made us all into a family around her. Then she organized a premiere with about five hundred people. She wanted to see how her husband and some of the notables of Monaco would react to it. Everyone loved it, and later, with Rainier’s encouragement, Grace took it to a TV network in New York. They adored it, too, and they wanted us to add about fifteen minutes more, so it could be an hour-long TV special. This was the first movie in which Grace had acted in twenty-five years, and there was wild excitement among the executives. When she returned from New York, she told us that she had also shown the rough cut to Frank Sinatra and Cary Grant—‘They loved it!’ she said.”

  After Grace returned from New York, Edward, Jacqueline and Dornhelm sat with her, watched the footage they had, took notes and began to extend their little comedy into an hour’s length. The director suggested that there ought to be at least one scene in which Grace wears a tiara or diadem, to emphasize her status. But Grace was adamant: “No,” she insisted, “that would only be pretentious, and I don’t want that.”

  Jacqueline and Edward felt that Grace “was proceeding in such an intelligent way with this project. The children were grown, and she wanted to have a more creative life at last. But she didn’t want the people of Monaco to think they were going to lose out, or that she was reverting to her movie-star status.”

  While Grace was in New York, a reporter from Paris-Match heard about the picture and rang Edward to ask what it was about. He said he would speak with the princess, and he rang Grace to ask how to proceed. She replied, “Tell them it’s something that we’ve already done, that the people of Monaco have already seen it, that it’s virtually completed, and everyone knows about it.” Edward relayed her words, and of course the reporter was completely baffled. Grace’s priorities were, as Edward and Jacqueline said, “in this order—her family, always first; then Monaco, America and France.”

  In July and August 1982, Grace was very busy. She and her family took a cruise to the North Pole. She was also planning the annual Red Cross gala, to which she invited Edward as master of ceremonies. After the plans for that benefit were finalized, he and Jacqueline went on a holiday to Los Angeles. “Call me when you return,” Grace told them, “and we’ll film the added scenes for our movie.”

  ON SEPTEMBER 5, Grace wrote to Rita Gam, then living and working in Beverly Hills. The letter was, as always to friends, in her own hand: “I am just reading the revised script for ABC [for the network’s dramatic movie about her life, in which Cheryl Ladd played Grace]. I think it will be all right. Of course I dislike the whole idea and feel slightly like someone coming home to find that burglars have entered and gone through all of one’s personal belongings. But they are trying to do it well, and it will be fairly accurate. You come out in it very well [i.e., an actress who represented Rita].

  “We went on a wonderful cruise into the Arctic Circle. It was very exciting and quite mysterious. But I have spent a month battling with a persistent bronchitis—which I hope will leave soon, as I am doing a poetry programme Sept. 28 at Windsor in St. George’s Chapel and then early Oct. will join [actor-director] Sam Wanamaker for a little tour of four cities to find some well-heeled donors for the Globe Theatre Project in London. Then in Paris until December. I expect to be in California in March. Hope we meet somewhere along the line. Meanwhile, much love, dear girl, and hang in there!—Grace.”

  REARRANGED WAS never completed as planned, but in its twenty-seven-minute version, it is a perfect gem. Grace still lit up the screen, and her sense of comedic timing served her and the movie
perfectly. She had lost nothing of her talent; if anything, the years had sharpened it and given her a depth and poignancy that would have left audiences worldwide like the private guests in Monaco—cheering wildly and wanting more.

  When Jacqueline and Edward later approached Rainier with a request to have the film distributed, “he was completely submerged in grief,” according to Jacqueline, “and he probably didn’t want to stir up painful memories.” The prince politely but firmly denied them and any businessmen permission to circulate the film. “We had no intention of seeking any profit from it,” Jacqueline added, “but we very sincerely thought that, to honor the princess’s memory, the public could discover underappreciated aspects of her real personality and talent, which was simple, charming, always subtle and full of good humor.” The master negative of Rearranged remains locked in the vaults of the palace, very likely forever.

  In June 1982, before leaving for her family cruise, Grace sent her own 35-millimeter copy of Rearranged to Edward: “I entrust our little film to you for the summer, Ed. Please have some videocassettes made—that will make it easier for it to be seen [by potential distributors] in the Secam, Pal and NTSC formats when we return, rather than the 35-millimeter version, which requires a projection room.”

  ON JULY 22, Grace gave, as it happened, her last interview. Toward the end, she was asked, “How would you like to be remembered?” She hesitated and glanced aside for a moment before replying.

  “I would like to be remembered as a person who accomplished something, who was kind and loving. I would like to leave behind me the memory of a human being who behaved properly and tried to help others.”

  1* Hitch occasionally sent cassettes of bawdy songs and risqué tales to Rainier, as to others—hence, “to be played privately.”