She was a great beauty, but she had more than just a good figure and a pretty face. Grace Kelly (1929-1982) exuded elegance and poise. With those credentials she made a name for herself in the Hollywood of the 50s. She fell in love with Cary Cooper, Cary Grant, William Holden, Clark Gable, Bing Crosby or James Stewart on the big screen and became Alfred Hitchcock's favorite actress. Eleven movies were enough to make Kelly a movie legend. In real life, she seduced Prince Rainier. She left acting to reign in Monaco and also succeeded in that role, although a traffic accident took her crown away from her at just 52 years old.
Kelly wanted to be an actress ever since she discovered theater at school. She had the support of her uncle, George Kelly, a renowned playwright who had won the Pulitzer Prize. Show business was no stranger to her family, as another of her uncles, Walter C. Kelly, was a music hall singer and vaudeville actor. And yet the young aspiring actress had a hard time convincing her wealthy parents to let her act. In the end, Ella Grace got her way and left her native Philadelphia to enroll in the Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York.
He studied for six years in which he combined his drama classes with modeling jobs, but he soon stood out and got numerous roles on television. But young Kelly wanted more. She managed to get the famous director Henry Hathaway to give her a small character in Fourteen Hours (1951), a film starring Paul Douglas about a man who wants to commit suicide by jumping from the top of a building.
That intervention was enough for Kelly to enter the cast of a classic film, Alone in the face of danger (Fred Zinnemann, 1952). The actress played the wife of Cary Cooper, the sheriff of a small town in the West. The couple just got married and want to move, but suddenly the threat arises, a criminal Cooper jailed has been released from prison and is on his way to meet them for revenge.
Kelly was on the road to stardom, and it didn't take long for another big opportunity to come along. John Ford was preparing a remake of Land of Passion (Victor Fleming, 1932), a film, starring Clark Gable, Jean Harlow and Mary Astor, which had been very successful in the 1930s. Ford was very clear that Gable would repeat as the lead in the new version and that Ava Gardner would take over the role of the ill-fated Harlow. For Astor's, he chose Kelly.
In Mogambo (1953), Kelly again played a newlywed who, together with her husband (Donald Sinden), travels to the heart of Africa to shoot a documentary about gorillas. The pair seek the help of Gable, a hunter who sells animals to zoos. Gable soon develops a crush on Kelly, even though he is in a relationship with Gardner. This love triangle did not please the Francoist censorship that, contrary to adultery, changed the dialogues in the dubbing so that Kelly and Sinden were brothers instead of marriage. The result was an incest that shocked far more than mere infidelity.
Despite the curious dubbing, the film dazzled the public: "Mogambo, the great Metro film, John Ford's masterpiece, is at the forefront of the greatest hits. Magnificent in his interpretation, entrusted to three stellar figures: Glark Gable, Ava Gardner and Grace Kelly, and its wonderful technicolor spectacularity. A love theme of exceptional interest and an action full of incidents and adventures attract the public that fills the large and sumptuous room of the Tivoli every day, "said the review published by La Vanguardia after the premiere of the film in Spain.
Alfred Hitchcock had a soft spot for blonde actresses. He saw Mogambo and knew that he had found his muse. He cast Kelly in The Perfect Murder (1954) where Ray Milland is a former tennis player who wants to get rid of his wife, Kelly. Milland finds a good alibi as he hires a man to break into his house and kill his wife. The murderer reaches the flat and struggles with the girl who, in self-defense, stabs him with scissors and kills him. The young woman faces a murder charge, but a hidden key will be the key to her defense.
Kelly's performance in Perfect Crime was more than applauded and marked the beginning of a collaboration between the actress and the director that resulted in three great films. There could have been many more if she hadn't retired from the movies. The film brought Kelly another great role as the troubled wife of an alcoholic actor (Bing Crosby) in The Anguish of Living (George Seaton, 1954). The film participated in Cannes, was liked by critics and gave Kelly an Oscar, although somewhat controversial, because it seemed that that year all bets were on Judy Garland, who also played the wife of an alcoholic actor in A Star Is Born (George Cukor, 1954).
The Academy had wanted to reward the most promising actress in Hollywood who, Oscar in hand, enrolled in an adventure, Green Fire (Andrew Marton, 1954) where she cooperated with Stewart Granger in the search for emeralds in the Colombian jungle. Kelly was not short of work. That same year she shot The Bridges of Toko-Ri (Mark Robson) with William Holden, a war drama set in the Korean War.
Neither of the two films was a great success, but Kelly's prestige was intact and only increased at the hands of Hitchcock, who required the actress for an unforgettable film. In Rear Window (1954) James Stewart is a photographer who, after breaking his leg, is forced to remain immobilized and cloistered in his house during a hot summer. The man gets bored and spends his time looking at the neighbors in the inner courtyard of his apartment until he is convinced that one of them has killed his wife. Stewart has a girlfriend, Kelly, who is a model and seems somewhat frivolous, but when he tells her about her suspicions, the girl helps him solve the crime.
After the success of Rear Window, Hitchcock and Kelly returned in a delightful suspense comedy with Cary Grant, another of the British director's favorite actors, as headliner. In To Catch a Thief (1955), Kelly is a multimillionaire who spends time with her mother on the Côte d'Azur. She there she meets Grant, a retired white-collar thief. A spate of jewelry thefts breaks out and Grant is the prime suspect, but Kelly, who has already had his eye on him, helps him uncover the real culprit.
The film crew moved to the Côte d'Azur for the shoot, and while in France, Kelly met Raniero, Prince of Monaco. In this case, it was the Monegasque president who had his eye on Kelly. Although the couple liked each other, the commitment was not immediate and she Kelly still had the opportunity to shoot two other films before becoming a princess.
Perhaps it was by chance, but in one of those two titles, The Swan (Charles Vidor, 1956) played a princess named Alexandra who is torn between the love she feels for her fencing teacher (Louis Jourdan) and the obligation to get married. with a distant relative, Alec Guinness, for the sake of the crown. The Swan was also shot in Europe and Rainier took the opportunity to get to know Kelly better, invited her to her palace and the relationship between the couple became closer.
But Kelly returned to the United States where another work commitment awaited him. George Cukor had succeeded in 1940 making the play The Philadelphia Story a film with Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn and James Stewart. The Metro proposed to make a remake but in a musical key. He cast Kelly in the role of Tracy Lord, the young heiress who plans to marry a second time, and cast Bing Crosby as the ex-husband who wants to win her back, and Frank Sinatra as the journalist who is going to cover the wedding and is attracted to the bride. With High Society (Charles Walters, 1956), Kelly said goodbye to the cinema.
During the filming of the film, Raniero traveled to Philadelphia to meet the Kelly family and ask for the actress's hand. On January 5, 1956, the engagement was announced. Grace Kelly was a big movie star, she was used to the spotlight and being the center of attention, but her marriage aroused spectacular interest and made the future princess the cover of newspapers around the world.
The wedding took place on April 18, 1956. The couple had three children, Carolina, Alberto and Estefanía. After the marriage, Kelly retired from the cinema and gave herself completely to her family and to the role of her princess. Her elegance and her charm served to place the Principality among the most select places and they say that her intervention was crucial in preventing France from annexing the small coastal country.
In September 1982, the princess returned to Monaco from her country house in Roc Agel. She was at the wheel and accompanied by her youngest daughter, Estefanía. The car she was driving went around a curve and plunged off the cliff. It was the same road that had served as the setting for some sequences of To Catch a Thief. Princess Grace was admitted to the Hospital that bears her name, but the doctors could not save her and she passed away the next day. She was only 52 years old. She was buried in the Cathedral of Saint Nicholas. She left for her memory a short film career but full of unforgettable titles.
