November 12, 1929—Even before becoming Her Most Serene Highness, Princess of Monaco, Grace Kelly—born on this date in Philadelphia—gave the appearance to her less attentive fans, with that stunning blonde hair and white gloves, of being born to an American aristocracy. Others—particularly Philadelphians and Irish-Catholics—knew that the heritage of the proper lady could be traced, not that far back, to far less comfortable circumstances in County Mayo, Ireland.
I hadn’t been aware that today would have been Princess Grace’s 80th birthday until I received an e-mail from my college friend Steve Irolla—Rabelaisian blogger, cunning cruciverbalist, film fan, galloping gourmand, tour guide extraordinaire, king of the world, master of the universe, and maybe one or two other things I’ve forgotten because of encroaching age. (You can read about my earlier adventures with my friend here.)
Steve reminded me that, though she is indelibly associated with Philadelphia, Hollywood and Monaco, the woman who became a byword for poise and glamour in films like Rear Window and High Society was resided for a while with New York, where she lived—in the Barbizon Hotel for Women—while she was modeling and taking her first tentative steps into acting. And we in the New York area can claim a distinction that none of the other aforementioned cities can: she stayed here during the pivotal period of her life, when she was trying to escape her testosterone-heavy family legacy.
Now, it’s true that Kelly was born to a life of privilege, but just remember: royals (or what passes for them here in the states) don’t always have it easy, even with all those estates, horseback-riding lessons, etc. The princess was speaking only the truth when she told future biographer Donald Spoto during a 1975 interview: "The idea of my life as a fairy tale is itself a fairy tale."
It was Kelly’s bad luck that her father, John B. (Jack) Kelly Sr.—the world-class sculler who wreaked vengeance on the British for banning him from the Henley-on-Thames Rowing Regatta by beating the champion of the event at the 1920 Olympics—treated her in much the same manner as Prince Philip of Great Britain acted toward Prince Charles as a young man: i.e., unfeelingly. Handsome, muscular, a millionaire contractor, Jack dominated his household, where there was no real place for an unathletic female. (Son Jack Jr. went on to win the Henley Regatta from which his father had been banned.) Jack and her mother, a former model, frowned upon her wish to become an actress.
Fortunately, Grace looked slightly afield to find a mentor to help her satisfy her aesthetic instincts: her uncle George Kelly, who first took Broadway by storm (the Pulitzer Prize-winning Craig’s Wife) before heading out to Hollywood. The bohemian, unmarried (widely speculated to be homosexual) George could not have been more like his brash brother, and it was in one of his early plays, a satire of the 1920s “little theater movement,” The Torch-Bearers, that Grace made her professional debut.
In the second half of the 20th century, Grace (was there ever a more appropriate first name)? shared pride of place with Jacqueline Kennedy as an American Catholic woman who symbolized elegance and allure at the intersection of the arts and politics. Posthumous gossipy revelations (all those alleged affairs by their husbands, and maybe even their own) have done noticeably little to decrease the affection that so many Americans feel for them. Perhaps that’s because they embody, far more truly than Marilyn Monroe, the Bernie Taupin lyric from Elton John’s hit “Candle in the Wind”: “You had the grace to hold yourself while those around you crawled.”
The lives of both women, it might be said, were divided in half by a single event that fixed their images with the public until their deaths: Grace’s marriage to Prince Rainier of Monaco, and Jacqueline’s stoicism as a widow at the funeral of her assassinated husband.
Both women would have been wildly out of place in our current confessional era. Perhaps they did so out of the desire to protect themselves and their families, but, by staying within their zone of privacy, they retained their aura of mystery and fascination well after their deaths.
The lives of the two women did intersect memorably in one brief, funny incident. It was related by Jacqueline’s mother, Janet Lee Bouvier Auchincloss, in an oral history now posted on the Web site of the JFK Library in Massachusetts.
Just as she was about to tell the story, Mrs. Auchincloss—perhaps wondering how appropriate it was to relate this tale less than a year after the death of the President--wondered “whether this should be on the tape,” then plunged ahead anyway:
After Senator Kennedy had an operation in 1953, Jacqueline would visit him at the end of the day in the hospital. At one point, Kelly told Jacqueline that she’d never met Jack, whereupon the latter hatched a prank: She persuaded the actress to don a nurse’s cap and uniform, visit JFK's room, and pretend to be the night nurse.
The heavily medicated senator—who had been complaining about his aged nurses—awoke to behold a far different sight this time. “I don’t know what Jack was doing,” Mrs. Auchincloss recalled, “but he must have been rather electrified when she announced that she was the new night nurse.”
The future randy President must have thought he’d died and gone to heaven.
I hadn’t been aware that today would have been Princess Grace’s 80th birthday until I received an e-mail from my college friend Steve Irolla—Rabelaisian blogger, cunning cruciverbalist, film fan, galloping gourmand, tour guide extraordinaire, king of the world, master of the universe, and maybe one or two other things I’ve forgotten because of encroaching age. (You can read about my earlier adventures with my friend here.)
Steve reminded me that, though she is indelibly associated with Philadelphia, Hollywood and Monaco, the woman who became a byword for poise and glamour in films like Rear Window and High Society was resided for a while with New York, where she lived—in the Barbizon Hotel for Women—while she was modeling and taking her first tentative steps into acting. And we in the New York area can claim a distinction that none of the other aforementioned cities can: she stayed here during the pivotal period of her life, when she was trying to escape her testosterone-heavy family legacy.
Now, it’s true that Kelly was born to a life of privilege, but just remember: royals (or what passes for them here in the states) don’t always have it easy, even with all those estates, horseback-riding lessons, etc. The princess was speaking only the truth when she told future biographer Donald Spoto during a 1975 interview: "The idea of my life as a fairy tale is itself a fairy tale."
It was Kelly’s bad luck that her father, John B. (Jack) Kelly Sr.—the world-class sculler who wreaked vengeance on the British for banning him from the Henley-on-Thames Rowing Regatta by beating the champion of the event at the 1920 Olympics—treated her in much the same manner as Prince Philip of Great Britain acted toward Prince Charles as a young man: i.e., unfeelingly. Handsome, muscular, a millionaire contractor, Jack dominated his household, where there was no real place for an unathletic female. (Son Jack Jr. went on to win the Henley Regatta from which his father had been banned.) Jack and her mother, a former model, frowned upon her wish to become an actress.
Fortunately, Grace looked slightly afield to find a mentor to help her satisfy her aesthetic instincts: her uncle George Kelly, who first took Broadway by storm (the Pulitzer Prize-winning Craig’s Wife) before heading out to Hollywood. The bohemian, unmarried (widely speculated to be homosexual) George could not have been more like his brash brother, and it was in one of his early plays, a satire of the 1920s “little theater movement,” The Torch-Bearers, that Grace made her professional debut.
In the second half of the 20th century, Grace (was there ever a more appropriate first name)? shared pride of place with Jacqueline Kennedy as an American Catholic woman who symbolized elegance and allure at the intersection of the arts and politics. Posthumous gossipy revelations (all those alleged affairs by their husbands, and maybe even their own) have done noticeably little to decrease the affection that so many Americans feel for them. Perhaps that’s because they embody, far more truly than Marilyn Monroe, the Bernie Taupin lyric from Elton John’s hit “Candle in the Wind”: “You had the grace to hold yourself while those around you crawled.”
The lives of both women, it might be said, were divided in half by a single event that fixed their images with the public until their deaths: Grace’s marriage to Prince Rainier of Monaco, and Jacqueline’s stoicism as a widow at the funeral of her assassinated husband.
Both women would have been wildly out of place in our current confessional era. Perhaps they did so out of the desire to protect themselves and their families, but, by staying within their zone of privacy, they retained their aura of mystery and fascination well after their deaths.
The lives of the two women did intersect memorably in one brief, funny incident. It was related by Jacqueline’s mother, Janet Lee Bouvier Auchincloss, in an oral history now posted on the Web site of the JFK Library in Massachusetts.
Just as she was about to tell the story, Mrs. Auchincloss—perhaps wondering how appropriate it was to relate this tale less than a year after the death of the President--wondered “whether this should be on the tape,” then plunged ahead anyway:
After Senator Kennedy had an operation in 1953, Jacqueline would visit him at the end of the day in the hospital. At one point, Kelly told Jacqueline that she’d never met Jack, whereupon the latter hatched a prank: She persuaded the actress to don a nurse’s cap and uniform, visit JFK's room, and pretend to be the night nurse.
The heavily medicated senator—who had been complaining about his aged nurses—awoke to behold a far different sight this time. “I don’t know what Jack was doing,” Mrs. Auchincloss recalled, “but he must have been rather electrified when she announced that she was the new night nurse.”
The future randy President must have thought he’d died and gone to heaven.
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