Grace Kelly

Grace Patricia Kelly (November 12, 1929 – September 14, 1982), also known as Grace of Monaco, was an American actress and Princess of Monaco as the wife of Prince Rainier III from their marriage on April 18, 1956, until her death in 1982. Prior to her marriage, she achieved stardom in several significant Hollywood films in the early to mid-1950s. She received an Academy Award and three Golden Globe Awards, and was ranked 13th on the American Film Institute's 25 Greatest Female Stars list.

Kelly was born into a prominent Catholic family in Philadelphia. After graduating from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in 1949, she began appearing in New York City theatrical productions and television broadcasts. Kelly made her film debut in Fourteen Hours (1951) and gained stardom from her roles in Fred Zinnemann's western film High Noon (1952), and John Ford's adventure-romance Mogambo (1953), the latter of which earned her the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress nomination. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in the drama The Country Girl (1954). Other notable works include the war film The Bridges at Toko-Ri (1954), the romantic comedy High Society (1956), and three Alfred Hitchcock suspense thrillers: Dial M for Murder (1954), Rear Window (1954), and To Catch a Thief (1955).

Kelly retired from acting at age 26 to marry Rainier and began her duties as Princess of Monaco. Grace and Rainier had three children: Princess Caroline, Prince Albert, and Princess Stéphanie. Princess Grace's charity work focused on young children and the arts. In 1964, she established the Princess Grace Foundation to support local artisans. Her organization for children's rights, AMADE Mondiale, gained consultive status within UNICEF and UNESCO. Her final film role was narrating The Children of Theatre Street (1977), which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

She died at the age of 52 at Monaco Hospital, from injuries sustained in a car crash. Her son, Prince Albert, helped establish the Princess Grace Awards in 1984 to recognize emerging performers in film, theatre, and dance.

Grace Patricia Kelly was born on November 12, 1929, at Hahnemann University Hospital in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to an affluent and influential family. Her father, John B. Kelly Sr., was born to Irish immigrants; he won three Olympic gold medals for sculling. He owned a successful brickwork contracting company that was well known on the East Coast. As the Democratic Party nominee in the 1935 election for mayor of Philadelphia, he lost by the closest margin in the city's history. In later years, he served on the Fairmount Park Commission and, during World War II, was appointed by President Roosevelt as National Director of Physical Fitness. His brother Walter C. Kelly was a vaudeville star, who also made films for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Paramount Pictures, and another brother named George was a Pulitzer Prize-winning dramatist, screenwriter, and director. He built the family home at 3901 Henry Ave in the East Falls, Philadelphia, neighborhood. The Kellys' former family home went up for sale for $1 million in June 2016. It wound up selling in September 2016 for $775,000.

Kelly's mother, Margaret Majer, was of German ancestry. Margaret had taught physical education at the University of Pennsylvania and had been the first woman to coach women's athletics at Penn. She also modeled for a time in her youth. After marrying John Kelly in 1924, Margaret focused on being a homemaker until all her children were of school age, following which she began actively participating in various civic organizations. Patrilineally, Margaret descended from Prof. Johann Christian von Majer [de] (1741–1821) from Ludwigsburg, who worked as a political scientist, jurist and theologian, and was elected five times Rector of the University of Tübingen. Through him, Grace was descended from the Stauffenberg family and many other minor German noble families, such as von Plieningen, von Münchingen, von Ow, von Bettendorf, von Nippenburg, and von Roth.

Kelly had two older siblings, Margaret and John Jr., and a younger sister, Elizabeth. The children were raised in the Catholic faith, and Grace continued to practice the faith until her death, with Rita Gam describing her as a "deeply religious person". Kelly grew up in a small, close-knit Catholic community. She was baptized and received her elementary education in the parish of Saint Bridget's in East Falls. Founded in 1853 by Saint John Neumann, the fourth Bishop of Philadelphia, Saint Bridget's was a relatively young parish, with families very familiar with one another. While attending Ravenhill Academy, a Catholic girls' school, Kelly modeled fashions at local charity events with her mother and sisters. In 1942, at the age of 12, she played the lead in Don't Feed the Animals, a play produced in East Falls by the Old Academy Players.

In May 1947, Kelly graduated from Stevens School, a private institution in nearby Chestnut Hill, where she participated in drama and dance programs. Her graduation yearbook listed her favorite actress as Ingrid Bergman and her favorite actor as Joseph Cotten. Written in the "Stevens' Prophecy" section was "Miss Grace P. Kelly – a famous star of stage and screen". Owing to her low mathematics scores, Kelly was rejected by Bennington College in July 1947. Despite her parents' initial disapproval, Kelly decided to pursue her dreams of becoming an actress. Her father was particularly displeased with her decision, as he viewed acting as "a slim cut above streetwalker" at the time. In 1947, Kelly signed with the Walter Thornton Model Agency gracing the covers of magazines.

In 1954, Kelly dated and was engaged to Oleg Cassini after his divorce from Gene Tierney.

To start her career, she auditioned for the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York, using a scene from her uncle George Kelly's The Torch-Bearers (1923). Although the school had already met its semester quota, she obtained an interview with the admissions department, and was admitted through George's influence. Kelly worked diligently, and practiced her speech by using a tape recorder. Her early acting pursuits led her to the stage, and she made her Broadway debut in Strindberg's The Father, alongside Raymond Massey. At 19, her graduation performance was as Tracy Lord in The Philadelphia Story. Her uncle continued to advise and mentor Kelly throughout her acting career.

At her father's insistence, she lived at the Barbizon Hotel for Women in Manhattan. She was hired as a model by the John Robert Powers agency, where some of her first modeling jobs were doing commercials for bug spray and cigarettes. Kelly was reportedly "fond of dancing to Hawaiian music down the hallways of the Barbizon, and given to shocking her fellow residents by performing topless". She later wrote that she had "wonderful memories of the three years I spent at the Barbizon".

Television producer Delbert Mann cast Kelly as the lead in an adaptation of the Sinclair Lewis novel Bethel Merriday; this was her first of nearly sixty live television programs. She was mentioned in Theatre World magazine as "[a] most promising personality of the Broadway stage of 1950". Some of her well-known works as a theater actress were: The Father, The Rockingham Tea Set, The Apple Tree, The Mirror of Delusion, Episode (for Somerset Maugham's tele-serial), among others.

Impressed by her work in The Father, Henry Hathaway, director of the Twentieth Century-Fox film Fourteen Hours (1951), offered her a small role in the film. Kelly had a minor role opposite Paul Douglas, Richard Basehart, and Barbara Bel Geddes, as a young woman contemplating divorce. Douglas commented: "In two senses, she did not have a bad side – you could film her from any angle, and she was one of the most un-temperamental, cooperative people in the business." Following the release of the film, the "Grace Kelly Fan Club" was established, gaining popularity across the country with local chapters springing up and attracting many members. Kelly referred to her fan club as "terrifically amusing".

Kelly was noticed during a visit to the set of Fourteen Hours by Gary Cooper. However, Kelly's performance in Fourteen Hours went largely unnoticed by critics and did not contribute to her film career's momentum. She continued her work in the theater and on television, although she lacked "vocal horsepower", and it was thought she would likely not have had a lengthy stage career.

Kelly was performing at Colorado's Elitch Theatre when producer Stanley Kramer offered her a role co-starring opposite Cooper in Fred Zinnemann's High Noon (1952), a Western filmed in Columbia, California. She accepted the role, and the film was shot in the late summer and early fall of 1951 over a 28-day shooting schedule in hot weather conditions. She was cast as a "young Quaker bride to Gary Cooper's stoic marshal", and wore a "suitably demure vaguely Victorian dress". High Noon garnered four Academy Awards, and has since been ranked by some reviewers among the best films of all time.

Biographer H. Haughland stated: "Miss Kelly's acting did not excite the critics, or live up to her own expectations." Some critics scoffed at the conclusion of the film in which Cooper's character has to be saved by Kelly's. One critic argued that her pacifist character, killing a man who is about to shoot her husband, was cold and abstract. Alfred Hitchcock described her performance as "rather mousey", and stated that it lacked animation. He said that it was only in her later films that she "really blossomed" and showed her quality.

After filming High Noon, Kelly returned to New York City and took private acting lessons, wanting to be taken seriously as an actress. She performed in a few dramas in the theater, and in TV serials. She appeared in several television plays, and screen-tested for the film Taxi in the spring of 1952. Director John Ford noticed Kelly in the screen test, and his studio flew her out to Los Angeles to audition in September 1952. Ford said that Kelly showed "breeding, quality, and class". She was given the role, along with a seven-year contract at the relatively low salary of $850 a week (equivalent to $10,065 in 2024). Kelly signed the deal under two conditions: first, that one out of every two years, she had time off to work in the theatre; and second, that she be able to live in New York City at her residence in Manhattan House, at 200 E. 66th Street, now a landmark.