Kelly, Grace

later Princess Grace of Monaco

born Nov. 12, 1929, Philadelphia, Pa., U.S.

died Sept. 14, 1982, Monte Carlo, Monaco

U.S. film actress.

She studied acting and made her Broadway debut in 1949. Her movie debut came in Fourteen Hours (1951). She gained critical and popular praise with her performances in High Noon (1952), Mogambo (1953), and The Country Girl (1954, Academy Award). Alfred Hitchcock saw "sexual elegance" in her and put her in three of his films

Dial M for Murder (1954), Rear Window (1954), and To Catch a Thief (1955). She made her last movie, High Society (1956), before marrying Prince Rainier III of Monaco. She died in a car accident after suffering a stroke on a winding mountain road in the Côte d'Azur.

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▪ American actress and princess of Monaco

also called (from 1956)  Princess Grace of Monaco , French  Princesse Grace de Monaco 

born November 12, 1929, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.

died September 14, 1982, Monte Carlo, Monaco

 American actress of films and television, known for her stately beauty and reserve. She starred in 11 motion pictures before abandoning a Hollywood career to marry Rainier III, prince de Monaco, in 1956.

      Kelly was born into a wealthy Irish Catholic family in Philadelphia (her uncle was the playwright George Kelly (Kelly, George)) and was educated in convent and private schools. She then attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City in 1947, working as a photographer's model to pay her tuition. After several seasons of acting in summer stock, she made her Broadway debut in November 1949 in August Strindberg's The Father. She appeared in a number of television dramas in the early 1950s. Her first film role, a small one, was in Fourteen Hours (1951), but the next year she appeared as Gary Cooper (Cooper, Gary)'s Quaker wife in High Noon and her career began to blossom.

      During the height of her Hollywood career, Kelly appeared in such films as Mogambo (1953), opposite Clark Gable (Gable, Clark), and The Country Girl (1954), a screen version of Clifford Odets's play, for which she won an Academy Award for best actress as Bing Crosby (Crosby, Bing)'s dowdy wife. But perhaps her most memorable roles were in such Alfred Hitchcock (Hitchcock, Sir Alfred) films as Dial M for Murder (1954), Rear Window (1954), and To Catch a Thief (1955). Kelly was the perfect Hitchcock heroine, epitomizing what he called “sexual elegance.” After making The Swan (1956) and High Society (1956), she retired from the screen to marry Prince Rainier, becoming princess of Monaco. The couple had three children—Caroline, Albert (Albert II, prince de Monaco), and Stéphanie—and Princess Grace was active in charitable and cultural work. She resisted attempts to lure her back into performing, although she lent her narration to one or two documentary films and gave occasional poetry readings, and in 1976 she joined the Board of Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation.

      In 1982 Princess Grace died of injuries sustained in an automobile accident. She and her daughter Stéphanie were driving on a winding road at Cap-d'Ail in the Côte d'Azur region of France when Princess Grace suffered a stroke and lost control of the car, which plunged down a 45-foot (14-metre) embankment.

Additional Reading

Steven Englund, Grace of Monaco: An Interpretive Biography (1984); James Spada, Grace: The Secret Lives of a Princess (1987); Robert Lacey, Grace (1994).

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