Kelly Grace

American actress who was transformed by her marriage to Princess Rainier as Her Serene Highness Princess Grace of Monaco. Winner of the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1955 for her performance in "The Country Girl," Grace was a Hollywood sensation in films including ""High Noon," "Rear Window," "High Society" and "To Catch a Thief." Kelly was one of four children born to high achieving parents. Her father, Jack Kelly, was a bricklayer turned contractor who, by 1929, built a mansion in fashionable East Falls, Pennsylvania. Though a champion oarsman, he was denied entry by the British in the Diamond Scull race on the grounds that he worked with his hands and was therefore not a gentleman sportsman. Channeling his anger at the class system, Kelly saw to it thirty years later that his namesake son was accepted into the race and came away holding first prize. Mom was the first female athletic coach at the University of Pennsylvania. Sports was the focus of the Kelly family and father Jack, a charming philanderer, could in no way relate to his frail, asthmatic and decidedly unathletic daughter Grace, who spent countless hours alone in her room in a fantasy world where she acted out roles with her dolls, using a different voice with each one. As a result Grace never gained attention or approval from her father, thus setting the pattern in her adult life to seek older, important men who were father substitutes. The biography be Robert Lacey related that she lost her virginity at 17 to a friends husband. Living in a fantasy world was an escape route to acceptance and by age 12, she was acting in productions with the East Falls Academy Players. After attending a strict convent school, Kelly moved to New York to pursue a career in acting at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. After graduation in 1949, Kelly got her first professional acting job in a stock company production of "The Torch Bearers" in New Hope, Pennsylvania, and made her Broadway debut that same year in "The Father." Supplementing her acting income as a photographers model, Graces success earned her a screen test in Hollywood in 1951, where she won the role opposite Gary Cooper in "High Noon." Her sheltered background did not prepare her for the fierce competition of Tinsel Town, and she gave an aloof impression, earning the nickname "The Ice Queen." "Until I know people, I cant give much of myself," she said. Possessing the right amount of refinement, natural beauty and sexual charisma, Kelly became known as the "pious mans Monroe." Alfred Hitchcock, who directed Kelly in "Rear Window," "Dial M For Murder," and "To Catch a Thief," once said that she was a "volcano covered by snow, but the public sees only the snow." Kellys love affairs with William Holden, Clark Gable, Bing Crosby, Oleg Cassini and Ray Milland caused great alarm to philandering Dad, to whom she always succumbed during his tantrums, along with MGM, which continually paid off journalists to keep her image pure. Her meteoric rise to success made her the No. 1 box office attraction of 1954, coupled with the fact that Kelly received more fan mail than anyone at MGM and was given more coverage that same year than Marilyn Monroe received in 1952. While attending the Cannes Film Festival in France in 1955, Kelly met Prince Rainier of Monaco, who was taken by her elegance and charm. When the Prince was visiting friends of the Kelly family in the U.S. at Christmas of that same year, another meeting Read less