Grace

by Thilo Wydra

  Cassini asked Grace what she wanted from a man whom she had only met for a half hour eight months before. She did not know him at all. “I will learn to love him,” she answered.252 How quintessentially Grace. The discipline—that Kelly ambition for something higher. These things take priority. All possibilities exist only within that framework.

  For Grace, it was the only logical path. Her decision was very much grounded in the expectations of her parents, particularly those of her father Jack. Grace still wanted to earn the respect, admiration, and approval of her father. And indeed, in Prince Rainier Jack Kelly saw, for the first time, a potential marriage candidate for his daughter. However, between the wedding in April 1956 and his death in June 1960, Jack Kelly only visited his daughter in Monaco twice, and in the palace, he felt extremely uncomfortable. Nevertheless, Grace’s decision satisfied her family greatly. In addition, she hoped to satisfy her own need to marry and have children, to establish a family, and to put an end to her unbearable restlessness. In considering Oleg Cassini and Don Richardson, Grace also described her upcoming marriage to Prince Rainier III as “the solution.” Neither Cassini nor Richardson could understand this; they both saw it as a big mistake. While Grace continued to maintain a friendship with Don Richardson, through letters and telephone calls, she broke all contact with Oleg Cassini. According to Nadia LaCoste, longtime press chief for the palace, “I cannot recall seeing Cassini in Monaco. I only know that at the time, the newspapers wrote that Grace and Cassini had almost gotten married. However, he was never in Monaco . . .”253 As in Oleg Cassini’s actual life, in the fictional film, court tutor Nicholas Agi had to resign himself to the fact that another was chosen. One who as Crown Prince brought with him the promise to make Princess Alexandra queen through marriage.

  Starting in mid-September 1955, Grace was in Hollywood for the preparations for The Swan. She found herself in hair and makeup tests, and spent a week in long dress rehearsals in the studio in Culver City under the direction of costume designer Helen Rose. She had previously clothed Grace in the MGM productions, Mogambo and Green Fire. This time, Grace was especially taken with Rose and her team, who created a white chiffon ball gown for her. The gown was covered with countless, separately attached camellia blossoms. On the day of the fitting, she stood in front of the mirror and exclaimed breathlessly: “It’s like a fairy tale.”254 Helen Rose had never before met a star who was so excited to try on a ball gown—one that was fit for a princess.

  Eventually, Helen Rose would design the $7,200 wedding dress that Grace wore for her wedding on April 19, 1956. It was produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, which among other things hoped to use this ingenious promotional tactic to obtain free publicity for The Swan. Furthermore, MGM acquired the valuable and exclusive rights for the documentary film, The Wedding in Monaco (1956; directed by Jean Masson).255

  The filming of The Swan was opulent and expensive in terms of design. Dore Schary himself produced the film, and filming ran from late September until December 22, 1955.

  The literary basis for John Dighton’s screenplay was the 1920 play A Hattyú by Ferenc (Franz) Molnár. Like director Charles Vidor, Molnár was a Hungarian native, and he was one of the most important Hungarian playwrights of the twentieth century. Molnár’s most famous play was Liliom (1909). A Hattyú premiered in the United States in 1923, with the legendary, openly homosexual Eva Le Gallienne in the role of Princess Alexandra. Prior to Charles Vidor’s film version, the play had been adapted for screen already twice before. The first version was made in 1925 with Frances Howard as Alexandra (directed by Dimitri Buchowetzki), and the second was directed by Paul L. Stein in 1930 under the title One Romantic Night, with Lillian Gish in the main role.

  Grace herself knew this play well. She had already played Princess Alexandra in a one-hour television program for the CBS series The Play’s the Thing. This aired live on June 9, 1950. Moreover, Grace’s beloved Uncle George highly respected Ferenc Molnár’s A Hattyú. And in terms of this role, what first took place on the screen, then occurred in real life.

  Since the end of the silent film era (1928–1929), director Charles Vidor (1900–1959) had been responsible for creating such films as Cover Girl (1944), Gilda (1946)—probably his most famous movie—and The Joker Is Wild (1957). Grace and Vidor (who had come from the old Austrian-Hungarian empire and would die only four years after making The Swan) understood each other well. Grace felt comfortable on set with him.

  The movie was filmed in Eastmancolor in the wide CinemaScope format. The sumptuous backdrop of the castle was designed by art director Cedric Gibbons, and the elegant costumes were created by Helen Rose. The cinematography was done by Joseph Ruttenberg and Robert Surtees, who had also helped film Metro’s Mogambo. The most enchanting shots of Grace happen during the extensive dance scenes at the evening ball in the castle: Alexandra (Grace) and Agi (Jourdan) seem to float over the parquet, their moods becoming dreamier and dreamier, even though half of the court is watching them. In these dance sequences, Grace is indescribably charming and tender. She looks as smooth and flawless as marble, yet seems quite fragile. Her gaze and her body language are infused with yearning. Much of Grace herself can be seen in this central dance scene, which was elegantly and cleverly choreographed. Even the way in which she moves, her gestures, her graciousness, as well as her facial expressions, reveal the noblesse and sincerity that she would adopt in soon-to-be real principality.

  In addition, there are several beautiful close-ups of Grace in The Swan. These show her face, smooth and relaxed, beaming and enchanting—yet there is a distinct undercurrent to all this. It is some sort of hesitance. Perhaps even a vague sense of fear. Furthermore, Grace appears frequently throughout the film (she received top billing for this MGM production), but she has relatively little dialogue. Much is communicated nonverbally through glances, small gestures, and various facial expressions.

  One background observer of the filming of The Swan was the photographer Howell Conant, whom had been commissioned by both Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and by Grace to take color pictures. During the film breaks, Grace often sat to the side. Most of the time she knitted or was lost in a book. Sometimes she read letters she had received. It can be assumed that most of this mail came from Monaco. She was discrete and silent about this. Even Conant noticed that “she seemed quiet and thoughtful on set.” He also noted that, to him “this was the hardworking side of Grace.”256

  Grace’s British costar, Alec Guinness, also noticed her demeanor: “Sometimes I saw her waiting in the wings, just staring into space. When I asked her, ‘Grace, are you alright?’ she came right back, but flinched every time, as though she’d been fully lost in thought.”257 This was Guinness’ first American production, following his success in such films as David Leans’ adaptation of Dickens’ Great Expectations (1946) and Alexander Mackendricks’ The Ladykillers (1955).

  One of Alexandra’s two younger brothers explains in The Swan that “No one ever knows what Alexandra is thinking.”258 And later, when Alexandra seeks comfort from her uncle, Father Carl Hyacinth (Brian Aherne), after she realizes that she and the court tutor cannot be together, her caring uncle says to her: “My child, you forget: You’ve only ever learned to suppress your feelings. If they suddenly come to the surface for a moment—one could make a mistake.” These statements are just as applicable to Grace, as they are to Alexandra.

  The interior scenes of The Swan were filmed in Hollywood, at MGM Studios in Culver City. During this time, Grace rented a white mansion high in the Hollywood Hills that belonged to the diet king, Gaylord Hauser, who was also Greta Garbo’s health guru. Oliver, her black poodle, was also with her. Cary Grant and his wife Betsy had given him to her. After the conclusion of the studio scenes, MGM hired two DC-7 airplanes to fly the cast and film crew to North Carolina. Here they filmed both exterior and interior scenes at the Biltmore House in Asheville, North Carolina, and at Lake Junaluska. The youngest child of millionaire William Henry Vanderbilt, George W. Vanderb
ilt commissioned architect Richard Morris Hunt to model the Biltmore on the French châteaus of the Loire Valley. The mansion and massive estate were built in the 1890s. This impressive building is the largest of its kind in the United States: 250 rooms, dozens of bedrooms and bathrooms. The team and cast spent six weeks at the house, secluded from the rest of the world. On their evenings off, Grace played Scrabble with Alec Guinness and her film mother, Jessie Royce Landis. Like Grace, Guinness was also religious; he accompanied Grace to Mass on one of the first Sundays in North Carolina.

  More than anyone else on the team, Grace was delighted by the house with its 250 rooms. She would regularly rave about it, calling it “heavenly.” It was “like a real palace.”259 She often exclaimed things like, “I love castles!”260 and “I love it!”261

  Although the others were impressed with the house, no one felt very comfortable in this rather grandiose site. Could Grace, alone in her noticeable praise, have been thinking about the palace on the Rock of Monaco?262 It was from here that the prince was advancing his courtship, as he had before, in the form of increasingly regular letters, telegrams, and phone calls. All this after only one short, personal meeting five months before, on May 6, at the royal palace. On the film set, Grace read the letters and telegrams, and she answered them. In this written, indirect way, the two became acquainted with one another.

  Grace’s film partner, the French actor Louis Jourdan, who played the court tutor Nicholas Agi, recalled this time: “There was an innate aristocracy, [an] elegance about her. Not only comportment and manners, but also in thinking, in being. It has been a cliché to say that Grace Kelly looked like a princess. But she did.”263

  It comes as no small wonder that Grace herself once said that Princess Alexandra felt like a woman she had inside herself already.264

  Louis Jourdan also explained, “She had this extraordinary sense of humor—not only and first of all, about herself. Never taking herself seriously.”265

  The following anecdote serves as an example of Grace’s humor: During the filming of The Swan, a running gag developed between Alec Guinness and Grace Kelly, which is known as the legendary “Tomahawk Anecdote.” This gag was maintained by both of them over a span of twenty-five years. Alec Guinness himself gave varying accounts of what happened over the years, but the one he provided in the 1987 television documentary, The Hollywood Collection: Grace Kelly—The American Princess, is as good as any: “I got back one night. I’m playing in a show, [I] get into bed and I say to my wife, ‘For God’s sake, why on earth do we need a cold hot water bottle! Why do we need the hot water bottle at all!’ She said, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ And it was this identical tomahawk.”266

  Guinness related that he had almost forgotten about the whole thing until he flew to Hollywood in 1979 to receive an honorary Oscar: “I went to Hollywood to receive a special Oscar which was very nice. I stayed at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. Clasping my Oscar, I got home at three in the morning or whenever it was . . . and there in my bed at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel was the tomahawk.”267

  Another anecdote described by Alec Guinness involved the filming of the final scene in The Swan, one characterized by wistfulness and parting. However, in Guinness’ dry, British humor, the filming sounds anything but sad:

  “A touch more wind on Grace’s hair,” they said one afternoon at MGM as Grace Kelly and I, hand in hand, stood at a plaster balustrade apparently gazing out over a non-existent lake. They turned up the wind machine slightly and it blew dust in Grace’s eyes, so she had to retire for an hour to be re-made up. When she returned, the director, Charles Vidor, said, “More wind, fellas, but without the dust,” It came with a whoosh and blew off my toupee. Grace cried with laughter and had to be repaired again by the make-up artist. Another idle hour. In the end they resorted to wafting a gentle breeze by waving a small board at us.268

  At the end of the film, court tutor Nicholas Agi departs, and Princess Alexandra sadly and longingly watches his carriage from the balcony. In the meantime, Crown Prince Albert has followed the princess onto the terrace, and he turns to her:

  Prince Albert: “Your father used to call you his swan, so I am told. I think that’s a good thing to remember. Think what it means to be a swan: to glide like a dream on the smooth surface of the lake, and never go to the shore. On dry land, where ordinary people walk, the swan is awkward, even ridiculous. When she waddles up the bank she painfully resembles a different kind of bird, n’est-ce-pas?”

  Princess Alexandra (timidly): “A goose.”

  Prince Albert: “I’m afraid so. And there she must stay, out on the lake: silent, white, majestic. Be a bird, but never fly. Know one song, but never sing it until the moment of death. And so it must be for you, Alexandra: cool indifference to the staring crowds along the bank. And the song? Never.”269

  Later, in a similar manner, Grace will not be permitted to fly or sing: She was not allowed to make any more films; she was forbidden from appearing before a camera again as an actress. Her subjects, her spouse, her life circumstances were all against this. This was forcibly driven home to her one last time in 1962, when with a heavy heart she was forced to withdraw the consent she had given her friend and mentor Alfred Hitchcock to star in his psychological drama, Marnie. Instead, Tippi Hedren played the title role. For a while, Grace fell into a depression.

  A sad, oppressive feeling of departure and anxiety lays across the final scene of The Swan. Her face is shadowed by yearning. It is as if she senses what will come next. It is a farewell to the life she knew before. This is true for Alexandra. And it is true for Grace.

  In the final moments, Grace Kelly and Alec Guinness turn from the balcony railing, and without even looking at him, she crisply says to him, “Take me inside, Albert.”270

  This is the fateful last line of the film. With it, everything is decided. Etiquette has triumphed over emotion. Decorum over passion. And above all, she maintains her composure—because she wants to become queen.

  Almost exactly four months after the conclusion of filming for The Swan, the film had its world premiere in Los Angeles on April 18, 1956. On April 26, its East Coast premiere was held at Radio City Music Hall in New York. The poster announced, “MGM presents The Love Story of a Princess,” and a crown was perched on the capital letter of the word “Swan.” Grace Kelly’s painted profile can be seen in the background, and in the poster foreground, a snow white swan appears, with a crown on its head. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer did not just accidentally select April 18 as the day for the premiere. On that same day in Monaco, in the throne room of the royal palace, the civil wedding took place. And the actress Grace Kelly became her Royal Majesty Princess Grace of Monaco.

  As Brigitte Auber revealed, “At the time, I heard that Americans were very proud of her becoming a princess. For that matter, it had a different meaning than it did in Europe. Here, one is more used to such things. However, an actual, real princess from an American family!”271 The princess in the making had finally found her prince.

  High Society

  (1956)

  “I don’t want to be worshiped—

  I want to be loved.”

  —Grace Kelly as Tracy Lord

  On January 5, 1956, just after the turn of the new year, the engagement of Prince Charming and the Hollywood Princess was officially announced. In Philadelphia, Grace’s hometown, all the Kellys, as well as Grace and Prince Rainier, gathered at the Philadelphia Country Club, one of Jack Kelly’s favorite locales. The engagement was first announced to this small circle. Of course, Jack Kelly insisted on being the one to break the news.

  Previously, on December 28, 1955, during a walk together through New York, Rainier proposed and gave Grace an engagement ring ornamented with a sparkling, polished emerald. Supposedly they were walking down the esplanade that runs down the center of Park Avenue. According to the story, Grace’s delighted “Yes, yes, yes!” could be heard on the other side of the street. In the film High Society, she wore he
r actual engagement ring.

  After the announcement at the country club, everyone returned to the Kelly house at 3901 Henry Avenue. The press had been invited to come here for the afternoon. However, what Margaret Majer-Kelly had to experience in her otherwise spacious house was more than she had ever imagined. Television journalists with their camera teams, newspaper reporters, and a horde of photographers stormed the Kelly house. Things were tipped over, furniture was damaged—some photographers even stood on top of the piano. Late in her pregnancy, sister Lizanne was hidden away upstairs. The house was packed and noisy.

  What then proceeded was a mostly improvised press conference. Grace and Rainier descended from the second floor, and the press could hardly contain itself. The newly engaged couple sat on a bench, and close by, separated by a little table, Margaret and Jack Kelly also sat. The four of them were arranged in front of a fairly ugly brick wall. Countless microphones were set up on a table in front of them, and behind these were several large television cameras.

  There is documentary, black-and-white footage of this afternoon, as Grace holds Rainier’s hand, the sparkling engagement ring on her finger. She was used to the flashbulb chaos of Hollywood and the world of movies. Of premieres, interviews, receptions. However, now it was different. It was no longer about a new film project nor did it skirt around the edge of what was going on in her private life. Now it was exclusively about her future as a princess, one whose private life would be fully public and strictly regimented by court protocols—the extent of which was not yet fully known to her. She even smiled as she and Rainier faced the tension and awkwardness of the situation.