Grace Kelly's Last Hurrah: The Spring 2024 CMBA Blogathon

When talking last hurrahs in Hollywood, how many of them occurred because the leading lady was about to marry a reigning prince?

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Today we’re talking about Grace Kelly and those hectic final months in Hollywood making High Society before she sailed off to the Mediterranean to become the Princess of Monaco.

But first, this post is part of the Spring 2024 CMBA Blogathon: Screen Debuts & Last Hurrahs. Make sure you click through to read all the posts!

Onwards.

If you could’ve bet that High Society would turn out to be Grace’s final film, you probably would’ve won a mint. Not only was she one of the most stylish, talented actresses working in Hollywood, she was fresh off an Oscar win (for The Country Girl) and all the perks that comes with such a career boost.

But Grace was never concerned with the trappings of stardom: she always wanted to do it on her terms. She had in her contract that she could travel back to New York for stage work and wasn’t afraid of suspensions meted out by MGM. She’d endured one in the midst of Oscar campaigning, which meant that she couldn’t step foot on the lot to get a gown for the big night—that’s how she wound up in an Edith Head-designed gown instead.

Anyways, after the Oscar win, Grace went back to work but she wasn’t impressed by the scripts she was receiving. And all around her, her friends and sisters were getting married and having children. It made her take stock of her life, and she decided that at the ripe old age of twenty-four that she needed to start thinking about the future.

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Cue: Prince Rainier III of Monaco.

In the spring of 1955, Grace travelled to Cannes for the famous film festival, but it was the sojourn across the border to Monaco that made history. Paris Match was interested in featuring her on the cover of their Cannes issue, and a meeting between Grace and the Sovereign Prince of Monaco was proposed.

Famously, the electricity in her room wasn’t working and hotel strikes meant that her dress wasn’t pressed, but when she met the elusive prince, she took his breath away. There’s more to the story, but the long and short of it was that they became pen pals after Grace returned to America, and by the year’s end, they had decided that they wanted to marry.

Rainier travelled to America and proposed to Grace over the holidays, and when news of their engagement broke, they became the focus of the world’s media: a bachelor prince and a glamorous American actress and the wedding of the century!

But before Grace could neatly pack up her life and move to Monaco, there was one more thing: High Society.

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Based on The Philadelphia Story, a Broadway play and 1940 film made famous by the trio of Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart, High Society would be a musical update with Grace, Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra in the leading roles.

While Grace was working on the film—including intense singing training, for Grace was not interested in having her vocals dubbed—in the background, she and Rainier were busy planning the royal wedding.

Not to mention dealing with their respective hard-willed families—go look up Princess Charlotte and Princess Antoinette after you look up Jack and Margaret Kelly, I’ll wait—and the world’s press badgering them. And Grace’s studio, MGM, was also giving her grief.

Grace was one of Hollywood’s biggest stars and MGM had her in a contract that they didn’t want to break. It didn’t help that Rainier was out there at press conferences speaking on Grace’s behalf, telling anyone who would listen that her Hollywood career would be over as soon as she became Her Serene Highness Princess Grace of Monaco. Grace was mum on the subject, but if you read anything from the era, it’s clear she was okay with giving it up at that point (we can talk about Marnie later).

But MGM wanted to milk everything they could out of Grace before she left American shores. They were as self-serving as they were generous: they provided a publicist to help the couple handle the PR around the wedding; they designed Grace’s wedding dress (Helen Rose truly made the most gorgeous royal wedding gown of all time); her hairstylist was provided to her; they gave her the entire wardrobe from High Society as a gift; and a $65,000 bonus for the film on top of her original salary.

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In return, they wanted the film rights to the wedding. Grace and Rainier orchestrated a deal that would see them film a documentary that they would distribute around the world—their cut would be donated to the Monaco Red Cross.

With all this set, MGM was only too happy to break Grace’s contract for Designing Woman, a role that would later go to Lauren Bacall (she would star opposite Gregory Peck, but the version Grace was set to make would’ve seen her reunited with Jimmy Stewart).

I’m going to be blunt here: you either like High Society or you don’t. Did The Philadelphia Story need a remake? No. Did it need to be a musical? No, but then why would you cast Bing and Frank otherwise.

I’m firmly in the camp of people who like High Society. It’s charming and fun and has qualities that you can appreciate independently of the original film. And once you’ve seen the wardrobe and you realize Grace got to keep it all? Hoo boy! I’ve seen so many of those costumes in person, they’re all enviable.

I mentioned earlier that Grace undertook vocal lessons because she wasn’t willing to be dubbed when Bing and Frank would be singing, and her record with Bing, ‘True Love’ was certified gold when it was released as a single!

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And let’s talk Tracy Lord’s engagement ring… it’s really Grace’s! Rainier had presented her with a simpler engagement ring in January, but the sparkler she wears in High Society is her true engagement ring. It was a 10.47 carat emerald-cut diamond ring.

High Society was filmed in the winter of 1956, wrapping in early March. While helming her final film, Rainier had been at her side nearly the entire time on an extended visit to the America.

As Grace would later recall, filming High Society under such…unusual circumstances…would prove memorable. She’d later say that making the movie was “one of my most enjoyable experiences. I was in love, I was engaged, I was singing a song called ‘True Love’—it was all wonderful, and I remember the cast as a group of amiable professionals. We had such fun making that picture.”

And of her Hollywood departure, she’d recall: “Maybe because I was about to leave Hollywood, I felt relaxed and could just let the character have her way—I didn’t impose myself on her.”

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It was Grace’s final film, but in the weeks before she left the United States on the S.S. Constitution for an April wedding, she filled her days with promotional requirements for High Society, shopping for her trousseau, and her final engagement: attending the Academy Awards.

As the previous year’s Best Actress, it was tradition that she present Best Actor at the following ceremony. She presented Ernest Borgnine with his much-deserved Oscar for Marty and then set sail for Monaco on April 4, 1956.

Grace and Rainier were married on April 18 and April 19, 1956. The first ceremony was a civil ceremony where her new titles—all 142 of them—were dutifully recited. The next day, a glittering religious service at the Saint Nicholas Cathedral saw the eyes of the world on Monaco’s new princess.

High Society premiered on July 17, 1956 to huge audiences—naturally—though the reviews were mixed. Some loved Grace’s performance, others hated it, saying that she couldn’t hold a candle to Katharine Hepburn’s Tracy Lord. But others still commented that it was her most relaxed performance.

Grace and Rainier would go on to have three children: Princess Caroline in 1957, Prince Albert II in 1958, and Princess Stéphanie in 1965.

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Grace threw herself into her new role as Princess of Monaco, but it never stopped the press from wondering if she would ever come back to Hollywood.

Despite her initial insistence that she would never go back, by the early 1960s, she had the acting bug again, and had planned to work with her beloved Hitchcock one last time for Marnie.

Her involvement was to the point that it was publicly announced—and approved by Rainier—but the outcry in Monaco of their Serene Princess playing a kleptomaniac was too much, and she was forced to withdraw.

Further attempts to draw her back to Hollywood failed to move the needle—The Turning Point is another film they wanted her to make—and Grace never acted again. Instead, she satisfied the creative urge by doing poetry readings and television narration and hosting.