Grace Kelly's Hollywood career lasted barely five years before she became a princess
Rejected by Bennington College over weak maths marks and warned by her father that acting was barely respectable, Grace Kelly went from a forgettable film debut in 1951 to a Best Actress Oscar three years later. Then, at 26, she walked away from the screen to marry Prince Rainier III of Monaco.
Kelly was born in Philadelphia on November 12, 1929, into a wealthy Catholic family. Her father, John B. Kelly Sr., the son of Irish immigrants, had won three Olympic golds in sculling, built a large brickwork firm and lost the 1935 mayoral race by the narrowest margin the city had seen. Her uncle George Kelly, a Pulitzer-winning playwright, used his influence to get her into the American Academy of Dramatic Arts after its quota was already full.
She modelled for bug spray and cigarette advertisements, lived at the Barbizon Hotel for Women at her father's insistence, and appeared in close to sixty live television dramas. Her small part in Fourteen Hours (1951) barely registered with critics. Even after High Noon (1952), where she played Gary Cooper's Quaker bride, Alfred Hitchcock called her performance rather mousey.
John Ford saw something in a screen test and cast her in Mogambo (1953), which brought a supporting actress nomination. MGM signed her for seven years at 850 dollars a week, but she bargained for two conditions: every other year free for theatre, and the right to keep living in Manhattan. The Country Girl (1954) won her the Academy Award for Best Actress, and Hitchcock, having changed his mind, used her in three thrillers, among them Rear Window.
She married Rainier on April 18, 1956, and gave up acting apart from narrating the Oscar-nominated documentary The Children of Theatre Street in 1977. As Princess Grace she raised three children, created a foundation in 1964 to support local artisans, and backed AMADE Mondiale, a children's rights group later granted consultative status with UNICEF and UNESCO. She died aged 52 on September 14, 1982, from injuries suffered in a car crash; her son Albert helped launch awards in her name for young performers in 1984.
Source: Grace Kelly
