Grace

by Thilo Wydra

  On Feburary 12, 1955, Grace Kelly received the happy news that she was among the five actresses that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences had nominated for the Best Actress of 1954. This must have been a dream come true for her. Although she had previously been nominated as Best Supporting Actress for her role as Linda Nordley in John Ford’s Mogambo, she had not won.

  Prior to this announcement, Grace had spent some time relaxing with her older sister Peggy in Jamaica. She wanted to distance herself from the hardships of the previous work-filled year and to revitalize herself. There she met with photographer Howell Conant, who wanted to do a photo shoot with Grace for an upcoming cover of Collier’s magazine. This was a second meeting for the two of them—Conant already shot her for Photoplay magazine. Grace soon came to trust and respect Conant’s work.

  Until the end of her life, Howell Conant (1917–1999) would accompany Grace as her personal photographer. He was at the filming of The Swan and High Society as well as with her on the Atlantic crossing of the Constitution from New York to Monaco, and at her wedding in April 1956 in the royal palace in Monaco. Howell Conant’s photographs of Grace appeared in Life and Look, in Paris Match and Collier’s, and many other periodicals.

  This particular cover photo for the June 24, 1955, issue of Collier’s became one of his most famous photos worldwide. It shows Grace as if she has just emerged from the water. She stands there with damp, combed-back hair, and from her ears hang droplets of water, like pearl earrings. She looks directly at the viewer. Her eyes are dark blue, her lips are dark red. Around her flows the turquoise water of the Caribbean up to her bust line. There is something very direct and intimate about her gaze.

  Conant accompanied Grace for twenty-seven years. Most of the people who became her friends stayed true throughout her life. Conant also attended Grace’s funeral—for the first time, without his camera.

  The 27th Academy Awards ceremony took place in Los Angeles on March 30, 1955. Grace wore a floor-length, crystal-blue satin evening gown, along with white pearl earrings and elbow-length white gloves. One of her trademarks. On her left arm, she carried a small handbag that was decorated with a floral pattern. Initially, Grace wanted to have the MGM costume department sew a gown for the Oscar ceremony, since she was still under contract with the studio. However, MGM let her know that she was no longer welcome there. Under the new leadership of Dore Schary, who replaced his predecessor Louis B. Mayer in the early 1950s, things were never comfortable for Grace at MGM. Schary liked to meddle in all the departments and shaped things according to his own personal gusto. Furthermore, he could not particularly relate to Grace. He did not find her either sexy or talented. This was the reason behind flops such as her unpopular film Green Fire. The studio that was supposed to bring about mutually beneficial successes for both her and themselves ultimately did not know what to do with her.

  She had insistently and regularly rejected the other film offers and screenplays that MGM had sent her over the years, and this individualistic, uncompromising attitude increasingly rubbed the studio the wrong way. Within MGM, it was gruffly said that they had had to loan her out to other studios too often and that Grace had not fulfilled the obligations connected with her seven-year contract, in the eyes of the MGM bosses. This would have considerable—almost threatening—consequences.

  In the weeks before the Oscar ceremony, Dore Schary made a statement showing his displeasure for Grace. His assertion was that she owed all her subsequent success to MGM because of Mogambo and yet, despite her contract, she had only made two pictures with MGM.188

  Additionally, the fact that Grace Kelly’s winning turn was in a Paramount production really rubbed salt in MGM’s wound. Refused a dress, Grace immediately turned to Edith Head, who dropped everything in order to design and sew a dress for the Oscar ceremony according to Grace’s detailed instructions and desires. Dressed in the resultant ice blue satin gown, Grace was featured on the April 11 cover of Life magazine. It was one of the most popular cover stories ever.

  In the categories of Best Actress and Best Actor, five actresses and actors are always nominated. Grace was up against four other actresses: Audrey Hepburn in Billy Wilder’s Sabrina (1954); Judy Garland for George Cukor’s A Star Is Born (1954); Jane Wyman for Douglas Sirk’s Magnificent Obsession (1954); and Dorothy Dandridge for Otto Preminger’s Carmen Jones (1954).

  In particular, Judy Garland and Grace Kelly were rumored to be favorites in industry publications and among the gossipmongers of Hollywood. Audrey Hepburn had won the coveted trophy the year before for William Wyler’s Roman Holiday (1953).

  Ironically, William Holden, who had himself won the Oscar for Best Actor the previous year for his role in Billy Wilder’s Stalag 17 (1953), read aloud the five nominations for Best Actress. He then took the envelope containing the name of the winner: “So, the Award for the Best Performance by an Actress: Grace Kelly, for The Country Girl!”189

  At the reading of her name, Holden beams brightly. They had been lovers once, and now he could give Grace the golden statuette. Grace was one of the few actresses to have won an Oscar after acting in only a handful of films.

  Grace’s thank-you speech is one of the shortest ever given, only twenty seconds in length: “The thrill of this moment keeps me from saying what I really feel. I can only say thank you with all my heart to all who made this possible for me: thank you.”190 Two sentences, short and sweet—how very Grace-like. She broke out in tears only after she had left the stage, having successfully suppressed them until then.

  Even John B. Kelly in Philadelphia watched the awards show on the television. When a reporter called him to ask for his comments on his twenty-five-year-old daughter’s astounding achievement, her father only had the following to say: “I thought it would be Peggy. Anything Grace could do, Peggy could always do better. I simply can’t believe Grace won. Of the four children, she’s the last one I’d expect to support me in my old age. How do you figure these things?”191

  It is not known how Grace reacted to this humiliating, published statement by her father about the greatest triumph of her acting career. However, one can imagine what it meant to have her own father react with such tactlessness in light of such an achievement. In the career that she had chosen, there was no higher honor. She had worked under the direction of Fred Zinnemann, John Ford, and Alfred Hitchcock. She had acted beside Clark Gable, James Stewart, and William Holden. She had won an Oscar, as well as numerous other awards. Yet, all her father could talk about was how his daughter Peggy could do everything better. For her parents, especially her father, Grace was always the black sheep among the four Kelly children. She still seemed to be that even now, in the spring of 1955 after the Academy Awards. She would always be seen that way. She had hoped so much that this would change things, but it was futile. Grace Kelly had to continue to try to win the goodwill and favor of her father. It wasn’t until 1956, close to the end of his life—four years before his death—when she finally would.

  The Oscar dinner party that followed the ceremony was held in Romanoff’s on Rodeo Drive, one of the most famous “in” restaurants in Hollywood during the 1940s and 1950s. At this time, Romanoff’s was very similar to Chasen’s, (which, incidentally, remained in business much longer). Chasen’s was Alfred Hitchcock’s favorite restaurant, and every Thursday evening, he had supper there with his wife Alma. It was also the location he chose several years later, in the fall of 1961, to offer Tippi Hedren her role in The Birds and to give her a silver brooch ornamented with three birds, which she still has today.

  On this evening in late March 1955, sitting at the table in Romanoff’s, Grace was still holding on to her golden statuette. It was sitting directly in front of her plate, and she showed it time and time again to the photographers who came by her table. Her entire face was lit up. Edith Head also sat at Grace’s table. She too had an Oscar sitting beside her, the one she had received for Wilder’s Sabrina.

  Grace left the dinner party bef
ore it grew too late. After she had taken her limousine back to the Beverly Hills Hotel, she supposedly set the statuette above the fireplace in her hotel bungalow. She then sat down on the sofa and stared at the trophy. Despite her success, this was a very lonely moment, a very lonely night. Perhaps the loneliest moment of her life. This is one version of the conclusion to Oscar Night 1955.

  According to another version, Marlon Brando, who had also just received an Oscar for his role as Terry Malloy in Elia Kazan’s On the Waterfront, gave Grace his telephone number. Supposedly Grace called Brando, and he came to her bungalow at the Beverly Hills. First, Grace complained to Brando about her costar Bing Crosby and how he had been dead set against her casting in The Country Girl. As Grace and Brando eventually drew closer, someone knocked on her bungalow door around 3:00 a.m. No one less than Crosby, who also had been nominated for an Oscar and who had lost out to Brando, stood at the door. The rivals scuffled, and Brando easily won out over the older Crosby. At this time, Brando was thirty, and furthermore, he had taken boxing lessons the previous year in preparation for his role as harbor worker Terry Malloy. Grace had to call the hotel manager and the hotel doctor. Finally, Crosby left Grace’s hotel bungalow.

  This version of the story comes from the Brando biography, Brando Unzipped, by Darwin Porter (New York, 2006). Porter was supposedly told this story by Brando’s agent Edith Van Cleve, who for a while also represented Grace Kelly.192

  It remains unclear which of these two scenarios actually corresponded to the reality of that Oscar night on March 30, 1955.

  Green Fire

  (1954)

  Green Fire was not a pleasant experience. We worked in a wretched village, with miserable huts full of dirt. The crew suffered too. It was awful.

  —Grace Kelly193

  With the greatest reluctance imaginable, Grace Kelly traveled directly after the conclusion of filming for The Country Girl to Colombia to fulfill her contract with MGM by acting in Green Fire. On all levels, this was a concession, a sacrifice. From the very start, it was clear that this project was not artistically driven. The filming took place under difficult, trying conditions, and the justification for this project was purely commercial in orientation. On the film poster, the names of Stewart Granger and Grace Kelly were accompanied by an image of a voluptuously endowed, typical Hollywood blonde, which clearly was meant to represent her. She was greatly displeased by this. When the film premiered in New York on December 24, 1954, it was a box office flop, and the critics panned it. It was a twofold disaster for MGM.

  Grace spent ten days in Colombia for the filming, and then she was in Culver City to shoot the interior scenes at MGM Studios. For this woman, who now knew where she stood and, even more so, where she wished to go, this felt like a lost period of her life. Gradually, Grace was beginning to recognize her own worth, although doubt continued to gnaw at her—even after the Oscars in March 1955. While she stood at the side of Stewart Granger in the role of coffee plantation owner Catherine Knowland, she already knew where she was going after the filming of this movie: to the French Riviera, to Cannes, Nice, and Monaco. There could have been no conceivably greater contrast between the hot, dusty, strenuous filming in Colombia, and the light-suffused Côte d’Azur with its elegant hotels and even more elegant, noble atmosphere. This upcoming change in location must have given Grace both comfort and hope, while she fulfilled her obligations by working on Green Fire.

  A native of Budapest, director Andrew Marton (1904–1992) worked on some of Hollywood’s most legendary large-scale productions, including William Wyler’s monumental epic Ben Hur (1959) and Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s Cleopatra (1963). Parallel to these, he also often directed the second unit for various adventure films—the second unit being the group typically charged with filming footage of the setting: establishing shots, landscape sequences, etc. Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts based their screenplay on a novel by Peter W. Rainier. Armand Deutsch was the producer. The plot is flat and one-dimensional. The characters have no depth or any biographical backgrounds. The suspense is solely established through external actions.

  When adventurer Rian X. Mitchell (Stewart Granger) finds a gem that could lead to a large cache of emeralds on Mount Carerre deep in the Andes of Colombia, he has to have it at all costs. Returning from the historic, centuries-old mine, he is attacked and injured both by bandits and then a leopard. Father Ripero (Robert Tafur) finds the stranded man and takes him the short distance to a coffee plantation that sits on the bank of the Magdalena River. Here he is cared for by the stylish plantation owner, Catherine Knowland (Grace Kelly). As soon as he can, Rian takes a river steamer to the capital city in order to convince his old pal Vic Leonard (Paul Douglas) to explore the mine with him. They had been partners for many years, but Vic is tired of adventures and hardships. Rian is finally successful in preventing Vic from departing. Together they return to the plantation, where Catherine waits for them. Rian hires laborers from the local villages to perform the mining work both inside the mine and on the mountain face. Catherine actually needs many of them to work on her coffee plantation since it is harvest time. However, the promise of the mountain is tempting, and the laborers accept Rian’s offer. Vic is skeptical, and argues with Rian repeatedly. Also, since first seeing her on the pier, he is quite taken with Catherine and wants to help her with the plantation. However, Rian is obsessed with the idea of unearthing the emeralds—the “Green Fire.” This obsession will ultimately be the downfall of Catherine’s brother, Donald Knowland (John Ericson), who lets himself be convinced to join Rian’s enterprise. At the building site on the mountainside, some large boulders come loose and roll down, and Donald is struck by one of them. Catherine is distraught by her brother’s death, and it is Vic who stands beside her. Vic again distances himself from his partner, who simply wants the mining activities to continue. For a second time, Vic and Catherine are both disappointed and hurt by Rian, and they abandon his project.

  This makes one wonder all the more why, within a very short time, Catherine and Vic are prepared to forgive Rian. This development is, in a dramaturgical sense, completely unsubstantiated and only seems to be a means to a happy “Hollywood ending.” After both an attack by bandits under the evil El Moro and a flood that threatens to destroy the plantation are overcome, Catherine and Rian finally fall into each other’s arms. By dynamiting a mountain slope, Rian rescues Catherine’s plantation from the flood, and he gives up the search for the green emeralds. A very rushed reformation.

  Grace Kelly’s co-star here is Stewart Granger (1913–1993). Early on he chose this stage name because he feared that his given name, James Lablache Stewart, would be all too easily confused with that of the actor James Stewart. A native Englishman, Granger’s second marriage took place in 1950 to the English actress Jean Simmons (The Big Country, 1958). Granger was forty-one when he filmed Green Fire with Grace Kelly, and Jean Simmons was pregnant with his child. Originally, the role of the adventurer was intended for Clark Gable, but ultimately it was Granger who took the role. At this time, Granger was at the peak of his career. However, the chemistry between Grace and Granger is, in general, nothing like that which connected her to previous costars. “I don’t think I have ever met anyone who was quite so conceited,” Grace once commented about the MGM star, whom the public also deemed a swashbuckler.194

  Granger swashbuckled his way through several adventure and cloak-and-dagger movies in Hollywood. These included Scaramouche (1952) by George Sidney and Curtis Bernhardt’s Beau Brummell (1954) with its star-laden cast: Peter Ustinov and Elizabeth Taylor, as well as Granger in the title role. In the mid-1960s, Granger became very popular in Germany because of his casting in major roles in Rialto Film’s Karl May films. His vanity and egotism, which Grace described, are also clearly recognizable in his role in Green Fire. Granger’s smarmy portrayal of the adventurer Rian Mitchell practically bristles with self-confidence and may cause the audience’s sympathies to meander from time to time between the three protagonist
s.

  For a time, Granger found Grace to be aloof and cool, although he also thought her to be fantastically beautiful. He perceived her as distant—lonely, even. As a costar, he described her as totally different and also as someone who was involuntarily treated differently than anyone else on set. Arrogant or not, he respected her courage.

  As Catherine, Grace rides from the coffee plantation to the mountain, to where Rian and his men are attempting to mine the mountainside. She is wearing white gloves. This simple accessory had become an instantly recognizable trademark for Grace, both on screen and off. On the set, Grace insisted on riding herself, instead of having a double do it. This astounded and caused concern among the camera team. If something happened to Grace deep in the Colombian jungle, if she was injured, the filming would be interrupted, if not canceled altogether. However, the ride went off without the slightest hitch. Fellow actor and MGM-contracted actor, John Ericson (who played her brother Donald and who some years before had also attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York at the same time Grace did) later recalled that to date he had never worked with any actress who seemed as far away from the prima donna mentality as Grace.

  In the movie, Catherine has a private conversation with Rian one evening on the riverbank. She states, “Who knows. Maybe one day my Prince Charming will come riding down from the mountains.”195 Shortly after this, they kiss for the first time. Considering her future, this passing comment takes on prophetic meaning. Nonetheless, most of the dialogue in Green Fire lacks any kind of actual content. Some of Paul Douglas’s lines as the worrying, sensible pal Vic are somewhat humorous in nature. While also questioning himself, he is constantly cursing Rian’s success at convincing him to stay. Grace had already met Paul Douglas during the filming of Fourteen Hours. Douglas had played the New York traffic cop Charlie Dunnigan. In both films, Douglas portrayed conscientious, responsible characters, ones that turned out to be the only wholly sympathetic figures.