High Society

by Donald Spoto

  The role of this desperately lonely spinster was assumed by Judith Evelyn, among the most intense actresses of her day and a specialist in neurotics and destructive characters. She had first met Grace in 1947, through George Kelly, when Evelyn played the title role in the Broadway revival of Craig’s Wife. Their reunion now was a reason to celebrate, which they did by sharing a split of champagne in Grace’s dressing room one afternoon.

  There seems to be no hope for Jeff in his relationship with Lisa precisely because he prefers to watch her: he likes her to model clothes for him, but he is patently afraid of going further (as Stewart is similarly afraid to do in Vertigo). In this regard, the movie’s signature tune has enormous significance. Bing Crosby croons “To See You Is to Love You” (from the Paramount picture The Road to Bali). These words are literally true for Jeff, who is satisfied with merely gazing at an image—“To see you is to love you, and you’re never out of sight, and I love you and I’ll see you in the same old dream tonight.” Indeed, there seems to be no hope for Jeff, who uses his physical disability as an excuse to avoid any kind of intimacy unless initiated by Lisa—and then he talks his way out of it. Early on, he complains to Stella that Lisa is the kind of girl who loves things like a new dress or a lobster dinner—and moments later she arrives with a new dress and a lobster dinner. However, even the realization of this little bit of imagination is too much for him, and at the end of the evening he rejects her cruelly and precipitates her abrupt departure from his apartment.

  When Lisa gamely climbs the fire ladder into Thorwald’s apartment, she finds the wife’s wedding ring and slips it on her finger, proudly displaying it to Jeff as he watches across the courtyard. But this gesture gives her away to Thorwald, who glances from her finger to Jeff watching him (and to us). At this moment Hitchcock closes the circle of his intention: Lisa has used the adventure as a way of showing Jeff how brave and resourceful she could be as his wife—thus she points to the wedding ring on her finger.

  “REAR WINDOW,” Hitchcock said years later, “was structurally satisfactory because it is the epitome of the subjective treatment. A man looks, he sees, he reacts—thus you construct a mental process. Rear Window is entirely about a mental process, done by use of the visual.” Regarding Grace, Hitchcock added, “Everybody wants a new leading lady, but there aren’t many of them around. There are a lot of leading women, but not enough leading ladies. An actress like Grace, who’s also a lady, gives a director certain advantages. He can afford to be more colorful with a love scene played by a lady than with one played by a ‘hussy.’ With a hussy, such a scene can be vulgar, but if you put a lady in the same circumstances, she’s exciting and glamorous.”

  Everyone working on Rear Window could see Hitch’s fascination for Grace. “Of course he fell in love with her,” assistant director Herbert Coleman said in 1981. “But who didn’t? Nothing happened, nothing came of this fantasy romance—he often had to fall in love with his leading ladies.” The fantasy romance was a pattern that had begun with Madeleine Carroll in 1935, was repeated with Ingrid Bergman from 1944 through 1948, and would recur later, with disastrous consequences. Hitch had a preference for blondes: they photographed better against dark backgrounds, and he viewed their apparent icy remoteness to be like snow on top of a volcano. Hence, Hitchcock regarded Grace’s sophisticated beauty as hiding an inner passion, blended with her obvious wit. She became his latest obsession—his last had been with Ingrid Bergman, who had left America five years earlier. Now, with Grace, he imagined that he would never need any other actress in his future films; this was one of the most futile prospects he ever entertained.

  Grace’s first appearance in Rear Window has the distinctive look and feeling of a dream. With the camera holding to the face of the sleeping James Stewart, we hear the sound of someone entering Jeff’s apartment. Then we see Grace, approaching the camera slowly, as if to embrace the lens (and thus the viewer). Cut to the profiles of the two heads, as Grace bends over to kiss Stewart. Hitchcock said he shook the camera for the final shimmering effect of this shot, but the fact is that he double-printed several frames of film, to give a more dreamlike, romantic feeling to the scene.

  Holding to the two profiles, Hitch told Grace to whisper her first words to Stewart:

  LISA. How’s your leg?

  JEFF. Hurts a little.

  LISA. And your stomach?

  JEFF. Empty as a football.

  LISA. And your love life?

  JEFF. Not too active.

  LISA. Anything else bothering you?

  JEFF. Yes—who are you?

  She moves away with a smile and turns on three lamps as she answers, “Reading from top to bottom: Lisa—Carol—Fremont.”

  Hitch worked with John Michael Hayes on a later scene that perhaps no other director could then create, remarkable in its erotic frankness and yet completely inoffensive. Kisses had time limits in Hollywood films, but Hitchcock finessed that requirement here, just as he had with Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant in Notorious: he interrupted the kissing—but not the embrace—with whispers and small talk, turning up the heat while moving his plot forward. Lisa returns to Jeff after a clash of wills over their future together. The scene, loaded with innuendo and sexy double entendres, opens with a close-up of them in a tight clinch in his wheelchair, as she sprawls over his lap:

  LISA. How far does a girl have to go before you notice her?

  JEFF. Well, if she’s pretty enough, she doesn’t have to go anywhere. She just has to be.

  LISA. Well, I am—pay attention to me.

  (More kisses.)

  JEFF. I’m not exactly on the other side of the room.

  LISA. Your mind is. When I want a man, I want all of you.

  JEFF. Don’t you ever have any problems?

  LISA. I have one now.

  JEFF. So do I.

  (More nibbling on lips and ears.)

  LISA. Tell me about it.

  JEFF. Why would a man leave his apartment three times on a rainy night with a suitcase and come back three times?

  LISA. He likes the way his wife welcomes him home.

  (More kisses by the passionate LISA.)

  JEFF. No, not this salesman’s wife. Why didn’t he go to work today?

  LISA. Homework—it’s more interesting.

  JEFF. What’s interesting about a butcher knife and a small saw wrapped in newspaper?

  LISA. Nothing, thank heaven.

  (Closer embracing, more kisses.)

  JEFF. Why hasn’t he been in his wife’s bedroom all day?

  LISA. I wouldn’t dare answer that.

  JEFF. Well, listen—I’ll answer it. LISA, there’s something terribly wrong.

  LISA (as she rises from his embrace). And with me, I’m afraid.

  JEFF. What do you think?

  LISA. Something too frightful to utter.

  Speaking in whispered, passionate murmurs, Grace created an authentic portrait of a woman aroused by the mere proximity of her lover, frustrated by his physical incapacity and anxious about his preoccupation with the possibility of a local murder. As Hitchcock intended, this was a side of Grace Kelly that had never before been seen. “I didn’t discover Grace,” he said, “but I saved her from a fate worse than death. I prevented her from being eternally cast as a cold woman.”

  The stated consensus about her slowly improved, although audiences were far more enthusiastic than media critics. She was “fascinating,” according to the New York Times, whose reviewer gauged the picture as “insignificant, superficial and glib, [and] the purpose of it is sensation.” But a year later, both the National Board of Review and the New York Film Critics Circle honored Grace as best actress of the year 1954 for her performances in a trio of pictures released that year—Dial “M” for Murder, Rear Window and The Country Girl. BAFTA, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, climbed aboard the Kelly bandwagon, too, nominating her as best actress for Dial “M” and The Country Girl.

  When Rear Window wrapped
on January 13, 1954,9* Hitchcock told Grace she would soon be working for him again; he did not inquire about her plans, or Metro’s. He had decided that she would soon be back in the Hitchcock fold, and that was that.

  IN CULVER City, meanwhile, the men at Metro still had no idea what to do with Grace. “I don’t understand all the excitement about this girl,” said an uncomprehending publicist at that studio, speaking on the record to a journalist. His opinion was obviously that of his bosses, for—even before Rear Window was completed—they renewed the loan-out deal with Paramount. Beginning January 4, 1954—“or on any day following completion of principal photography of Rear Window”—Grace was to appear in Paramount’s The Bridges at Toko-Ri.

  Metro contract player Van Johnson understood the reason for Grace’s popularity with moviegoers, studio bosses to the contrary notwithstanding: “There hasn’t been a newcomer of her thoroughbred type [for many years], as contrasted with the cuties who’ve flung themselves up any old way. The public has had so much sex pitched into its face recently that it’s gone for Kelly in rebellion against a broadside of broads.”

  Hitchcock and Johnson may well have been alluding (perhaps rather unfairly) to another blonde—Marilyn Monroe, whom Twentieth Century-Fox was presenting as the epitome of the new, bold sexiness in movies, exploiting her with breathless, almost desperate speed: in 1953, Fox released three Monroe pictures—Niagara, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and How to Marry a Millionaire. Talented beyond the material she was given, Monroe was a phenomenon, presented as the antithesis of everything Grace stood for.

  Film roles were one way to keep a studio’s actors in the public eye and mind. Another way to maintain their fame was through interviews and articles discreetly arranged and then published in fan magazines and national newspapers. Movie stars were commodities, after all, and they had to be properly advertised, presented and celebrated for the sake of the studio’s financial success. Stars, as one movie historian has written, “had to be accepted by the public in terms of a certain set of personality traits which permeate all his or her film roles. The successful stars have been those whose appeal can be catalogued into a series of such traits, associations and mannerisms.” The unofficial syllabus of developing stars was the same everywhere in Hollywood: there was an initial construction of an image, a series of photographs sent to the print media, a careful presentation of the star’s background—and even a rumor of romance, as indication that the star was no bloodless mannequin. When an actor was cast in a major film, a “unit publicist” attended the entire production, supervising publicity and interviews and planting harmless and helpful tidbits in the press.

  Metro exploited the fact of Grace’s wealthy family, her education and her theatrical apprenticeship, in order to suggest that she was the perfect lady of the 1950s, an era that idolized and idealized the amalgamation of prosperity, family ties and hard work to achieve the American dream. Although Grace’s image was carefully molded to appeal to a male audience, she was also presented as a respectable, white-gloved girl who could be admired by women—hence she was featured in magazines like McCall’s, Ladies Home Journal and Mademoiselle. “There’s Grace Kelly,” commented an anonymous columnist at Vogue. “Her gentle, fine-bred prettiness is rapidly reversing Hollywood’s idea of what’s box office.” A Metro publicist wrote that line and successfully slipped it to a Vogue editor.

  Grace’s image was based on the generally truthful contours of her family background—her father’s achievements in business and sport, for example—and on favorable comments from colleagues. But remarks from Grace herself were rare, and when forced by the studio to give an interview, she did not divulge intimacies. Marilyn Monroe was once asked what she wore to bed, and she replied, “Chanel Number 5.” When the same question was put to Grace, she said, “I think it’s nobody’s business what I wear to bed. A person has to keep something to herself, or your life is just a layout in a magazine.” And so it went.

  There was nothing patronizing in Grace’s personality, and the aloofness that went along with her ice-maiden image was something that none of her friends and colleagues ever saw. “She was anything but cold,” said James Stewart. “Everything about Grace was appealing. She had those big warm eyes, and if you ever played a love scene with her, you’d know she wasn’t cold.” As for her professional skills, Stewart spoke for many of her leading men when he said, “You can see her thinking the way she’s supposed to think in the role. You know she’s listening, and not just for cues. Some actresses don’t think and don’t listen. You can tell they’re just counting the words.”

  Terms like “lady,” “genteel,” “elegant,” “patrician” and “reserved” were most often used to describe Grace—along with puns and plays on her first name. It’s almost impossible to keep count of the number of articles, over thirty years, that were titled “Amazing Grace.”

  At exactly the same time, Paramount’s publicists helped journalists with their descriptions of Audrey Hepburn, who was routinely termed “elfin” (although elves are spiteful, malignant dwarves), “gazelle-like” (despite the fact that gazelles are spotted antelopes); “coltish” (although colts are male horses); and, most often, “gamine” (which means a street urchin or a homeless waif). With Audrey and Grace, new vocabularies were needed for new styles, and the publicists pored over their dictionaries. In “real life,” if Grace or Audrey was seen in a restaurant or at a public event, there was quite literally a collective, audible intake of breath: it was the appearance of a goddess to mere mortals.

  Neither Audrey Hepburn nor Grace Kelly ever acquired the sort of image that Marilyn Monroe had as the ultimately desirable playmate, available if only a guy had the chance. Just as the public was told of Audrey’s European aristocratic background—her mother was a Dutch baroness—so Grace was presented as a kind of American noblewoman, from a “good family” that worked hard to achieve social primacy (which, in fact, they never enjoyed). Monroe, on the other hand, came from a hardscrabble background: she had been married for the first time at sixteen, and she had toiled her way to independence and fame as she became the supreme sex symbol of the decade. Suggestive remarks were composed not only for her movies, but for her to say during interviews, too.

  Never mind that Marilyn Monroe was actually a woman of keen intelligence and serious purpose: she had to serve the studio’s manufactured image of her if she wanted to maintain her popularity and position. And never mind that Audrey and Grace were both healthy young women who dated, had love affairs, wore jeans, occasionally used a four-letter word and liked to balance hard work with a good time and laughter. They both exhibited a natural refinement and were unfailingly courteous to colleagues and strangers, but these qualities were presented as the sum total of their personalities. They were nothing like goddesses in person, although they were certainly beautiful, stylish and always considerate. They were women to respect, but they could never be fully defined as merely respectable—a term that alternately amused and annoyed them both.

  “I never really liked Hollywood,” Grace admitted. “Oh, I liked some of the people I worked with and some friends I made there, and I was thankful for the chance to do some good work. But I found it unreal—unreal and full of men and women whose lives were confused and full of pain. To outsiders, it looked like a glamorous life, but it really was not.”

  1* Hitchcock told me that when he first met Grace he had not seen Mogambo or a rough cut of it: he knew only her black-and-white test for Taxi and (he thought on reflection) perhaps a scene or two from High Noon. He did not need any more than that to make the right decision.

  2* On Hitchcock’s life and art, there have been books and articles past counting, in many dozens of languages. He is unquestionably the director most often considered by biographers, academics, historians and appreciative moviegoers. Detailed but necessarily partial lists of volumes and essays about Hitchcock are included in my three books about him, which are listed here in the bibliography.

  3* There are
a few very brief shots outside the set of the Wendices’ London flat—quick cuts to the local police station, to a men’s club, and to Tony and Mark riding in taxis.

  4* That summer, Hitchcock’s agent, Lew Wasserman, arranged a multi-picture deal for him at Paramount Pictures, by which Hitch would produce, direct and eventually own the rights to five films (which turned out to be Rear Window, The Trouble with Harry, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Vertigo and Psycho) and for Paramount to produce and own four—but the studio got only one (To Catch a Thief).

  5* The Cassini-Kelly affair was no rumor. It was detailed in thirty-seven pages of his autobiography and was well known to Grace’s family. Her children included letters, photos and billets doux exchanged between their mother and Oleg Cassini among the items in the 2007 tribute to Grace at the Forum Grimaldi.

  6* In her first movie role, TV actress Eva Marie Saint won an Oscar as best supporting actress for On the Waterfront and began a long and busy career.

  † Audrey Hepburn and Marilyn Monroe had long-term deals with, respectively, Paramount and Fox; each was paid about $15,000 per picture for the run of the contract, although occasionally a bonus was added. Grace’s base pay was a bit higher.