Queen of Hollywood and Princess of Monaco
In 1955 "To Catch a Thief" was released, starring Grace Kelly and Cary Grant and directed by the king of suspense Alfred Hitchcock, the film, considered a "minor work" of the director, received very good reviews, however, due to the chemistry that gave off two of the most famous actors of the time. The film was shot in Monaco and during the filming of one of the exterior scenes Grace Kelly looked up to discover some beautiful gardens: "Who does this wonder belong to?" biographers say when the actress asked, "Prince Rainier of Monaco".
The idea of visiting those gardens was recorded in the mind of Grace Kelly and it was that same year when the Hitchcock film was released and the famous actress was chosen as the image of the Cannes Film Festival when she had the pleasure of walking through the place that most Later it would become his home.
Grace Kelly, at just 25 years old, was one of the best-known faces in Hollywood and therefore (let's keep in mind that at that time, films were on the bill for up to three years) throughout the world. At the age of 26, she became Princess of Monaco. It seems like one of those stories of "and they lived happily ever after" however in the life of Grace Kelly all that glitters is not gold. With days to go before Nicole Kidman brings her to life on the big screen in a version of Kelly that she didn't like too much at the Palace, we remember the life of the actress, the princess, and the style icon.
A girl from Philadelphia
But let's start at the beginning before arriving in the Principality, Grace Patricia Kelly was born into a wealthy family in Philadelphia, her father Jack Kelly, was a prosperous businessman and also a well-known Casanova: in the book "The real Grace: life and the times of an American princess" they say that when Christmas came his father ordered 27 bags of beauty products from Elizabeth Arden and sent them to his 27 lovers.
However, her father did not see with good eyes that her little girl had inherited the same seduction skills as him since her idea in her family was to turn her into an elegant lady and marry her off with a good piece. She had a couple of love stories, one of them with a much older man, which led to clashes with her family. At 18 years old, Grace decides that her life was not going to be that of an ordinary wealthy woman from Philadelphia and she moves to New York to study Dramatic Art despite her family's opposition.
New York, Los Angeles: love and work
A volcano covered in snow. This is how Alfred Hitchcock described it. A perfect definition for a woman like Grace Kelly, with an imposing physique, she began working as a model: her six-foot-three, her fifty-three kilos, her blonde hair, and her blue eyes made her the ideal of American beauty of the time.
Her appearance was sweet and elegant, but at the same time cold. However, inside her was the opposite. In 1949 she got her first role in a Broadway play, the play went unnoticed but the same did not happen with Grace Kelly, who received offers to work on television.
Much has been written about her period in New York: an emerging star, she began to have admirers from high and low levels, some of them much older than her and even married, for which she began to carve out a reputation as "Debora hombre" and " destroys couples". Grace Kelly was too hip for 1950s New York: she enjoyed life and had adventures, but she didn't commit to anyone. She did what the male actors of the time did, with the only difference being that she was not exactly described as a "conqueror".
Within a few years of arriving in New York, Grace Kelly was one of the best-connected people of the day: partly because of her rising career as an actress and partly because she was born well-placed in high society. Her beauty and her talent made many men fight for her company, it is worth noting her romance with the 'playboy' Ali Khan, the future husband of Rita Hayworth, who gave her one of the bracelets with which she used to reward the lovers of it. But perhaps the most notorious was her affair with John Kennedy which sparked a lifelong feud with Jackie Kennedy when she found out about the torrid romance to the point that Jackie refused to receive her at the White House when, after her husband's funeral, Grace Kelly came to Washington to mourn over the president's grave and pay his respects to the family.
After living it up in New York, Grace Kelly decided she wanted to leap to the big screen so she moved to the movie mecca. Her career was brief but extraordinary: in six years she worked in eleven films and in gossip magazines she was listed as "the First Lady of Hollywood".
In the 50s, Hollywood actors were for Americans like their own royalty, since in America the luxury of European Royal Houses did not exist, the press was in charge of creating them. Thus, stars like Elizabeth Taylor, Marilyn Monroe, Ava Gardner, and Grace Kelly herself became women admired and adored by an audience that demanded to know about them, see them on screen, and also know about their lives.
Her first film, Fourteen Hours, went largely unnoticed, yet it led to her landing her second role in Fred Zinnemann's Alone in Danger, which went on to win four Academy Awards. In this film, she shared the bill with veteran actor Gary Cooper, who was 28 years her senior and whom she seduced from the start. And not only him, it seems that the film's director, Fred Zinnermann, also had a relationship, whose devotion to the actress led to the inclusion of an infrequent number of close-ups of the actress in the final cut, which unleashed the wrath of another protagonist, Katy Jurado.
But it seems that not only did the Austrian director fall in love with the young Grace Kelly, who was twenty-two at the time, but the public did as well. Her career took off with that film and made it possible for her to later work in Mogambo alongside John Ford, Clark Gable, and Ava Gardner, with whom she began a good friendship. She also had time to seduce Gable who, once out of Africa, told her that it was over. For Mogambo, she was nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress.
She would win Best Lead Actress in 1955 for The Country Girl, directed by George Seaton.
