Its history, with its lights and its shadows, is like a fairy tale… although sad ending. Grace Kelly went from being a Hollywood star to one of the most fascinating and unforgettable princesses of European royalty. On November 12, I would have been 95 years oldbut as is known, a fatal traffic accident He ended his life at 52. Perhaps that is why his legend remains more alive than ever.
Before becoming Hitchcock’s muse, receiving an Oscar or abandoning her film career to become the princess of Monaco and being one of the undisputed icons of the world of fashion, Grace was a young woman trying to find her way.
© GETTY IMAGESRaised in an influential and wealthy family in Philadelphia, in the late 1940s she decided to move to New York to study acting and try her luck as an actress. The non-negotiable condition that her parents imposed on her was that she had to live in the Barbizon Hotel for Women, on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. And that is where this story begins.
In this residence for young ladies, Grace Kelly shared a room with Sally Parrish, Carolyn Scott and Prudence ‘Prudy’ Wisewho would become one of her best friends and personal secretary. The actress maintained an extensive correspondence with Prudy, personal letters that are part of a batch that last week went up for auction at Doyle Auctioneers & Appraisers, in the Big Apple. This rare collection, spanning from 1949 to 1968, includes handwritten and typed letters, postcards, telegrams, photographs, and notes that Kelly sent her former roommate. In addition to a close friendship of years, the correspondence reveals the actress’s first ambitions, her rise, her relationship with the late fashion designer Oleg Cassini… the entire journey she took to become princess of Monaco.
© GETTY IMAGESThe first important letter is postmarked April 1949, seven months before his Broadway debut with The Father, by August Strindberg. Over eight pages, written in pencil on delicate paper, Grace tells Prudy about a disastrous dinner at which she introduced her parents to her suitor, Don Richardson. The appointment ended in a strong argument with his parents and put end to the relationship. The positive side, he also told her, was that Richardson had helped him make contacts in the theater.
After some modeling work and her Broadway debut, Grace Kelly made her first film, fourteen hoursin 1951. Later they would come Alone in the face of danger and Mogambo. Regarding the filming of the latter in Nairobi, Kelly mentions in a letter to Prudy Kudner: “After leaving camp two weeks ago, Frank (Sinatra), Ava (Gardner), Clark (Gable) and I went to Malindi, in the coast, to spend five wonderful days… there was a terrible champagne binge for about ten days at Christmas… we all went to Rome. Ava and I are now great friends…” Also tells him that the diseaseinjuries and deaths had plagued the production and “the old man (Sinatra) is very anxious to leave Africa.”
In a 1953 letter from the Savoy Hotel in London while it was being edited MogamboGrace writes that “Gable and Sam Zimbalist are cutting the movie to pieces, which breaks my heart—I’m not talking to Clark these days and I’m not talking to Ava—but don’t tell anyone.” For her performance in this film, the actress won a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress and was nominated for her first Oscar.
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© GETTY IMAGESBetween 1953 and her storybook wedding to Prince Rainier of Monaco in 1956, the actress starred in The anguish of living, perfect crime, rear window and catch a thief. In July 1953, Kelly gives her friend a tip about the obsession of the suspense genius with blondes: “They are still debating my hair color. It comes out bright red on WarnerColor and Hitchcock is having a fit.”
In the following letter, Kelly says: “On Saturday night I had dinner with the Hitchcocks. We went to Perino’s, which was a lovely place…there are actually very few nice places to dine here; “most of them are swanky eating places.” She concludes by noting that, on the first anniversary of the Grace Kelly fan club, she took the time to talk to the 15 girls who attended a party and called her on the phone.
Early the following year, Kelly prepares to move to his new apartment in New Yorkbut in a brief letter, on Paramount Pictures letterhead, possibly during the filming of viv’s anguishgo, he tells Prudy that he will first settle in at the Bel-Air Hotel in Los Angeles. In the following letter, written on this hotel’s stationery, the actress mentions seeing a screening of the film and spending a day swimming in the famous costume designer Edith Head’s pool. It is in this letter where he first mentions a new suitor, designer Oleg Cassini —who years later would create first lady Jackie Kennedy’s wardrobe—. Grace Kelly describes how he got her the typewriter she uses (“the only one in Beverly Hills”) and their spectacular outings together: “Last Saturday we went to a big party at Jack Warners… and the weekend before we went to Hitch’s ranch in Santa Cruz… We had dinner with Bing (Crosby) one night… My dad’s not very happy with the prospect of having Oleg as a son-in-law… but the plan now is to get married at the beginning of October…”. The union with Cassini – who had previously been married to actress Gene Tierney – never came to fruition, but Kelly wore a dress designed by him when she set sail for Monaco to marry Rainier, whom she had met in May 1955.
© GETTY IMAGESIn April 1956, a few days before her wedding to the prince of MonacoKelly writes to Prudy: “I have no problem if you want to write an account of the wedding, as long as it is not a report on the venue and you write it afterwards, since I am not supposed to include any members of the press in my guest list”.
Once she became princess of Monaco, many of her letters are written on actual letterhead. In August 1956, Grace asks Prudy, “Can you believe I’m pregnant?” and mentions shopping for maternity clothes in Paris before heading to the United States. About a week before Princess Caroline’s arrival in January 1957, Kelly shows her anxiety: “I still can’t get used to being a wife, much less a mother… it’s been so long since I’ve led a normal life that I imagine It will take me a while to get used to it completely…
In early 1958, Prince Albert is born and the princess excitedly reports to her friend: “Our little one is too sweet for words. He is gaining weight rapidly and will soon be a big fat boy. Carolina loves himbut he gets very angry when he cries. It’s really wonderful to have two such beautiful babies and one of each!” Grace included several photos of herself with the children in these letters. Later that year, the princess is in the United States and describes a trip to California to meet with Metro Pictures; a trip to Jamaica with Colliers magazine and the new apartment that she and Rainiero have on Fifth Avenue and that she will decorate with “a clock from one of the sets of catch a thief” that Cary Grant gave him.
In the later years of the correspondence, most of the topics the princess addresses are her travels and instructions for when Prudy visits her; news of his children and his charity work with orphans, the Red Cross and other organizations.
In 1958, Prudy married—Grace was one of her bridesmaids—and settled on a farm in Maryland, where letters continued to arrive from Monaco, Switzerland, Spain, and elsewhere. Around 1968 Prudy began to suffer from leukemia that ended his life in 1973. He was only 42 years old.