It was more like a premiere than a betrothal. Everyone wanted to see the show and read the script. But these exclusive photos of Grace and her prince reveal a basic phenomenon which tells wholy story: love.
The Cover — The betrothal of Hollywood’s Queen Grace Kelly to Monaco’s Prince Rainier III has probably aroused the world’s romantic fancy more than any other such affair since the engagement of England’s then Princess Elizabeth to Philip, now Duke of Edinburgh. Before and after her engagement was announced, photographer Howell Conant was able to train an exclusive camera-eye on both Miss Kelly’s career and her romance — in Hollywood, where he watched her making The Swan; then in New York, where he was invited to meet Grace and her prince in the first interview granted in her apartment. See views of Hollywood’s queen in full color.
By Martha Weinman
And now — so said the families, the friends, the press, the press agents, the movie fans of America and the 23.000 heir-happy inhabitants of the principality of Monaco — and now. The two would live happily ever after. But it wasn’t quite that easy. Many headlines had to he hurdled first. Suddenly, it was everyone’s business where the wedding would be: how many children they would have; why she wasn’t marrying an American: whether they could he happy, and whether the palace plumbing was any good.
Behind the ballyhoo was a simple fact: two people — Grace Kelly, the queen of Hollywood, and Rainier III. the Prince of Monaco, wanted to get married. Their betrothal had been publicized, glamorized and full of whoop-de-do. I here were skeptics who said that the marriage wouldn’t last a year: supcrskeptics who said that it would never lake place at all. And no one could call them wrong, for a mere engagement has never guaranteed the nuptials of any couple. But when the two were photographed recently. in an exclusive interview in Miss Kelly’s apartment, the camera’s impersonal eye caught moments filled with a gentle and unmistakable presence Il was the presence of something called love.
Ffor some months before her engagement was announced, Grace had been at work on M-G-M’s forthcoming film, The Swan (in which, as was often and gleefully noted, she plays a girl who marries a prince). If she knew, then, that her name would soon be hitting as many newspaper editions as the weather report, she didn’t show it by so much as a secret smile.
On the set, Hollywood’s acknowledged queen behaved precisely as she always had. Unlike the whitc-sports-car brigade, she drove to work in a battered old sedan, dressed tn her customary skirts, shirts and flat neck’d shoes. Before the cameras she seldom needed direction, almost never fluffed a line. Between scenes she knitted or read books — often in French, throughout, the filming she was friendly with everyone, easily accessible, immensely popular with the crew.
“I’ve heard that girl called everything from ice-cold to glacial,” observed fond co-star. “Nonsense! They say those things about her because they don’t know what else to say about her. And they don’t know because Grace has always minded her own business and kept her own counsel.”
As it later developed, she certainly had.
Photographer Howell Conant, who had first come to know Grace when he did a picture story on her vacation in Jamaica (Collier’s, June 24, 1955), spent two weeks shooting her at work in Hollywood. Shortly after returning to New York he got a phone call from Miss Kelly. “Collier’s better hurry up with that Swan story.” she said. “I’m getting married.”
A week later the engagement was made public; and Conant was invited to spend an afternoon photographing Grace and Prince Rainier together, in the only interview ever given in her New York apartment. “I don’t believe I’ve ever seen two people who looked more in love.” Conant reported. “Every time I turned away to change film or grab another camera, they’d start whispering, holding hands… like any just-engaged couple. Pretty romantic.”
“We talked, mostly about their honeymoon plans… traveling on his yacht, and doing skin-diving and underwater photography. The prince said he’s been down as deep as 45 meters – ‘whatever that is in feet.’ Well, it’s about 115 feet, and that’s daredevilish, I d say. I told him I introduced Grace to skin-diving when we were in Jamaica. She look to it right away. She’s an excellent swimmer.”
“There were newspaper stories on the engagement scattered all over the place. They read each one and laughed at the pictures. And Rainier said Grace could take a better picture of him than all the news photographers put together.”
“When I left, Grace walked me to the door. ‘What do you think of him?’, she asked. I told her if I were in any position to pass judgment I’d give my wholehearted approval. Prince or no prince, he’s a heck of a nice guy.
“‘I knew you’d like him. Howell,’ she said. ‘He’s wonderful.’”
A scant two months before the pledging of the troth, Collier’s had asked writer David Schoenbrun, CBS’s Paris correspondent, to interview Prince Rainier, in the young monarch’s pink palace in Monaco. The result had been the strangely prophetic article (Where Will the Prince Find His Princess? Dec. 9, 1955), in which Rainier, about to embark for the United States, had described his ideal girl for the first time in print. ‘I like a girl who is fair-haired,” he had told Schocnbrun, “… with the sort of subtle beauty that grows on you. She… has long flow ing hair… her eyes arc blue or hazel, flecked with gold.” The prince didn’t, say he was thinking of Grace, whom he had met sonic months earlier. But his friend and chaplain, the Reverend J. Francis Tucker, says the drcam girl Rainier described to Collier’s was based “on what he found in Miss Kelly.”
The prince did mention Grace, however, in that first interview, when he talked of his dating problems: “When I met your lovely American actress. Miss Grace Kelly… the next day I read in the papers I was going to marry her. That sort of thing embarrasses both me and the girl.”
Recently, in a second meeting with Schoenbrun this one in Rainier’s Manhattan apartment, when the CBS correspondent was in New York at the time of the engagement announcement — the prince was less embarrassed than enchanted by the turn of events.
“It really was love at first sight,” he said, “but I thought I’d better take a second look. You can’t propose by letter to a girl who is almost a stranger. And so when I made plans to visit America and see Miss Kelly again. I spoke to my mother and she wished me luck. And I was lucky.”
“I think we’ll be married here first, in a religious ceremony, and then in Monte Carlo. That will. I hope, symbolize the union of love and friendship — between my bride and myself, and between our peoples.
“You see,” he finished smilingly, “you asked: ‘Where will the prince find his princess?’ Well, now you know.”
Collier’s (March 2, 1956)
Grace&Family 