The Grimaldis of Monaco, page 26
Grace and Lyons continued to see each other, but after a disastrous visit to Philadelphia, when he drank too much and her family asked him to leave, she came to the decision that the affair must end. She still considered New York her home and shared a simple apartment with a friend from her Barbizon days, Prudence “Prudy” Wise. Jay Kanter called to say she had been offered the second female lead in an M.G.M. remake of the 1932 film Red Dust, originally about an overseer (Clark Gable) on a rubber plantation in Indochina who falls in love with a stranded prostitute (Jean Harlow) and is pursued by his engineer’s wife (Mary Astor). The film, renamed Mogambo, would be directed by John Ford and shot in East Africa. In its reincarnation it was set in Kenya, but would have Gable playing largely the same role he had played twenty years earlier, except that he was now to be a white hunter, Ava Gardner, a stranded American showgirl he falls in love with, and Grace, who falls in love with him, the wife of a British archaeologist.
Grateful at the chance to break completely from Lyons and thrilled at the idea of foreign travel and appearing with “Rhett Butler” (by her own count she had seen Gone With the Wind a dozen times), she hastily accepted the part even though it meant signing a seven-year contract with M.G.M. The studio gave her permission to appear in theater between films but retained the right to pre-empt her services if they had a suitable role for her ready to go before the cameras.
Gable had gained weight, and his age was evident (he was fifty-two). His recent life had been trouble-strewn. His popularity was on the wane. His brief marriage to Lady Sylvia Ashley was being settled in the divorce courts and he was drinking so heavily that he often could not control his shakes before the camera. East Africa was unbearably hot and the film difficult to make. Ava Gardner, who became Grace’s lifelong friend, was having difficulties in her marriage to Frank Sinatra, who had remained in Hollywood; she did not want to further incite a jealous husband and so was cool to Gable’s off-camera overtures. Gable turned to Grace. When not shooting, the pair would take long journeys in a jeep over the rugged terrain and “[make] camp by firelight in desolate reaches.” A pattern was beginning to form: Grace seemed always in pursuit of the love of an older man or father figure, as she herself recognized. They parted at London Airport, Grace sobbing, Gable insisting that he was too old and too confused to continue the affair.
Mogambo was not a box-office hit, nor did her role in it show her talents to their fullest (or even close to it); but it made Grace Kelly a star, for on-screen she projected that certain chemistry that creates sparks. She was perhaps more a creation of Ma Kelly’s design than her own or Hollywood’s. She was the ultimate lady, aloof but with a charitable heart and a promise of yet unplumbed depths.
“I’ve been at the studio for years and years. In all that time there’s been nothing like it,” Grace’s biographer Steven Englund quotes one of M.G.M.’s publicity men as saying about Grace after the release of Mogambo. “What gets me is that when all the hullabaloo started, she’d only really been in one [M.G.M.] picture. We can’t keep up with the demand for interviews with her. We even had somebody here from The Saturday Review of Literature. The Saturday Review of Literature! I’ve never dealt with The Saturday Review of Literature before!”
Next, Grace was loaned out by M.G.M. to Alfred Hitchcock to star opposite Ray Milland in Dial M for Murder,4 The old pattern of an attraction to an older man was repeated but with a double edge. By the end of the film Hitchcock was hopelessly in love with her. She admired him greatly as a director and appreciated his faith in her, but no more, and over the years Hitchcock’s continually frustrated passion would become obsessive. Ray Milland was equally mesmerized by Grace. Both men were older, both were married. She was attracted to Milland but resisted becoming as involved as she had with Gable (the memory of that relationship still caused her pain).
After the completion of Dial M for Murder, she returned to Philadelphia, where the preview was to be held, accompanied by Jay Kanter and his wife, Judith.5 After the showing of the film, which was attended by all the Kellys, they and Grace and her friends went back to the house in Germantown. Somehow under the impression that Grace’s family was high society, Judy Kanter was taken by surprise at the middle-class surroundings and was quick to note that Jack Kelly’s eyes were focused with pride on Peggy, not on Grace. After nothing was said about their daughter’s appearance in the film they had just seen, Judy Kanter asked Jack, “Isn’t it exciting what’s happening to Gracie’s career?”
“She was a weak little thing,” Jack Kelly sighed dismissively, as if Grace were not in the room. “I don’t understand why she’d want to be an actress, never did, but I told her she could go to New York when she asked because I couldn’t even think of anything else she could do. Not even getting into college. Oh well, I’m glad she’s making a living.”
“It was clear,” her agent’s wife later wrote in her book, The Bridesmaids, “that in Jack Kelly’s eyes, his daughter Grace was an unprofitable and unexceptional investment. To her dad, Grace was a write-off.”
Hitchcock borrowed her for a second picture, Rear Window, opposite James Stewart, one of the few of Grace’s leading men with whom she did not dally. (Stewart was a constant and loving husband to his wife, Gloria.) Hitchcock was determined to show the world how truly talented Grace was, and he worked with her in an almost brutal fashion to bring out for the camera the sexuality he believed lay beneath that cool exterior. (“Grace is like a mountain covered with snow,” he once told a friend, “and when the snow melts you discover it to be a smoldering volcano.”) It worked, and Grace’s sensuality contributed to the tremendous commercial success of Rear Window, which was a gripping suspense film, well produced and acted. Hitchcock began the search for yet another script suitable for Grace’s talents. Meanwhile, she was loaned out again, this time to co-star with William Holden in the action thriller The Bridges at Toko-Ri, adapted from a novel by James Michener about jet pilots during the Korean War. This was a drama about men, war and planes, and although her role was not as strong as Holden’s, she had the only woman’s role of any size in the film and her elegant sexuality and her beauty helped to give the picture, and the grim drama of the story, a fuller appeal.
She appeared drawn to Holden from their first meeting. He was twelve years older than she, married to actress Brenda Marshall and drinking heavily. The director, Mark Robson, took Holden aside after the first day of shooting and warned him against involving Grace in an affair. Holden ignored the advice. The film was made in Hollywood, and his car was said to be parked outside Grace’s apartment house on Sweetzer Avenue almost every night. “It was hard not to fall in love with Grace,” Holden later told the press. When The Bridges at Toko-Ri opened at Radio City Music Hall in January 1955 her name came below Holden’s in the credits. The New York Times critic called her “briefly bewitching,” and the New York Herald Tribune film editor wrote, “Everyone knows how nice it is to have her around.” But in Hollywood, it is the box office returns, not reviews, that are important and Grace’s films were commercial hits. Grace, on the other hand, believed she could, if given the right role, have it both ways.
The part she wanted to play was that of Georgie Elgin in the planned adaptation of the Clifford Odets play The Country Girl, to be directed by George Seaton and to star William Holden and Bing Crosby in two of the three main roles. Georgie was the long-suffering wife and caretaker of an alcoholic actor (Bing Crosby), managed by the Holden character. She was plain, a tough, uncompromising woman. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer refused to allow her to do the film. She threatened to break her contract and return to the stage. Finally they agreed.
The Country Girl began filming almost immediately after The Bridges at Toko-Ri was completed. Grace was still in love with Holden but he now decided that he had to give his marriage another chance. Grace was under tremendous tension—there were her problems with Holden, the difficulty of the role and, in the beginning, a personality clash between herself and Crosby. Midway through the film his attitude changed as he saw how hard she was working at her part and to keep Holden at a distance. Crosby now became as enamored of Grace as had the majority of her other co-stars. In his favor were his Catholicism and the fact that he was a widower. Grace did not return his feelings to the same extent, but the romance helped her to overcome her feelings for Holden.
In the short time she had been in Hollywood, Judy Balaban Quine later wrote in her autobiography, “Grace had done six of Hollywood’s hottest pictures [High Noon, Mogambo, Rear Window, Dial M for Murder, The Bridges at Toko-Ri and The Country Girl] and, reputedly, four of the hottest male stars in the business [apparently referring to Cooper, Gable, Holden and Crosby].”
Grace’s schedule was difficult. She still maintained her New York apartment and between films flew back to appear in shortterm stage productions; in stock and off-Broadway. She thought of herself as “of the theater.” She had never gone Hollywood and seemed unconcerned about her image. She seldom appeared at galas or premieres or dated for publicity, and despite her new affluence, she did not spend her money on a showy apartment or an expensive car. It seemed she might be perfectly happy to turn her back on Hollywood. But then Hitchcock sent her the script of the film he had been preparing since they had worked together on Rear Window, a story about a slick and very attractive cat burglar who uses his past talents To Catch a Thief, which would be shot on the Riviera; in fact, most scenes would take place on the Corniche above Monte Carlo. Cary Grant was to co-star. Perhaps because she had heard the Hollywood rumors about Grace’s penchant for older, married men, Grant’s wife, the actress Betsy Drake, accompanied him. The three became good friends, frequenting the Casino which Grace, although betting small stakes, found exciting. Rainier, who was deeply involved with the PMS bank scandal at this time, did nothing to welcome the film people to his Principality. Had they met then, it is doubtful they would have had a future, for Grace was deeply in love with a man who she was convinced would be her mate for life—suave, European Oleg Cassini, a fashion designer recently divorced from actress Gene Tierney.
Cassini had an exotic background. Born in Paris of aristocratic Russian parents and raised in Florence, he had achieved success as a couturier before the war and had gone to the United States, where he immediately became the darling of cosmopolitan society. He and Grace had met through the French actor Jean-Pierre Aumont, who was appearing with Grace in a television film.
Cassini followed her to the Riviera, and their affair flourished in the warmth and beauty of the surroundings and in the company of good friends such as the Grants and the Hitchcocks and the many fascinating Europeans of Cassini’s acquaintance from the art, literary and society worlds. He was unlike any of the men Grace had known. He was not just a bon vivant. He had charm and wit, spoke four languages fluently (Russian, French, Italian and English), and was well-read and well-informed. His second daughter with Gene Tierney had been born severely retarded because of a case of measles he had caught during his wife’s pregnancy and had given to her. He carried this guilt with him and the tinge of sadness aroused Grace’s emotions. Cassini was sixteen years older than Grace, yet she had a faintly maternal attitude toward him.
Cassini was the first eligible man with whom Grace was truly in love. They returned to the United States after the completion of To Catch a Thief in the spring of 1955 to be met with an avalanche of public and press interest. Grace took him home to meet her parents, which proved to be disastrous. “The mere thought of Grace marrying a divorced man was distasteful to us,” Ma Kelly wrote in a newspaper piece not long after.
Cassini was unprepared for the intolerance and rudeness that greeted him. “Mr. Cassini,” Ma said in a clipped, hard tone, “you’re terribly charming and continental, and I can certainly understand Grace’s wanting to date you, but as a marriage risk you’re very poor.”
Cassini refused to let Grace’s mother take the upper hand. Having been told by Grace of her father’s infidelities, he replied: “You know, I’ve always said that before one accuses another person, it is a good idea to be sure of one’s own ground.”
He had dinner with the entire Kelly family. It was a ghastly evening. Neither Ma nor Jack addressed him directly, and Grace’s sisters were cool, fearing their parents’ wrath if they were friendly. Brother Kell, who had told a reporter that Cassini “looked like an odd ball” to him, had been threatening to “kill him when he walks through the door.”
Grace’s younger sister, Lizanne, had just become engaged to a young man of whom the family also did not approve, Donald Le Vine. “Donald was Jewish,” Cassini commented to biographer Steven Englund, “so he, too, was in bad odor with the family, though not so bad as I. He was the only person [apart from Grace] who talked to me. We were the pariahs.”
Grace was firmly told that if she married Cassini (whom her parents still considered a married man), “there would be no more Christmases at home.” It may seem astonishing that a twenty-five-year-old woman who had been living away from home for seven years and was one of the most famous film stars in the world would have considered this a serious deprivation. But Grace could not bear to think of being cut out of her family’s celebrations, nor could she deal with the idea that they did not find the man she loved acceptable. Cassini fought to hold them together, but he was on the losing side, far outnumbered by the Kelly family.
In April, Grace, to her amazement, won the Academy Award for her performance in The Country Girl. William Holden presented her with the Oscar. It was an emotional moment. Unable to control her tears, Grace could only mutter a heartfelt “Thank you for the honor.” Jack Kelly, on the other hand, telephoned by a reporter for a quote, said: “There’s been too much publicity about Grace. Peggy’s the family extrovert. Just between us, I’ve always thought her the daughter who’s got the most on the ball.”
Within a week after Grace won the award, M.G.M. placed her on suspension for not accepting a role opposite Robert Taylor in Quentin Durward, a costume picture based on the novel by Sir Walter Scott. She was in a state of serious depression, not knowing what she should do next in either her career or her personal life. The affair with Cassini was all but over. The film part she had wanted in Giant, which was to be directed by George Stevens, had gone to Elizabeth Taylor. She had also been rejected for the role of Roxanne in a Broadway revival of Cyrano de Bergerac. A journalist named Rupert Allan, with whom she had become friendly, suggested she go to the Cannes Film Festival. He impressed upon her that she was currently the most popular star in Europe as well as in the United States, and that rather than sit and brood she should be in the public eye. She flew to Paris a week later and took the train to Cannes with Pierre Galante, editor of Paris Match, who was married to the film star Olivia de Havilland.
During the journey Galante discussed an idea he had for a photo shoot. Would she be agreeable to meeting Prince Rainier and doing a tour of the Palace gardens? Recalling Rainier’s coolness to the crew of To Catch a Thief, Grace suggested that he might not like film stars. Galante informed her that he had lived with one for years. “Well, in that case,” she laughed.
“You agree?”
“If the Prince does,” she replied smiling.
17
RAINIER’S FAVORITE PLACE to escape for a few solitary moments in the Palace was his private zoo. His love of animals had awakened during his childhood visits to Marchais, and Gisèle had shared his interest in wildlife. He was particularly drawn to primates because of their intelligence. Tanagra, a chimpanzee that had been born in the jungle and raised in captivity, was the object of his fondest regard and indulgence, for she had been his first feral acquisition and the only one allowed in other parts of the Palace. He now had quite a collection of monkeys, gorillas, lions, tigers, numerous other varieties of wild cats, a retired circus elephant (Rainier was especially fond of circuses) and some uncommon breeds like a llama and an oont (a species of camel).
There was a large zoo staff, but Rainier enjoyed helping to feed the animals. He had what one family member calls “a magic touch with them” and fearlessly entered their cages even when the keepers were cautious. Never able to work up great enthusiasm for creatures of the sea, he nonetheless understood his great-grandfather Albert’s zeal for nature.
With his breakup with Gisèle, he was a lonely man. He could trust no one in his family. He loved children, and despite the bitterness of his relationship with his sister, he was happiest when his two nieces and his nephew came to visit and he could be lost in their simple childhood world. One problem after the other had beset him in his six-year reign: Ghislaine, the attempted coup, economic imbroglios, the PMS scandal, and the growing animosity and power struggle between him and Aristotle Onassis.
After a serious car accident in 1953, which almost cost him his life, he no longer raced. He enjoyed his yacht but remained shy with people, which meant his cruises were often friendless journeys; and he had never been the kind of man who was at ease with casual female companionship.
Rainier was now ready to accept the advice of his spiritual adviser, Father Tucker. He was thirty-two, a good age for a man to marry. Finding the right young woman was not that easy, however. First there were the things a prospective Princesse de Monaco must be: Catholic, fertile, rich, beautiful, and someone who would be a good companion to him. And then there were the things she could not be: German, of questionable birth, a woman not able to devote her complete life to him, their children and the Principality. This last requirement was perhaps the most difficult to meet, for Rainier’s reticent nature drew him toward lively, intelligent women whose own experiences could bring excitement into his life and who might not be pleased to give up their independence.
