High Society by Donald Spoto - Excerpt

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T h e L I F E o f G R A C E K E L LY
HARMONY BOOKS N E W YO R K
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High Society
D O N A L D S P OTO
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Copyright © 2009 by Donald Spoto
All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Harmony Books, an imprint of the
Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com
Harmony Books is a registered trademark and the Harmony Books

colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-0-307-39561-0
Printed in the United States of America
Design by Lauren Dong

Photographs on title page © 2000 Mark Shaw/MPTV.net
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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High Society

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CONTENTS
Ac k n o w l e d g m e n t s xi
I n t ro d u ct i o n 1
PART I Fade-In (1929—1951)

One OFF THE MAIN LINE 11
Tw o T H E ST U D E N T M O D E L 35
PART I I Action (1951—1956)

T h re e L E S S I S M O R E , O R N OT 59
Fo u r L ’ A F FA I R E G A B L E 91
F i ve OV E R T H E M O O N 10 9
Six F R I E N D S A N D LOV E R S 141
S eve n C L I M B I N G OV E R R O O F TO P S 16 9
Eight CRISIS 187
Nine P L AY I N G T H E P R I N C E S S 209
PART I I I Fade- Out (1956—1982)

Te n HIGH SOCIETY REARRANGED 2 31
N ote s 275
B i b l i o g r a p hy 2 87
I n d ex 2 91
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INTRODUCTION
During our last meeting, I asked Grace Kelly Grimaldi

if she planned to write an autobiography or to authorize a
writer to compose her life story. “I’d like to think I’m still too
young for that!” she said with a laugh. Without any hint of a
dark premonition, she then added, “Donald, you really ought
to wait until twenty-five years after I’m gone, and then you tell
the whole story.” I have honored her request for a delay: Grace
left us in September 1982, and I started work on this book early
in 2007.
I spent many hours with this remarkable woman over sev-
eral years, beginning with our first meeting during the after-
noon of September 22, 1975; in a short time she offered me a
friendship that deepened over the years. At our introduction, at
her home in Paris, she was preparing to relocate from her apart-
ment on the Avenue Foch to another residence nearby. There
were packing boxes, and movers working with quiet efficiency,
and my tape recording of that afternoon indicates that there
were only three brief interruptions in our long conversation.
First, an elderly attendant, the only servant I saw that day,
inquired what he might offer for refreshment, and Grace asked
if I would like tea and biscuits. Then, a few moments after we
began the interview, Grace apologized as she went over to a
sliding glass door to the terrace, to admit her cat, eager to check
out a visitor. Later, Grace’s youngest child, ten-year-old Princess
2 D O N A L D S P OTO
Stéphanie, emerged from her room. “Mommy, I can’t find my

yellow sweater.” Grace told her to try the obvious place—the
drawers of her dresser. Stéphanie returned a few moments later,
unable to find the beloved sweater. Grace excused herself, went
to Stéphanie’s aid and returned moments later, the wardrobe
problem having been quickly resolved.
The matter had not been attended to by a servant, nor had
one been looking after the child during my visit. “I hope you
don’t mind these little interruptions,” Grace said that after-
noon. “We just don’t like the idea of turning the children over
to nannies and minders. We like to help them ourselves—and
then of course we know what to tell them when they ought to
do something on their own. They don’t always have everything
done for them, I can tell you that!”
My visit that day was an important part of the research for
my first book, The Art of Alfred Hitchcock, the first full-length
treatment of all the director’s movies. Knowing that she gave
interviews but rarely, I had not much hope when I wrote from
my home in New York to Grace’s secretary at the palace in
Monaco. Up to 1975, my writing résumé listed only a few mag-
azine articles and one essay in a book—hence I had little hope
for an interview with the princess, who was constantly besieged
with such requests.
Two weeks after I wrote, however, I received a reply from
her secretary, Paul Choisit, asking if I would like to meet with
Her Serene Highness in Paris that September. You bet I would.
I went to visit Grace shortly after spending two weeks with Al-
fred Hitchcock, while he was directing (as it turned out) his last
film, Family Plot, that summer of 1975. I told him that I had an
appointment to interview Grace. “That should be interesting,”
he said with a wry smile.
High Society 3
My first conversation with Grace that September after-

noon was mostly about her three films for Alfred Hitchcock,
made between July 1953 and August 1954. Her memories were
sharp, picturesque, amusing and full of telling anecdotes. That
day and later, she also spoke about other directors, especially
Fred Zinnemann and John Ford, mostly to compare their meth-
ods and manners with Hitchcock’s. There was no doubt about
her deep respect, affection and acute understanding of Alfred
Hitchcock the director and the man. Later she also spoke quite
frankly to me about her life and about incidents for which she
asked my confidence “as long as I’m around,” as she said. I gave
her my word.
At that first meeting, Grace impressed me with her total lack
of affectation and of anything like a regal manner. She wore a
simple navy blue suit and, as I recall, very little jewelry. She put
on no airs, she was funny and ironic, she had an extraordinary
memory for detail, she told some delightfully risqué tales of
Hollywood, she was realistic and completely unstuffy—and she
was as interested in my life as I was in hers. I was completely at
ease with her. We sat on a comfortable sofa, and we sipped tea
and munched delicious little cookies, on and off, all through the
afternoon until dusk.
But there was one enormous surprise for me as I prepared to
depart.
As we came to the end of the afternoon, Grace asked if any-
one was going to write a foreword or introduction to my work.
I replied that, as The Art of Alfred Hitchcock would be my first
book, I had given no thought to the matter of a foreword by
anyone—I had been lucky just to find a small independent pub-
lisher. “I am constantly asked to endorse products,” she contin-
ued, “and to comment on books, or to say something about a
movie. I cannot do that, for many reasons. However, in your
case, I would make an exception. If you will send me your
manuscript when it’s finished, would you like me to write a

foreword to your book?”
In December, I sent her the final draft of The Art of Alfred
Hitchcock, and on January 16, 1976, a diplomatic courier ar-
rived at my New York apartment, bearing her introduction to
the book and a charming cover letter: “I am enclosing the fore-
word,” she wrote, “as well as the galley sheets that I very much
enjoyed reading. It will certainly be a great book about Alfred
Hitchcock.” The book was published in August of that year,
with Grace’s remarks right up front. Thirty-three years later it
is still in print. Doubleday purchased it from the original pub-
lisher; foreign translations appeared; and Grace’s introduction
still honors my debut as a writer. Her generosity was a signifi-
cant addition and brought the book attention from some who, I
am certain, would otherwise have ignored it. And yes, she said,
of course I could exploit both her words and her name in pro-
moting the book.
In the summer of 1976, Grace invited me to the palace in

Monaco, where I presented her with the second copy of the
published book—the first, of course, went to Hitchcock. It was
a torrid, humid day, and she returned from her country house
especially for our reunion. As I was shown into the family
quarters, Grace was standing in an orange chiffon outfit, try-
ing, with difficulty, to fasten a bracelet. “Oh, Donald,” she said,
smiling and extending her wrist when she saw me, “would you
please help me with this?”
“What shall we have to drink?” she said afterwards, as we
settled onto a settee facing open French doors to a terrace and
trying to catch a breeze. We decided on sparkling water. That
day I also met Princess Caroline, who came in, fresh and alarm-
ingly beautiful, and briefly joined us. Her mother was proud to
show off her intelligent, poised daughter, then a university stu-
High Society 5
dent in Paris. I was booked into Grace’s schedule for an hour in

the late morning, but she insisted that I remain for lunch.
From 1975 until Hitchcock’s death in 1980, I was a kind of
go-between, delivering messages back and forth from Monaco
to Hollywood during my various visits with Hitch and Grace.
With the probable exception of his wife, he did not easily con-
fide in anyone—but I was an acolyte, and he dropped the mask
of diffidence with me, especially at the elaborate lunches pre-
pared just for the two of us in the dining room of his offices at
Universal Studios. At such times he was more frank than if we
were doing a formal interview. He rarely laughed, but I saw
tears run down his face when he spoke, for example, of his re-
cently deceased sister.
Grace, on the other hand, was consistently more forthright
and unguarded once she felt confident of my trust. I think this
was one of the reasons she offered to write the foreword to my
book, and to entrust me with details of her association with
Hitch and of her life and career.
When Grace died, I was asked by National Public Radio in

the United States to compose and broadcast a tribute to her. It
was one of the most difficult assignments of my life, before or
since. I spoke briefly of our friendship and of our many conver-
sations about the great and small things of life.
The book you are holding is the story of a working life,
from Grace’s days as a model and television actress to her final
film, made not long before her death. Although that last movie
has never been released, it leaves no doubt that Grace was one
of the foremost talents of her time, our time, any time. I am for-
tunate to be able to treat this last, unavailable movie in consid-
erable detail here, as well as a wide selection of her television
appearances, which have been, up to now, completely ignored
by biographers.
With very few exceptions, Grace’s story has not, I think, been
generally well served by writers. Apart from an astonishing
array of factual errors and omissions, there has been an accumu-
lation of imagined events and fantasies about all kinds of
things—love affairs particularly, most of which turn out to be
utterly without basis in fact. She was, as I have written here, cer-
tainly a healthy, beautiful young woman with normal desires—
and most of all, a deep capacity to love and to be loved. As she
told me, she “fell in love all the time” before she married Prince
Rainier of Monaco. But falling in love did not always mean
falling into bed. I have tried to correct the record on this and
other more important issues, without fudging the truth—she
would have hated that.
Grace’s achievements were singular in several ways—not
least in the sheer volume of her movie work within a very short
period. She worked for two days on a film during the summer
of 1950, and then—from September 1951 to March 1956—she
appeared in ten films in just four years and six months. But
there was a one-year hiatus during this period, so it is more ac-
curate to state that she made ten films in forty-two months. By
any standard of assessment, that is a formidable record. In ad-
dition, she also appeared in no fewer than thirty-six live televi-
sion dramas and two Broadway plays between 1948 and 1954.
High Society: The Life of Grace Kelly has been a privilege to
write, for it is both a testament to our friendship as well as a
biography. To exploit a cliché: Grace was far more than just a
pretty face.
“The idea of my life as a fairy tale

is itself a fairy tale.”
—Grace Kelly Grimaldi, Princess of Monaco,
to Donald Spoto
PA RT I
Fade-In
1929—1951
previous page: As a New York fashion model, age 18 (spring 1948).
ONE
Off the Main Line
I never really felt pretty, bright or socially adept.

—Grace
n the late 1920s, the Hahnemann Medical College,
I at the corner of Broad and Vine Streets in Philadelphia, was

one of the largest private hospitals in the United States. Un-
usual luxuries characterized the private rooms: a telephone and
radio were installed at every bedside; nurses could be sum-
moned and addressed by call-buttons and two-way speakers;
and high-speed elevators whisked visitors to the wards. Al-
though Hahnemann accepted emergency cases from every socio-
economic class, it catered, unofficially but famously, to the
demands of the rich from the counties of eastern Pennsylvania.
Early in the morning of Tuesday, November 12, 1929, John
B. Kelly escorted his wife, Margaret Majer Kelly, to Hahne-
mann, where, after an unexceptional labor, she bore her third
child and second daughter. On December 1, the Kellys took the
baby to St. Bridget’s Roman Catholic Church, a three-minute,
half-mile drive from their home in the upscale neighborhood
of Philadelphia known as East Falls. The infant was baptized
Grace Patricia, in memory of an aunt who had died young, and

(so Grace Kelly believed) “because I was Tuesday’s child”—who,
according to Mother Goose, was “full of grace.”
On the banks of the Schuylkill River, East Falls has always
been a quiet residential neighborhood, known for its easy
commute to downtown Philadelphia. The most respected, es-
tablished families—Protestants with “old money” like the
Drexels, Biddles, Clarks, Cadwaladers and Wideners—lived
across the river, in western suburbs along the so-called Main
Line, in eighteen communities (among them, Overbrook, Mer-
ion, Wynnewood, Ardmore, Haverford, Bryn Mawr, Rose-
mont and Radnor). The river was very like a social dividing
line.
But membership in Philadelphia’s élite depended more on
history than geography: one was “in society” only if a family
could be traced back to colonial times, before the War of Inde-
pendence. The class distinctions were so immutable that the
Kellys knew they would never be accepted into high society, no
matter the extent of their wealth. The Kellys were Irish, Roman
Catholic and Democrats; Philadelphia society was English,
Episcopalian and Republican. “We could have been members
of the social register—the so-called Four Hundred—if we’d
wanted to,” Grace Kelly’s mother said. “But we had other
things to do.” If she really believed this, she was astonishingly
naïve. Her husband knew otherwise; instead, he set out to “do
well” in business, athletics and politics.
When Grace was born, the entire country was in the throes of
a terrible financial crisis. At the end of October the stock market
was in almost total collapse, signaling an economic disaster that
led to the Great Depression. Scores of banks failed overnight;
innumerable companies shut their doors forever; and millions
High Society 13
of Americans were suddenly homeless and jobless, pitchforked

into abject poverty and facing a future without prospects. The
United States was steeped in despair, and newspapers chroni-
cled a tragic epidemic of suicides.
Some families, however, were untouched by the gruesome
facts of national life, and Grace’s was among them. Her father,
John B. Kelly, had never speculated in the stock market, and
his wealth—achieved in the construction trade during the
boom time after the Great War—was held in cash and gov-
ernment bonds. His seventeen-room brick mansion at 3901
Henry Avenue was set amid lush, undulating lawns, and the
property featured a tennis court and elaborate recreational
equipment for active children. The house was mortgage-free,
like Kelly’s seaside vacation home in Ocean City, New Jersey.
The family sailed through the Depression enjoying a genteel,
privileged life: the Kelly children attended private academies;
there were household servants and workers to tend the
grounds and gardens; and the children wore only the finest
new seasonal wardrobes.
Grace had two older siblings: Margaret (“Peggy”), born in
September 1925; and John junior (“Kell”), born in May 1927.
The family was complete with the birth of Elizabeth Anne
(“Lizanne”) in June 1933. “I wasn’t a strong child like my sis-
ters and brother,” Grace said years later, “and my family told
me they thought I was practically born with a cold—I was al-
ways sniffling and sneezing, clearing my throat and fighting
some kind of respiratory ailment.” Her mother routinely re-
served the juices of the family roasts for fragile young Grace, in
a constant effort to improve the child’s strength and stamina.
“My other children were the strong ones, the extroverts, but
Gracie was shy and retiring,” her mother recalled. “She was
also frail and sickly a good deal of the time.” The girl filled the
hours of her frequent confinements by making up stories and
plays for her collection of dolls. “Grace could change her voice
for each doll, giving it a different character. She loved attention
for all this, but she didn’t cry if she didn’t get it.”
Thin and withdrawn, Grace preferred to read myths, fairy
tales and books about dancers and dancing; indeed, her favorite
dolls were fashioned like tiny ballerinas, complete with pointe
shoes and delicate tutus. She also loved to read poetry and tried
her hand at verses:
I hate to see the sun go down

And squeeze itself into the ground,
Since some warm night it might get stuck
And in the morning not get up!
Grace was largely indifferent to physical activity: “I liked to

swim, but did my best to avoid other sports and games.” This
attitude made her something of an outsider. Her father had
been an Olympic athlete, her mother a champion swimmer and
physical education teacher, and their children were strongly
encouraged—indeed, they were expected—to excel at compet-
itive sports. Grace’s preference for books and imaginative games
did not go down well with her father, a man who had little in-
terest in cultural or intellectual matters.
Born in 1889, John B. “Jack” Kelly was the youngest of ten

children born to Irish immigrants. Quitting school in early ado-
lescence, he worked in the family firm as a bricklayer while per-
fecting his skill at sculling (rowing on the river), and during
army service in the World War, he became a champion boxer.
Returning to civilian life, Jack rejoined his father’s company,
Kelly for Brickwork, and the postwar building boom of the
High Society 15
1920s quickly made him a millionaire. He did not, however,

achieve this on his own, as he often implied, nor was he a self-
made American success story. “They’ve latched on to the brick-
layer theme and won’t let go of this Horatio Alger idea,” said his
brother George, who directly confronted Jack’s self-glorification.
“What’s all this talk about you getting callused hands laying
bricks? The only times I remember you having calluses were
from long hours of scull practice on the Schuylkill River!”
Wealth freed Jack to spend those long hours rowing. After
winning six national championships, he headed for the Henley
Regatta in England, the most celebrated event in the sport of
sculling. But in 1920 his application for inclusion was rejected
at the last minute when the judges determined that his years of
manual labor and muscular development as a bricklayer gave
him an unfair advantage over “gentleman” athletes. The true
reason for his dismissal, however, was that the English author-
ities did not want to risk giving a prize to an Irish-American
Catholic. The consequential outcry was so loud that by 1937
the rules at Henley no longer excluded manual laborers, me-
chanics or artisans as unfit for the competition.
More determined than ever after this rejection, Kelly pro-
ceeded to the 1920 summer Olympics at Antwerp, Belgium,
where he won a gold medal in the single scull and, half an hour
later, a second gold medal in the double scull, in which he
rowed with a cousin. His family later swore to the truth of the
anecdote that he mailed his racing cap to King George V with
the message, “Greetings from a bricklayer.” Four years later,
during the summer of 1924, Kelly and his cousin repeated their
success at the Paris Olympics—an achievement that made “the
Irish bricklayer” the first rower to win three Olympic gold
medals. With that, he became one of the most famous athletes
of his generation, and his name was included in the United
States Olympic Hall of Fame. Later he was appointed National

Physical Fitness Director by President Franklin D. Roosevelt,
who regarded him as a good friend.
Before his Paris triumph, Kelly renounced bachelorhood
(but not his avocation as a womanizer) when he married Mar-
garet Majer on January 30, 1924, at St. Bridget’s Church. She
was nine years his junior and as strikingly beautiful as he was
darkly handsome. They had first met at a swim club, where she
successfully competed; she was also one of Philadelphia’s most
successful cover-girl models. With her degree in physical edu-
cation, she became the first woman to teach that field at the
University of Pennsylvania and at Women’s Medical College.
She converted from Lutheranism to her fiancé’s religion just
before their wedding.
“I had a good stiff German background,” Margaret said
years later. “My parents believed in discipline and so do I—no
tyranny or anything like that, but a certain firmness.” Proper
appearances, unfailing decorum, the importance of manners:
these were almost religious observances for Margaret Majer
Kelly. She trained her children to control themselves, to hide
pain and disappointment, to suppress their emotions in public,
to disguise effort and to strive for perfection without seeming
to do so. Her tutoring was more successful with Grace than
with the others.
Margaret’s discipline was apparently unremitting. Kell nick-
named her “the Prussian general” for her heavy hand, and Grace
recalled her mother’s insistence that her daughters learn not only
the fine points of competitive sports but also those of sewing,
cooking, dressmaking and gardening. “My mother was the disci-
plinarian in our family,” she said. “My father was very gentle,
never the one to spank or scold. My mother did that. But when
my father spoke—boy, you moved.” Life among the Kellys was
to be enjoyed by the constant development of new skills and by
High Society 17
the quiet assumption of responsibilities, and Margaret’s chief oc-

cupation became the training of her children. Jack, meanwhile,
was involved in local politics, business, sports and a social (and
amorous) life that excluded his family.
When Jack was at home, famous athletes from all over the
world frequently visited. For the parents and for Peggy, Kell
and Lizanne, these people were stimulating company; for
Grace, they were tiresome and left her feeling more alienated
than ever. “I never really felt pretty, bright or socially adept, and
all that talk of sports, politics and business left me cold.” People
often mistook Grace’s shyness for an attitude of superiority and,
later, of snobbery. The truth was that, in addition to her quite
different interests and hobbies, she was exceedingly near-
sighted: without her hated glasses, very little was clear and she
could not recognize people. “She was so myopic she couldn’t see
ten feet in front of her” without glasses, recalled Howell Co-
nant, who later became her favorite photographer.
Grace’s estimation of herself was also formed by her father’s
favoritism, and this, as with any child, caused her some insecu-
rity. “My older sister was my father’s favorite,” Grace reflected
years later, “and then there was the boy, the only son. Then I
came. After that, I had a baby sister, and I was terribly jealous
of the attention she got. I was always on my mother’s knee, the
clinging type. But I was pushed away [by my mother], and so I
resented my sister for years.”
“Of the four children, Peggy was Jack’s favorite,” recalled
Dorothea Sitley, a longtime family friend. “Grace was the in-
trovert, the quiet, serene one, and she felt left out. It was always
Peggy and her father together.” Jack admitted his preference
for his firstborn child: “I thought it would be Peggy whose
name would be up in lights one day. Anything that Grace could
do, Peggy could always do better”—or so he thought.
“According to him, Peggy was destined to be the star of the
family,” recalled Grace’s close friend and publicist, Rupert

Allan (later also the Monégasque consul general in Los Ange-
les). “Jack never paid much attention to Grace—he accepted
her, but he never understood her. But she adored him and al-
ways sought his approval.” Jack Kelly was “a very nice man,”
recalled Grace’s friend Judith Balaban Kanter Quine, “but he
was a man without much sensitivity.”
As much as she must have been aware of her father’s prefer-
ence for Peggy, Grace longed for her older sister’s approval as
much as for his. “I used to help my sister sell flowers to passersby
to raise money for my mother’s pet charity, Women’s Medical
College and Hospital of Pennsylvania. Naturally, most of our
customers were the neighbors. Little did they know that some of
the flowers came from their own gardens. I used to be sent by my
big sister Peggy to raid the nearby gardens at night, and quite
unashamedly we sold these same flowers back to their owners
next morning.”
Just as she tried to befriend her sister, “Grace admired her
father,” according to her close friend, the actress Rita Gam.
“But she thought he really never appreciated her. He always
preferred Peggy and never approved of Grace’s career—and
her mother was a very tough lady, rather critical and not terri-
bly warm. Both her parents said they were surprised and puz-
zled by Grace’s later success. When she talked about this, there
was a certain wistfulness in her voice, but she was an extremely
loyal person and very protective of her family.” What might be
called Grace’s marginal status in a family of hardy, rah-rah
competitors evoked a touching desire for demonstrative affec-
tion. “As a child,” recalled her sister Lizanne, “she loved to be
held and cuddled and kissed.” This longing for physical tokens
of affection increased with the years.
Grace and her father remained virtual strangers to each
other until his death in 1960. She never addressed the topic di-
High Society 19
rectly, but she said that her father liked to be with rough, self-
confident children who could tumble on a playing field and
bounce right back up. The implication was clear: that was not a
description of Grace at any age, and she felt outside the orbit of
his approval. Judy Quine agreed: “Jack Kelly didn’t cozy up to
Grace. He understood business, politics and sports. He knew
what these things were about, but he never ‘got it’ about Grace.
Toward the end of his life, he accepted her. He saw her impact
on the world and he showed her some respect. That’s what they
shared at the end of his life—deep respect.”
It was perhaps inevitable, then, that a senior family servant
named Godfrey Ford became something of a father figure. Ad-
dressed as “Fordie,” he was the Kelly chauffeur and factotum,
evoking enormous affection from all the youngsters—and es-
pecially from Grace. “He kept their cars polished,” recalled the
Kellys’ childhood friend Elaine Cruice Beyer. “He could serve,
put on a big party, supervise bartenders and buffets and keep
the gardens in beautiful condition.” Grace’s respect and fond-
ness for the African-American Fordie instilled in her a lifelong
hatred of racism.
On Thursdays, when the children’s nanny was off duty,
Fordie was entrusted with the task of putting the children to
bed. “Gracie asked my opinions about this and that,” he re-
called years later. “I’d tell her what I thought, and she’d usually
follow my advice.” Later he gave her driving lessons in front of
the house and in the long driveway, “but she was never good at
parking.”
Shortly before Grace marked her sixth birthday, in Novem-

ber 1935, she began her education, joining Peggy at the Raven-
hill Academy, a convent school for girls less than a half-mile
away, on School House Lane. Built in the nineteenth century as
a family home by the millionaire William Weightman, Raven-

hill is a grand High Victorian Gothic mansion with dark panel-
ing, ornate fireplaces, dramatic staircases and formal parlors.
Weightman’s daughter later donated the vast residence to the
Roman Catholic archdiocese of Philadelphia, and when Dennis
Dougherty was appointed archbishop in 1918, one of his first
acts was to invite the Religious of the Assumption—an order of
teaching nuns with whom he had worked as a bishop in the
Philippines—to come from Manila and establish a school for
girls at Ravenhill, which they did in 1919. Admission was
strictly controlled, and at its peak there were but fifty students
in the entire first through twelfth grades.
“They were remarkable women,” Grace said, “and I was
enormously fond of them. They were strict about our studies,
but also very, very kind. Their long black habits were simply the
formal garb of an exceptional group of teachers, and however
rigorous their religious life, the nuns understood young girls and
devoted themselves completely to our educational and spiritual
welfare.” The nuns insisted, among other elements of proper
decorum, that the girls wear white gloves to and from school—a
convention already familiar to Grace from her mother’s home
training.
At Ravenhill, Grace’s teachers encouraged her wide read-
ing, her drawing, her hobby of learning to arrange flowers for
classroom and chapel, and her custom of filling a notebook
with simple lyrics:
Little flower, you’re the lucky one—

you soak in all the lovely sun,
you stand and watch it all go by
and never once do bat an eye
while others have to fight and strain
High Society 21
against the world and its every pain

of living.
But you too must have wars to fight

the cold bleak darkness of every night,
of a bigger vine that seeks to grow
and is able to stand the rain and snow
and yet you never let it show
on your pretty face.
In 1943, Grace began four years of high school at the nearby,

nonsectarian Stevens School. At that time it was unusual for a
Catholic family to send a child to a non-Catholic school, espe-
cially after the years at Ravenhill. But the Kellys were not par-
ticularly devout. “Aside from going to Mass on Sundays and
saying our prayers before going to bed, we didn’t do anything
else,” Lizanne recalled. “We didn’t eat meat on Friday, but
even then Mother wasn’t too demanding. She said, ‘If you hap-
pen to be visiting someone and it’s Friday and they serve meat,
eat it. I don’t want them feeling uncomfortable because of
you.’ ” To Margaret’s credit, this was good religious common
sense—and such a “liberal” viewpoint was not the common at-
titude of the day among American Catholics.
“My dad was not a very great religious person,” Kell said
years later. “He attended church more for the children, my sis-
ters and myself, rather than for great sincerity in his beliefs. My
mother, of course, was not a Catholic until she married my fa-
ther. She went through the routine and did the basic mini-
mum, but she is not an active Catholic today [1976]. People
who don’t know her are inclined to think she is [devout]. But
she is not upset over my separation from the Catholic religious
point of view—except that it makes her look like something
less than a perfect mother.” As for Grace, thanks to both her

family and the wise nuns at Ravenhill, she never had the neu-
rotic, haunted sense of guilt that often afflicts the scrupulous.
On the other hand, she always took her faith seriously—even
more so as demands and disappointments accumulated.
At fourteen she had nearly reached her full adult height of
five feet, six inches; blue-eyed, lithe and poised, with blond hair
turning light brown, she had mostly outgrown her childhood
respiratory ailments, but they had left her with a flat, nasal tone
it would take years to counter.
As local hospitals were crowded with World War II casual-
ties, volunteers appeared from every station in life, and many
schoolgirls devoted several hours each week to helping over-
worked nurses and aides. Shy and sensitive, Grace was never-
theless coolly efficient when dispatching indelicate chores in
the wards. In addition, she quickly understood how much her
presence meant to the young men, for she was, after all, a dis-
armingly attractive young woman.
The Stevens School, located on Walnut Lane in the adjacent
neighborhood of Germantown, had been established “for
young matrons who are interested in establishing ideal, satisfy-
ing homes and in administering them efficiently and scientifi-
cally.” This rather grandly stated agenda, written at the turn of
the twentieth century, was effectively the program for little
more than a finishing school for the daughters of wealthy
Philadelphians, although by Grace’s time things had taken a
somewhat more academic turn. She did well in her four-year
course of studies, except in science and mathematics, which
bored her.
“She is one of the beauties of our class,” states the school
yearbook for 1947. “Full of fun and always ready for a good
laugh, she has no trouble making friends. A born mimic, she is
well known for her acting ability, which reached its peak this
High Society 23
year in her portrayal of Peter Pan in our Spring Play.” Grace

was also a member of the glee club and the hockey and swim
teams, she excelled at modern dancing, and she was named
“Chairman of the Dress and Good Behavior Committee,” which
must have pleased her mother. Her favorite actress and actor,
she said that year, were Ingrid Bergman and Joseph Cotten,
who had appeared together in Gaslight, a picture she saw many
times. “Ingrid Bergman made an enormous impression on
me,” Grace said. “I couldn’t imagine where that kind of acting
talent came from.” Her favorite summer resort was Ocean City,
the family’s summer residence; her preferred drink was a choc-
olate milkshake; among classical music selections, she loved
Debussy’s “Clair de Lune”; her favorite orchestra was Benny
Goodman’s; and she especially liked the singer Jo Stafford.
But it was acting with the school drama society, and the
parts she played with local amateur groups, that most appealed
to Grace. Her parents were almost mute with astonishment as
their shy, retiring daughter flourished not by competing, but by
participating in the joint effort that a cast makes onstage to cre-
ate a memorable impact on an audience. As it happened, she
drew her primary inspiration from one of her father’s brothers.
Her theatrical mentor was not, as is commonly believed, her

uncle Walter Kelly, who was sixteen years older than Grace’s fa-
ther. The family had seen him act onstage and in a few films, but
he was something of an embarrassment. A nationally known
vaudevillian, he had made his fame in a series of monologues
that could not be performed in later decades, for they were
openly and frankly racist. Dough-faced and corpulent, Walter
Kelly played “The Virginia Judge” in a constantly changing se-
ries of sketches in which he mimicked not only the judge but also
a legion of black men characterized as ignorant and slothful.
Spot_9780307395610_3p_ata_r1.c.qxp 6/12/09 3:20 PM Page 304
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Donald Spoto, who earned his Ph.D. from Fordham Uni-

versity, is the author of twenty-five books, including bestselling
biographies of Alfred Hitchcock, Audrey Hepburn, Ingrid
Bergman, and Marlene Dietrich. He lives in Denmark.

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High Society

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Copyright © 2009 by Donald Spoto

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

Printed in the United States of America

Design by Lauren Dong

PART I Fade-In (1929—1951)

PART I I Action (1951—1956)

PART I I I Fade- Out (1956—1982)

During our last meeting, I asked Grace Kelly Grimaldi

Stéphanie, emerged from her room. “Mommy, I can’t find my

My first conversation with Grace that September after-

manuscript when it’s finished, would you like me to write a

In the summer of 1976, Grace invited me to the palace in

dent in Paris. I was booked into Grace’s schedule for an hour in

When Grace died, I was asked by National Public Radio in

“The idea of my life as a fairy tale

previous page: As a New York fashion model, age 18 (spring 1948).

Off the Main Line

I never really felt pretty, bright or socially adept.

n the late 1920s, the Hahnemann Medical College,

I at the corner of Broad and Vine Streets in Philadelphia, was

Grace Patricia, in memory of an aunt who had died young, and

of Americans were suddenly homeless and jobless, pitchforked

I hate to see the sun go down

Grace was largely indifferent to physical activity: “I liked to

Born in 1889, John B. “Jack” Kelly was the youngest of ten

1920s quickly made him a millionaire. He did not, however,

States Olympic Hall of Fame. Later he was appointed National

the quiet assumption of responsibilities, and Margaret’s chief oc-

family,” recalled Grace’s close friend and publicist, Rupert

Shortly before Grace marked her sixth birthday, in Novem-

a family home by the millionaire William Weightman, Raven-

Little flower, you’re the lucky one—

against the world and its every pain

But you too must have wars to fight

In 1943, Grace began four years of high school at the nearby,

less than a perfect mother.” As for Grace, thanks to both her

year in her portrayal of Peter Pan in our Spring Play.” Grace

Her theatrical mentor was not, as is commonly believed, her

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Donald Spoto, who earned his Ph.D. from Fordham Uni-

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