(Music) She was born in a prosper
Philadelphia family.
Though she was a shy child,
she will live her life in the public eye.
"Don't try to be a hero!
You don't have to be a hero, not for me!"
"I'm not trying to be a hero..."
At the age of 23, her beauty and talent
took her to Hollywood.
She made eleven films in three and a half years
and became one of the most sought-after stars of her time.
She worked with Hollywood's most important directors,
played opposite its top leading men.
"There's nothing quite so mysterious
and silent as a dark theater..."
Then, at 26, she turned her back on make-believe.
But make-believe came true,
in a fairy tale shared by the entire world.
Her name was Grace Kelly.
It became Her Serene Highness, Princess Grace of Monaco.
I don't think Grace really believed that
she was going to give up acting when
she became Princess Grace of Monaco.
I think that the reallity of that probably
struck her some place in the middle of
the Mediterranean after the honeymoon began.
She took everything so much in her stride,
nothing seemed to be too much for her.
Of any name, Grace, could not have been
more fitting,
and even her death, her tragic early death
made her enter even more into legend.
Monaco, a principality of less than
five hundred acres on the French Riviera.
For centuries, the Monégasques had held on
to their distinctive character, and their pride.
But, to this world, this place was known
as a "playground for the wealthy"
and came to enjoy its beauty and its gambling.
Monaco became a home of young American actress
who arrived in 1956 to be its Princess.
She brought it fame, her cool beauty,
her intelligence, and she brought war
a sense of purpose.
Well, this story about the Princess was firmly anchored in reality.
Reality had its origins
back in Philadelphia.
Competition came easily to the Kellys.
Here along Kelly Drive
named after Grace's father, John B. Kelly,
they still race in the sport for which
Jack Kelly won an Olympic medal.
A statue elected by the citizens of Philadelphia
commemorates that achievement.
Jack Kelly's father was a bricklayer from
Ireland who went on to make a fortune.
Young Jack soon joined the family business:
construction and brick making.
He started his own business
and made his own fortune.
But he always professed pride in
his family's humble origins.
Jack Kelly believed that the world
was what you made it.
Margaret Majer, who married Jack, had been
a model as well as a champion swimmer and athlete.
Margaret and Jack were determined
to raise their children their own way.
If you are good enough, you're sure to reach the top.
It was drilled into the Kelly children from their earliest years.
As a family, we were always very close,
four of us, Peggy, my sister, the oldest,
our brother Jack, Grace and then myself.
She was the baby for three and a half years
and loved every minute of it.
Grace, when she was young, was very shy
and a mama's baby.
There were many times were we had pictures taken
that our mother had to lean back
away from the camera so Grace would not cry
and taken away from her mother,
she was very sweet and soft, and loved to held
and cuddled and kissed, and loved.
I, on the other hand, and I think my
brother and older sister, were more
"don't let me," "don't get around me,"
we wanted to do our own things.
We always had a place at the shore when we were young,
and, at that time, I think we had our best times together,
we just had a marvelous time,
and Grace, all her life, loved being by the ocean and the sea.
Grace and all the family were a competitive family.
I think we got that, I know we got
that from our mother and our father.
They instilled into us a deep sense of competition
and the love of sports,
the will of winning,
but also taught us how to lose gracefully.
But the Kellys didn't intend to lose and there never was a better
drillmaster than Jack Kelly.
It was fun, family fun, and it left a special kind of determination.
This determination didn't manifest itself in Grace
as much in the sporting field.
But her determination sooner took another turn.
She loved to sit by the hours and pretend
and create situations and say:
"Lizzie, you do this, and I'll be this,"
and, "I'll be the mother and you'll be the baby,"
of course, I gave her a hard time a lot of times because I did not
want to play her games.
For Grace, growing up wealthy
meant winter sports in Lake Placid.
It also meant the best private schools.
Working for causes you believed in started young.
With modeling, it's society fashion benefits.
But for Grace, these shows meant more than fundraising;
They were theater.
She got most of her love from the theater my uncle George.
He was a playwright and he directed plays.
Very gracious, highly educated person, well-read, and very witty.
And she just was fascinated with
all the tales of the stage and the theater.
Her uncle George Kelly was a great example to her.
He was sensitive and kind, and talented,
and I think of all the men she ever knew,
rather than going for the "athletic macho type,"
I think her ideal man was her uncle George.
My recollections with her father, Jack Kelly,
were of an enormous man with
a tremendous amount of gusto, everything up front,
everything in the open, moved ahead.
A nice man, but not a tremendous amount of internal sensitivity.
Her father believed absolutely that Peggy,
the elder sister, was gonna be
the big star of the family and succeed,
and he never paid any attention
to basically the middle of the family and his four children,
and she was quiet, observant of
the others and adored her older brother too Kell,
John B. Kelly Jr., an also athletic star, great racer,
her father thought he was great,
but Gracie just accepted, and I don't think
he understood her at all,
but she adored him.
And yet, one wonders, when you don't
get from a parent, what it is
perhaps what you need, if that isn't what
creates a great deal of the drive in you
you to go out and become the fullest part of yourself.
She decided to go to New York, and my
mother and father especially surprised
because she was a shy and retiring girl.
My mother and father were a little wary of New York and on her own,
but mother said: "Jack, it's not as if
she is going to Hollywood or to California."
Grace knew that her father didn't think much of an acting career.
They allowed her to go, to get it out of her system,
"Let her go, it won't mount to anything."
Grace was accepted into the
American Academy of Dramatic Arts
and then housed in Manhattan's Carnegie Hall.
It was 1947 and Grace Kelly was 18 years old.
She supported herself by modeling.
She got her round portfolio, and little by little,
she started getting jobs.
So that she didn't have to ask for the favor of being supported
in her efforts
so that she could justify her own existence
by her own earning power.
Grace also appeared in commercials.
She was the girl-next-door,
the girl a man hoped they could marry.
After graduating from the American Academy,
Grace found parts in stock companies
and her first professional role
in her uncle George Kelly's play: "The Torch-Bearers".
Then, came her first Broadway role
in a Strindberg play.
And we all went up to Philadelphia to see the opening night,
and dad did not know that Raymond Massey was in the play.
Grace introduced her father to Raymond and he said:
"Oh! Jack! How are you?" And he said:
"Is this your daughter? I did not know that!"
So she did everything on her own and did not want any help
from any of the family
because she said: "If I don't do it for myself,
I don't want to do it at all."
I was very taken away for the way she looked,
and the way she walked,
and specially her lovely voice.
She had a beautiful voice.
Except for the speech was not yet
as an actress blended with her posture
with that stately figure that she projected.
She studied,
she really applied herself to the characters
that she was working on.
I met Grace Kelly early in her career
back in 1950 when I was directing "Danger" for CBS Television.
Her mother came up, and I think her brother
came up to watch her rehearsal,
and when the rehearsal was over,
I heard her mother say:
"Darling, your speech was affected a little bit, can you, kind of, make it
more natural?"
and she said "Mother, I'm working on it."
"Your city is full of sounds, listen..."
"I don't hear a thing."
"Because there is no automobile 'going pass in the road'
and the boat in the harbor..."
She played the lead in the "Rich Boy" for me.
"I'll take you."
"Will you?..."
Under the pressures of live television,
no retakes,
no ability to go back and get changed.
Television when they had to flat full down on tea tables
and everybody was out there improvising.
She performed absolutely brillantly
and very quickly became one of the
leading members of the so-called
"stock company,"
those actors that we would tend to cast
over and over again.
"... basic I would say.
Oh, I must sound very snobbish about the west."
"Oh! No! I'm interested,
I just never thought about that way."
"Well, people in the west are more open."
"I'm open."
"That's because you've had a lot to drink.
You drink a lot, don't you?"
"No!"
"When I was watching you from across the room,
you kept filling your glass every few minutes."
"You were watching me?"
"And so were the other girls.
Some men are like that,
they compel attention.
"I didn't even see you until just a few minutes ago,
and I couldn't wait to be introduced."
"Some men are like that..."
The first time I saw Grace, I would be hard-pressed
to describe her as the glamour queen of the world.
During the rehearsal, she had a pair of glasses on,
and they were just a little bit down on her nose,
and she had a terrible cold.
And she was quite withdrawn.
I remember we shook hands, but it wasn't a very hearty handshake,
it was the handshake of a little girl.
And I thought: "Ooh, what a nice schoolteacher!"
She's from Philadelphia, and that's my first impression of Grace.
Grace was given a small part in the movie "Fourteen Hours"
in which she was hardly noticed.
She returned to television and to stock theater.
Her big break came almost by chance.
I met Grace in 1953 actually going through the receiving line
at my wedding to my then- husband Jay Kanter,
who was her agent.
I was intrigued by her looks in the photographs that he sent me
by her background, and probably more by the fact that
she absolutely would not accept the long- term studio contract.
He was a young agent, I was a young producer,
and he brought to me Marlon Brando,
then he sent me a photograph of Grace Kelly
at the time we were casting "High Noon".
Now, I wanted an unknown girl. I asked to see her.
She came in from Denver for an interview.
For an interview for a part in a Western with white gloves
no less.
That goes way back when we were children.
My mother insisted every time we went into town:
"You wore hats and gloves."
That's not only my mother, we were brought up at a convent,
and the nuns insisted that you wore white gloves
on special occasions.
I went overboard because she had that lady-like quality,
that kind of dignity, which was in contrast to the Western scene,
which works so well. These are the corporate.
"... Your love and wedded husband,
to love and to hold, from this day forward."
The reason I think she was miscast
is that Cooper was much older than Grace Kelly,
he was too old for Kelly, actually, in the role.
She didn't believe that she did well in the film,
I didn't think so either.
There was a girl in the film named Katy Jurado,
who played the Mexican girl on the town,
Katy Jurado was dynamic and overpowering,
and yet, Kelly wasn't swallowed even in her miscast
because this lady-like thing came through.
"... they were on the right side, but
that didn't help them anyway when the
shooting started.
My brother was 19. I watched him die..."
For Grace Kelly was her big break, and
for me, it was my first American picture
making here on Hollywood.
I was two years older than she was,
I have seven years making pictures
in Mexico, but there was something
so different between Grace and I,
we could not really explain that we could not be very close,
but I could see a girl with a lot of dignity, and a lot of character
because she wants to be somebody in movies
and she worked very hard in that picture.
She looked weak and very tiny, but she was a very strong person.
I believe she was one of the strongest movie star I worked with.
She knew what you want, and she did it.
Gary Cooper went on to win an
Academy Award for Best Actor of 1952,
but there were no more roles for Grace,
and she promptly headed back to New York for more study.
She was a Kelly, and she had to do better.
We both probably read the thing when she says that
"You can see everything in Gary
Cooper's eye" but that her eyes were
"flat and dull, and dead" and that she didn't like them
she couldn't tell what the character was feeling.
She began to work harder on concentrating on her objective.
In other words, that would've
eventually be the cure for the way she
attacked her characters, to make them come alive
to make her eyeball shine with meaning.
She always had this inner image of being an old-fashioned actress
with the kind of glamour that you have on Broadway.
Grace was eager for a lead role in
a New York production of "Cyrano de Bergerac".
I wanted to have Grace as Roxanne,
I wanted her, not because of her great acting ability, but
because of that discipline that she appeared to have.
Unfortunately, she never did realize that
every part she went up for in Broadway,
with the exception of "The Father", she lost.
And when she didn't get it, there
were mentions of it in the columns and so on.
She was very, very, very distressed
and she picked herself up, and went on.
"Mogambo" was a picture that Grace apparently
wanted to do very badly because she was willing to
sign a long-term contract with MGM to do the picture.
"Is that all you're going to do for him?!"
"Well, what do you expect me to do, Mrs. Nordley,
crawl in bed with him and hold his hand?"
The thought of playing opposite of star-like Clark Gable
being directed by John Ford, a fellow Irishman.
And I also think she was intrigued to the idea of going to Africa.
On location for "Mogambo," Clark Gable described an incident
to Rupert Allan, then Look magazine correspondent.
Grace was alone and was discovered by Gable.
She turned to him and he saw that she was crying,
and he said: "Well, why are you crying, Grace?"
She says: "So beautiful. I'm reading 'The Snows of Kilimanjaro'
by Hemingway, and I looked up and I was just reading about this
frozen leopard I think they found way up in the snows
of this highest mountain in Africa,
and I looked up in that book thinking about
what a beautiful picture it was inside Hemingway,
and then I saw a lion walking along the seashore.
It's just too beautiful."
She gave human personalities to her animals
and very often she gave animal personalities to humans.
She used to call some of her close friends bird and she called
Rita bird, Jay bird, this bird, that bird.
I mean, people and animals
became interchangeable with Grace.
Grace's role in "Mogambo" earned
her an Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting
Actress of 1953.
"What are you saying? You're drunk!"
"You know how it is on safari.
It's in all of us, a woman always falls for the White Hunter
and we guys make the most of it, can you blame us?
Oh, when you get along with that look in your eye..."
Some critics called her a star in the making.
Few realized how luminous that star would become,
and in how short a time.
Hollywood, as far as Jack and Margaret Kelly were concerned,
was no place for a girl on her own.
On Sundays many times, we used to go to church,
and then uncle George who lived in Southern California
would come pick us up
and take us for a ride around and take us to lunch,
and she enjoyed those rides with George so much.
That I would sit in the backseat and maybe take a little nap,
but the two of them would talk theater and books and poetry.
Some of the people in town, the studio heads,
were quite mystified by her, and they didn't understand why
she didn't wanna go their dinner parties
and be sitting next to all the people that young
actresses should wanna be seating next to.
She didn't rush out effusively
and reach forward to make lots and lots and lots of friends.
She got up five o'clock in the morning, went on set, came home
and grabbed something to eat.
Usually a hamburger which was Gracie's favorite food.
And then went to bed.
She was charming, she was never cold, she was never icy to
anybody on the set.
She could give that appearance of coldness, of being sort of
above it all at all times, but inside, she was a very often seething.
And she was a volatile person but always under control.
Alfred Hitchcock used to say about Grace Kelly
with his usual whit that her apparent virginity was like
a mountain covered with snow,
but that the mountain was a volcano.