(Music) She was born into a prosperous Philadelphia family. Though she was a shy child, she would 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..." - By 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 reality 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. (Band plays) Monaco, a principality of less than five hundred acres on the French Riviera. For centuries, the Monégasques held on to their distinctive character, and their pride. But, to the world, this place was known as a "playground for the wealthy" who came to enjoy its beauty and its gambling. Monaco became a home of a young American actress who arrived in 1956 to be its Princess. She brought her fame, her cool beauty, her intelligence. And she brought war, a sense of purpose. Well, this story of a Princess was firmly anchored in reality. A reality that 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 erected 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 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. (Music) If you're good enough, you're sure to reach the top. It was drilled into the Kelly children from their earliest years. (Music) As a family, we were always very close. Four of us; Peggy, my sister, the oldest, my 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 mother had to lean back away from the camera so Grace would not cry to be taken away from her mother, she was very sweet and soft, and loved to be held and cuddled and kissed, and loved. I, on the other hand, and my brother and older sister, were more "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 marvellous time, and Grace, all her life, loved being by the ocean and the sea. Grace and all the family, we 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 sport 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, John B, Jack Kelly were of an enormous man with a tremendous amount of gusto, everything up front, everything in the open, move 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 an athletic star, great racer, her father thought he was great, but Grace, he 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 to go out and become the fullest part of yourself. She decided to go to New York, and my mother and father were 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 amount 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 modelling. She got her 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. 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 myself, I don't want to do it at all." I was very taken by 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 is 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." "There is an automobile going past, and a horse and a 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 change. Television when they had flats fall 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 it 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!" "I was watching you across the room, you kept filling your glass." "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 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 school teacher!" She's from Philadelphia, and that was 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 of my wedding to my then- husband Jay Kanter, who was her agent. I was intrigued by her looks in the photographs that Edie 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 lawful wedded husband, to have 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 gal in 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 when the shooting started. My brother was 19. I watched him die..." For Grace Kelly was her first big break, and for me, it was my first American picture making here in 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 stars I worked with. She knew what you want, and she did it. (Music) Gary Cooper went on to win an Academy Award for Best Actor of 1952, but there were no laurels 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 where she says that "You can see everything in Gary Cooper's eyes" 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 eyeballs 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 on 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 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?!" "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 with 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: "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 from my 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 come 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, they didn't understand why she didn't wanna go their dinner parties and be seated next to all the 'A people' that young actresses should want to be seated next to. She didn't rush out effusively and reach forward to make 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 always 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 wit that her apparent virginity was like a mountain covered with snow, but that the mountain was a volcano. In 1953, director Hitchcock found in Grace his perfect heroine It was a scene in "Dial M for Murder" where he wanted her to answer the phone by putting on her bathrobe and she said there was no reason for her to put a bathrobe on, just to answer a telephone, with no one else in the house but her" And he said: "What would you wear?" She said: "I'll wear a night gown" He said: "All right". And it worked out very well "Hello... She seemed to know the movements before Hitchcock had anything to say about it and I think Hitchcock liked that I think everybody liked it In the picture "Rear Window" Hitchcock said to Grace, "Now, you're going to go have to go across and get into the room" and Grace without any direction, she just went over, climbed up the fire escape climbed in one of the windows and sneaked in through the door and then, looked over across the way to Hitchcock and said: "Is that what you mean?" Well, everybody applauded, and she deserved it because this was exactly what Alfred Hitchcock wanted What Grace brought, as an actress, was, Grace brought the actual young women of the '50s into a vision of glamour It was a very proper era, in a way very premier Underneath that, of course, there was always the sense of flirtatiousness of young women, and the sense of fun Grace had trully arrived She appeared on the covers of national magazines But success meant more time spent in Hollywood She was really a family person, she didn't like to be alone I remember when she first went to California to make films she lived alone, and suddenly she asked Rita Gam to come and live with her and Grace let me in, and there she was wearing the same Philadelphia skirt same sensible shoes, the same tied back hair, except now, she was becoming a very valuable property, I had no idea that her background was one of opulence I thought of her as a coworker an actress Then, out of the clear blue sky, and very directly, openly and warmly she said: "Would you like to share the flat? How would that fit in with your schedule?" I said, "Well I get up at 5am" She said "I get up at 5 too" I said: "We can both go to sleep at 9" She said "Terrific! that's it" I think, the thing that most people forget is that when all of this was happening to Grace, this extraordinary excitement about her career being generated and roles with the world's most famous leading men and the world's most respected directors, she was just a girl in her early 20s One time in Hollywood, we were invited to what turned out to be a dinner party with two bachelors We thought it was going to be this grand party with a lot of people and, there we were, and the lights were getting lower and the wine was getting heavier, and I was getting very nervous and I knudged Grace under the table Grace had her glasses on, I think that was her protection mine, was sort of chatting nervously and say "let's go, let's go Grace" and she whispered back "Let's wait until after dessert, it might be good" 'The bridges at took a reek' gave Grace the opportunity to play opposite an actor she admired: William Holden "Harry, you've got to tell me about those bridges" The kind of concentration that a good actor was capable of would definitely infect her "I know we're not going to fly above the mountains" "We're going to fly between them" It would make her respond, and in that way you could see to the chat of nervous system that was similar to lookness paper She reacted immediately "You didn't want to tell me because you didn't want me to worry well, I don't want you to worry either about me, I mean" "I know what the admiral was trying to tell me, I had to face those bridges too" Director George Seaton was impressed by Grace's performance and wanted her for the demanding role of the wife in "The Country Girl" But, before releasing her, MGM insisted she appear in "Green Fire" Which, wasn't one of her favorites films she was tired when she started She had done about 6 pictures in a row and she had to go to South America Some, like "Green Fire" that absolutely made her blazing mad I mean, she said: "This is not what I wanted to be an actress for" But she did do it in order to get the part in "The Country Girl" "At the moment all I want is for you to get dressed so we can get out of here" "Who is in New York?" "Frank, I am warning you, I'm going to hit you with the first thing I pick up" The greatest expression of her that Grace demonstrated was the throwing away of her mask of beauty and of her elegance Nobody understood at all, I mean why would this gorgeous creature wanted to be seen in an old tacky sweater with her hair pulled back in a bun, looking haggarded She desperately wanted to be this great actress "You'll be in the strong, so behind of Bernie Dodd" "Can you stend him up on his feet again? Because that's where all my praires have gone; to see that one holy owl when he can stand alone again" "And I may have forgiven you Mr. Dodd, if you can keeping me long enough for me to get up from under" "All I want is my own name and a modest job to buy sugar for my coffee" "Would you listen..." "You can't belive that, can you? You can't believe that a woman is crazy out of her mind to live alone, in one room by herself" "Listen to me, listen to me" "Why are you holding me? I said you're holding me!" "How could you be so angry, someone who didn't even know? In the single year of 1954, she had completed 4 major films "Grace Kelly for "The Country Girl"" and won an Academy award She was pronounced one of Hollywood's major stars She was 24, but it semmed that she had it all "This is after Grace had an enourmous success in films and what a very big posh apartment, and I have an image of her father walking through the lobby and Grace appearing out saying: "There he is, there he is coming" and it was as if this fictional character the Great Gatsby, came down to look at her apartment and she really wanted to prove to him that she had accomplished a great deal, and that was the first time I got a sense of an undercurrent of something other than this picture of family Grace dated, but no one really seriously until the later part of her career There were so many poeple that have fall in love with her, most men were She had that quality of, I don't know, turning men on She was going to be my maid of honour and when I, baby sister was getting married she had that to think about now "Well, I want to get married too" I was married in June, and I think I booked the news that I was pregnant and was going to have a baby in May and she said: "Lizzie, you are going to have a baby! Oh! I want a baby I'm missing things In 1955, Grace would appear in a film that would change her life Location worked for "To Catch a Thief" to a place near the ancient principality of Monaco Her co star would be Cary Grant, once again, she was directed by Alfred Hitchcock What he extracted from her combination was the cool beauty who helded it all back and then just gave that just enough to be gentelizing and just enough to make the leading man and the audience want a little more "Ever had a better offer in your whole life?" "One worth everything?" "I never had a crazier one" "Just as long as you are satisfied" "You know as well as I do that this neckless is an invitation" "Well, I'm not" And she had a lot of boys and boyfriends who were actors and human beings, and dress designers, and this and that but there wasn't this one person who could fulfill this childhood image that quite many of us have about wanting that one man in our lives to be special and really, to be old prince on the white chariot A French magazine had decided the palace in Monaco would be the perfect background for Grace or publicity layout And then, Prince Rainier indicated that he was willing to meet the beautiful star Though he was know as a shy and modest man, Prince Rainier III was called Europe's most eligible bachelor And his meeting with Grace immediately provoked interest "Rumors linking you with, virtually everybody, and the latest one is with Grace Kelly, would you coment on that for us?" "No, I just met Grace Kelly, she came to the palace when she was at Canne's, for the festival, and that's all of it" "Although, many stories say that you are actively seeking a wife would you care to comment on that?" "No, I'm not" "What if you did meet a girl that you like? Would the publicity about it prevent you from do anything about it?" "Oh! No, it shouldn't, and anything should "If you were to marry, what kind of girl do you have in mind?" "I don't know, the best" Being the best is a lesson that Jack Kelly had drilled into his children Grace had excelled, she had reached the top of her profession But, for Grace Kelly there had to be more MGM had no idea of Grace's future when they cast her in the film that was oddly profetic "The Swan" It is based on a play by Molnár and the story was very simply the story of a princess "I want to be so good to you" "Oh, I want a hundred things, I want to tell you everything that it's in my heart all my secrets, I adore Napoleon too" "Yes, Princess" "I want to hear you call me by my name" "Alexandra" "Alexandra" There was an innate aristocracy, elegance about her not only in coportments, in manners but also in thinking, in being It has been a cliché to say that Grace Kelly looked like a Princess but, she did There was another element in Grace Kelly that was all important she had this extraordinary sense of human not only, and first of all about herself Never taking herself seriously During filming of "The Swan" Alec Guinness had an Indian tomahawk smuggled into Grace's bed, and she quickly returned the compliment the joke would continue for years They never spoke about finding it or passing it along It just dissapeared, it went from one to the other "I get back home one night, get into bed and I say to my wife: "For God's sake, why on Earth do we need a cold hot water bottle? Why isn't it the hot bottle water for?" "I don't know what you are talking about" and it was his identical tomahawk" Somehow, Alec Guinness got it into the Palace, at least once into Grace's bed "So, while she was downstairs, the tomahawk was put under the cavinet" So, she ended with the tomahawk she read into paper in Europe that he was being alert by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences "I stayed at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel classy my housting got back at 3 in the morning or whatever it was, and there in my bed in the Wilshire Hotel was the tomahawk" A lot of extraordinary, withdrawn, glamorous glaciar personality put forward this sense of the ridiculous that only the British currently appreciate or a 5 year-old child Jessie Royce Landis played as Grace Kelly's mother in two films and when Grace married Prince Rainier she said: "I'm the one who advised her to marry him and told her that would be her greatest role" and one Monday morning she came into LB Mayors office and said: "Mr. Mayor I'm going to get married" Well I said: "Jeez, that's wonderful I'll have a big reception for you upstairs with everybody in Hollywood" "No" she says "Mr. Mayor, you don't quite understand" Grace Kelly had been news worthy as a movie actress but now, her important source "Grace Kelly, how are you feelling in this ocassion?" "All I need is to say that I am very very happy" "How about you Mr. Kelly?" "Well, I think you can't interfere with love if they are in love with eachother, will we?" "I gave my blessing" Reporters hung on every word and will alert to every move made by Grace or Prince Rainier "Will you continue with your career after you marriage?" "That decision will be made by the Prince" "Is Mrs. Kelly going to make any more movies as far as you know?" "I don't think so" He did come to the house that Christmas and Donald and I had our own little apartment, and we asked them to come over for dinner and he fit in very well even helped with the dishes Rainier, when we first met him I think he might have been a little shocked So we used to say: "Come on Raini" you know, but he just fitted into the family beautifully "George, lay down here please" "Crazy!" In 1956, Grace made her last Hollywood film "High Society" In it, she probably wore her new engagement ring The sense of style "How do you do? I'm Tracy Lord" High comedy performance is what she gave in "High Society" vastly different from anything that she had ever done before "Did you get lost finding us?" "No, no, not at all, we had good directions" "Good" "I do hope you don't mind me being here for your wedding" "Oh! But I'm delight to give more cake" "What is your name dear?" Grace's sense of fun would never again be as publicly revealed "My name is Elizabeth Imbrie" "Elizabeth Imbrie" "Oh! It sounds like a medieval saint who was burned to death" "And you?" She had made this extraordinary luminous climb to the absolute top of the industry There were a lot of people that had just quality and had no electricity She comined them She could have called the shots from then on, I mean then she was finally in a position where she didn't have to argue about the film she wanted to do, people would have bought things for her people would have planned productions around, they would have done anything and she fell in love, and she said: "Bye! I'm going off to be Mrs., in this case, the Princess of Monaco and, before we all knew it, she was gone Grace Kelly had never really enjoyed the publicity that came with stardom Now, she would feel the burden of true international celebrity I don't know how she was able to protect that small cord so necessary that keeps you sane but she did She was able under the most extraordinary mirage of the press and the personal need that people had, I mean, people just I don't know how they do it, but they seem to want to get inside particularly, the press, of a person's soul, and Grace had the extraordinary ability of not rising above it, separating herself from it It was almost a mystical kind of ability she had to be the quiet eye in the middle of the horrendous hurrican And, there she was, just firm and sure and calm "... an exciting thing and I am very very happy, sometimes a little sad to be away from home, but I hope to be back quite often" She chose as any average young woman would, her 6 best friends and her sister to attend at her wedding to the Prince And then, Grace Kelly of Philadelphia with most of her family, and many of her closest friends, sailed away to become a Princess Prince Rainiers yacht discloses into the harbour of Monaco a few hours earlier, Grace Kelly... Once we arrived in Monaco was, of course, all the madness that one has seen over the years of what went on They came by the thousands, to welcome and to judge She was witch, she was beautiful but, she was an American and, to some of them, just an actress I think Grace had tough job being a movie star from America moving into the life of the symbol of Southern countries Constant round of parties and being part of this glamorous and mithological and just simply being around royalty was new to all of us As Grace took up a totally new role, some who did not know her watched and waited for her to fail It was like a fairytale all of it and that's the part that we got to be part of It was not a fairytale Grace relaxed at her husband's side but she knew to the Monegasques she now had to prove herself worthy of being the wife or their ruler Prince Rainier III The last time I saw Grace was in my own imagination when she was on the yacht chug chug chugging away into the Mediterranean after the wedding was over and I realized that there was no more Grace Kelly Grace Kelly was a memory, Grace Kelly was history, there was only Princess Grace of Monaco Then we all went home and she stayed there This was a very hard challenge for her because, not only the language barrier but in foreign world, a foreign customs and the principality, the formal way of doing things She kept studying things that would impulse her position as Princess She knew the lines, everything around her, she improvised on being a Princess the way a really good actress would improvise on a part For example, she always tried to simplify things Alexandre, the hairdresser in Paris, fixed for her a number of special pieces of hair attachtment So, when she would travel with all these fancy aristocrats while they were making appointments with hairdressers, everywhere we went Grace was always ready with one of these hairpieces that she was making into some kind of a wonderful hair do Never took extra time Since she was, fundamentally a working woman She did everything with a great sense of responsibility On cultural or diplomatic occasions with presidents or with popes she was expected to be perfect in bearing, and often, in her newly acquired language (Speaking French) It was something that I am amazed that she could handle I wondered so many times, 'Oh, I could never do that' but she was determined to make the best of it "Can I ask you to explain what will happen in the event twins are born a boy second, and a girl first Who would be the ruling monarch?" "The successor would be the eldest child, even if it's a girl but that doesn't mean that she will rule, because she can always resign or abdicate in favour of her younger brother and he would then rule" "Are twins expected?" "Not that I know of" Princess Grace, is this how you imagined your life before you became a princess? Well I became Princess before I had much time to imagine what it would be With the birth of a daughter, Caroline, on January 23rd 1957 The line of succession was secure Just 15 months later, a male heir, Albert arrived to even greater celebration I think the major came when she had the children and they did come very quickly She wanted the children, she loved them and we had so much fun rough-housing together Her children and mine are the same age and they've gone to camp together John and I have been to Monica's several times with the children and they've come here in Ocean City Their needs were the same for closeness, and for family In addition to her own children Grace would always have the Kelly's Prince Rainier soon found himself an accepted part of that family Grace always adored children, and she almost over-adored her own children she was the typical loving sometimes too disciplining but always giving mother Private time was essential for them both family life was a retreat from the formalities of state Grace was determined to keep her family a success No matter how demanding her official schedule there was always time for her children There were the trips home often with Prince Rainier There was the anniversary for Margaret Kelly and her growing brood of grandchildren For Prince Rainier, cruises on his yacht meant he could indulge his passion for fishing Then, there was the time set aside for enjoying the palace pool with children and friends I think she held on to her old friends in those beginning years because they were her reality as Grace Kelly and she didn't want to lose Grace Kelly There was never any loss of the sense that she was Gracie from Philadelphia She was a girl with an American soul and heart, and she brought that to Monaco with her, and she never she never chipped away at that at all In the back of Grace's mind was always the possibility of going back to being a film star I think she kept it there for those rainy nights I would occassionaly read a script of that would intrigued me that Kramer had sended on The opportunity arose to do "Marnie I think she ? at it I couldn't understand why she would want to do it, and why Hitchcock would want to do it The Monegasques were absolutely, completely undune because they thought that she had abandoned them I think, that the thing that convinced her that she couldn't do it was that she was the Princess of the Church once she believed that dignity of being the pricess of the capital Church was more important than being an actress as she accepted it, but I think it took a long time In 1965, seven years after the birth of Albert, Stephanie was born Once Grace's life as a performing artist seem to come to a close as she became Princess of Monaco She didn't discard her feelings for the arts, any parts of them I got a letter from Grace saying that she was going around doing poetry readings for theatre in London that was being built So, basically, Grace was an artist and she did it for poetry she wanted very much to have Monaco be a cultural center Grace established a foundation to further her goals The Monegasques had been without a playhouse for many years a new one was built Today, this theatre draws drama companies from around the world