High Society

by Donald Spoto

  Earlier in the movie, Robie accompanies Francie to the door of her hotel suite. They have been introduced only moments before, and are not yet on a first-name basis—and so Hitchcock surprised his audience by having Francie, all in cool blue chiffon, enter her room, turn and, without a word, boldly plant a kiss square on the lips of the astonished but quite pleased Robie. This is a hint of what is to come later—some of it, too, improvised by the actors:

  ROBIEM. What do you expect to get out of being so nice to me?

  FRANCIE. Probably a lot more than you’re willing to offer.

  ROBIEM. Jewelry—you never wear any.

  FRANCIE. I don’t like cold things touching my skin.

  ROBIEM. Why don’t you invent some hot diamonds?

  FRANCIE. I’d rather spend my money on more tangible excitement.

  ROBIEM. Tell me—what do you get a thrill out of the most?

  FRANCIE. I’m still looking for that one.

  ROBIEM. What you need is something I have neither the time nor the inclination to give you—two weeks with a good man at Niagara Falls.

  Later, at their impromptu picnic, shared in her car at the roadside:

  FRANCIE. I’ve never caught a jewel thief before. It’s so stimulating! [As she offers him pieces of cold chicken:] Do you want a leg or a breast?

  ROBIEM. You make the choice.

  FRANCIE. Tell me—how long has it been?

  ROBIEM. Since what?

  FRANCIE. Since you were in America last.

  From her first to last appearances in To Catch a Thief, Grace reveals her gift for high comedy, demonstrating in every scene a keen ability to match Cary Grant’s established excellence in that genre. No expression or tone is exaggerated, and her apparent coolness—as so often with Hitchcock’s female characters—masks a simmering passion. In Francie’s hotel suite that evening, for example, as fireworks illuminate the night sky, the suggestive dialogue continues:

  FRANCIE. If you really want to see fireworks, it’s better with the lights off. I have a feeling that tonight you’re going to see one of the Riviera’s most fascinating sights—I’m talking about the fireworks, of course.

  ROBIEM. May I have a brandy? May I fix you one?

  FRANCIE. Some nights a person doesn’t need to drink.

  The conversation then turns to stolen gems:

  ROBIEM. I have about the same interest in jewelry that I have in politics, horse racing, modern poetry and women who need weird excitement—none.

  (Francie sits seductively with him on the divan, her diamond-and-platinum necklace glittering above the bodice of her white strapless gown.)

  FRANCIE. Give up, John—admit who you are. Even in this light, I can tell where your eyes are looking. Look, John—hold them—diamonds! The only thing in the world you can’t resist. Then tell me you don’t know what I’m talking about.

  (A fireworks display can be seen in the background. She kisses his fingers one by one, then places his hand beneath her necklace. There is a close-up of raging fireworks in the harbor.)

  FRANCIE. Ever had a better offer in your whole life? One with everything!

  ROBIEM. I’ve never had a crazier one. (Cut back to vast fireworks.)

  FRANCIE. Just as long as you’re satisfied. (Fireworks again.)

  ROBIEM. You know as well as I do that this necklace is imitation.

  FRANCIE. Well I’m not! (They kiss—cut to fireworks—back to a long, passionate kiss—then back to the final explosion of fireworks. End of scene.)

  “What I find most striking after all these years is how we got away with all that dialogue,” Grace recalled. “I saw the movie on a flight from New York recently, and I thought—oh, how beautiful Cary and I were.” She spoke with a kind of wistfulness.

  “Because Grace commanded so much respect, there was almost total silence when she arrived on the set,” recalled Cary Grant. “But she never distanced herself from others, and she was enormously friendly to everyone—no stuffy attitude, no star complex. As for her talents, Grace acted the way Johnny Weissmuller swam or Fred Astaire danced—she made it look easy. And she probably went through life being completely misunderstood, since she usually said exactly what she meant.”

  IN AN ESSAY approved by Princess Grace’s children after her death, Frédéric Mitterrand wrote that “Alfred Hitchcock fell in love with Grace Kelly.” The love was strictly platonic, but on Hitch’s side it was a tangle of emotions, complicated with all sorts of fantasies and phobias.

  Hitchcock had scrupulously followed every rumor about Grace’s private life since they met in June 1953, less than a year before the first scenes of To Catch a Thief were filmed. Although the accounts of her romances have been grotesquely exaggerated, it is nevertheless true that in her twenties Grace was a healthy, popular young woman who enjoyed intimacies with a few men to whom she was seriously (if only temporarily) attached. A devout Catholic, she was nevertheless sufficiently mature and independent of spirit to allow for love and its facsimiles without assuming a burden of neurotic guilt.

  Grace and her parents presumed she would eventually marry—preferably a Catholic, but certainly not a divorcé. She grew up in an era when polite young women simply did not marry without their parents’ approval, and it is necessary to appreciate the strength of that social and familial bond in order to understand why Grace and her friends (with very few exceptions) looked to their families to endorse potential unions.

  Hitchcock was privy to her mixed feelings on this, for Grace confided in him; I do not think she thought that he would subsequently entrust those confidences to me, although apparently most of what she told him she eventually shared with me, too. These reflections may be essential toward an understanding of Alfred Hitchcock’s adoration of Grace Kelly, whose eventual departure from Hollywood he saw as a personal rejection (precisely as he had regarded Ingrid Bergman’s departure, in 1949). Hitchcock was, as her family later knew, in love with her—but the way a schoolboy develops a hopeless crush on an unattainable object of desire; in his case, however, the love seemed to be accompanied by a sense of futile possessiveness.

  With To Catch a Thief nearing completion, Hitch was already planning Grace’s future. As soon as her obligations to Metro were resolved, their collaborations would, he expected, resume with a film of James M. Barrie’s ethereal romance Mary Rose, which Hitch had hoped to bring to the screen ever since he had seen it onstage in London decades earlier.

  His unexpressed but clear intention was that Grace (again, like Ingrid) would forever belong to him, at least professionally, in roles created for her that were variations on how he saw her or wished her to be. Grace listened, smiled and said nothing to disillusion him. But the fact was that (in the words of Mitterrand) “her California blues” were turning her more and more away from movieland and toward a serious consideration of her future as a wife and mother—a vocation she saw as possibly fading with the rapid passage of time.

  On July 6, the production company of To Catch a Thief moved to Hollywood for the interior scenes, and on August 13, Hitch’s fifty-fifth birthday was celebrated on the set of the fancy ball sequence. He continued to supervise Grace’s capacious eighteenth-century costume, the arrangement of her hairpiece, and each tilt and angle of her head. She felt stiff and awkward and, as she said, she did not like her performance in that sequence; she thought she seemed statuesque and unreal. Nevertheless, critics were pleased: “She is cool and exquisite and superior,” commented the New York Times.

  Throughout the final weeks of filming, at the end of August, Hitchcock seemed content with cosseting Grace, advancing an image of chic, refined sensuality. She was Hitchcock’s willing and winsome Galatea, but she did not see her life and career as ineluctably linked to his. At the same time, although Hitchcock was both obsessive and possessive, he was not completely divorced from reality. He knew that any idea of sexual activity between them was doomed to disappointment. It was precisely this combination of elements—of longing, desire and fear—that ga
ve the life and character of Alfred Hitchcock its enormous poignancy.1* His marred, marvelous perception shared something of our common humanity; were it otherwise, we could not adequately explain his enduring worldwide popularity and the legacy of his cinematic art.

  “Grace can play comedy not only sexily but elegantly,” Hitchcock said as the film wrapped that August. “It’s a quality most women do not have. It has already taken her a long way—it may even take her to the top. But so far, she has yet to play the character around whom a whole film is built. That will be her big test. But I am sure she will come through it with flying colors. I hope to go through it with her, to make sure that she gets a rich role, not a tintype part in a celluloid soap opera.”

  When a visitor to the set of To Catch a Thief asked Grace if anyone had told her she was as aloof in life as she was often on the screen, she replied, “Lots of people have told me that. But until I know people, I can’t give much of myself. A year ago, when people asked me, ‘What about you?’ I froze. I’m better now, but I’m still not cured.” Years later, asked just what she felt she needed to be “cured” of, she said she hadn’t felt obliged to promote herself when she was in Hollywood—“I was hired to be an actress, not a personality for the press.”

  Still, word was out about the “remote” Miss Kelly. Ironically—because she neither sought publicity nor invited journalists and photographers into her private life—she was reported to be unfathomable, mysterious, baffling or, worst of all, proudly aloof. She was none of these things, but because people had to speculate, and because colleagues insisted that she was a joy to work with and utterly without affectations, Grace appeared to be almost as inscrutable as Greta Garbo. And so, then as later, scandalous stories and a totally inaccurate personality had to be invented.

  TO MAKE the situation with Hitchcock even more byzantine, Grace had fallen deeply in love. With her consent, Oleg Cassini had followed her to the Riviera in May. “Those were the most enchanting days I ever had in my life,” he said in 1998.

  In April, Oleg had offered to accompany her on the trip to Colombia for Green Fire, but she had discouraged him: “My work is one thing. My personal life is another. They have nothing to do with each other.” By way of letters and phone calls, they fenced and parried until the end of May, a period during which she was aware of his dalliance with the young actress Pier Angeli. But in France, things happened quickly. On weekends and her days off, and during the evenings when she did not have an early call on the production, Grace was constantly with Oleg—“We have lunch and dinner just about every day,” she wrote to Prudy Wise.

  They drove to Grasse and Vence. They packed a picnic lunch and headed for cool parks near St. Maxime and Ville-franche. They dined at the finest restaurants. They danced until the small hours at glamorous nightclubs and on hotel terraces. They gambled small sums at the casino in Monte-Carlo. And they often joined Mr. and Mrs. Hitchcock and Mr. and Mrs. Grant for dinner. “Hitch, of course, has found all the restaurants,” Grace wrote to a friend that summer, “so we spend a great deal of time eating—and it is a great problem to remain decent-looking in a bathing suit!” Years later, she recalled, “You know how much Hitchcock enjoys eating. When we were working, he used to diet all week in anticipation of having a glorious meal on Saturday evening. He’d spend all week just thinking about it!”

  “Hitchcock was at the height of his own vicarious romantic obsession with Grace,” Oleg added, “but he didn’t seem to resent my presence.” Oleg’s relationship with Grace, however, remained chaste, and so he decided to raise the matter in an exchange he recalled almost verbatim. It occurred when they were on a raft, floating lazily in the Mediterranean.

  “Grace, this has been a long and strange relationship. I am tired of chasing about—enough is enough. There is no need for artifice any longer.”

  “Who are you, Mr. Cassini?” she asked. “I know that you are very wild, very pleasant, very extravagant and very dangerous—but who are you?”

  Instead of a reply, he babbled about society, culture and sports. Late that night, when he drove Grace back to her hotel, he did not bid her good night at the door but spent the night in her suite. At this point his recollections sound like breathless phrases from an old romance novel: “She smelled of gardenias, exotic and pure. There was a translucent, pearl-like quality to her; everything about her was clear and fresh and fine—her skin, her scent, her hair. I was enraptured, aware only of the transcendence of the moment, the perfection that she was … in the intense emotional and physical chemistry we had found on the Riviera.”

  Now Grace became the comprehensive lover. She helped him plan their little escapes when she had a free afternoon or Saturday morning. They drove up tortuous, hilly roads; they shopped and visited country markets. They talked about food and wine, history and religion. They went to Mass every Sunday. “I’ve broken all my regulations with you,” she told him, speaking neither boastfully nor contritely.

  Just before they left France for California, Grace forced the issue as he had. They dined at a small but superb bistro on a pier, gazing at the boats in port and the twinkling lights in the harbor. As they sipped wine over a supper of grilled fish, Grace said softly to Oleg, “Oh, if only there was a man who could take me away from all this—take me to Tahiti, on a boat like one of these, away from the drudgery of this routine.”

  Cassini later admitted that he was content with the affair, and felt no inclination toward marriage. But “there was a Roman Catholic soul lurking inside Grace Kelly,” he said, and the status quo was not sufficient for her. “I want to make my life with you,” she said at last. “I want to be your wife.” Fine, he said—so we’ll get married. At once, she began to plan Oleg’s introduction to her parents … and the wedding … and her gown … and having children.

  But later Oleg confessed to her his disinclination to utter marriage vows. “Marriage to Grace Kelly was not something I’d truly anticipated. I had strong feeling for the girl, but I am not sure that marriage was what I really wanted.” He added that he had several opportunities during the following year to “close the deal” and marry her, “but each time I acted indecisively.” He had his first chance to hesitate when the production moved to California and he traveled separately, to New York. But a few weeks later he joined her in Hollywood.

  “Oleg drives me to the [Paramount] studio every morning,” Grace wrote during the final weeks of To Catch a Thief, “and he picks me up at night. Then we have dinner…. My father isn’t very happy over the prospect of Oleg as a son-in-law. But the plan now is to be married the first part of October, so we can have some time together before he has his showings [of the fall fashion line].”

  The inevitable meeting with the Kelly clan occurred in early September, immediately after the completion of To Catch a Thief. First, Oleg was introduced to Margaret in New York. Riding in a taxi, he and Grace encountered only a stony silence until Oleg seized on a literary reference and said cheerfully, “Well, here we are—the unholy trio!”

  “You, Mr. Cassini, may be unholy,” said Grace’s mother, almost between clenched teeth. “I can assure you that Grace and I are not.” This was worthy of a character in a play by George Kelly.

  “We do not consider you good marriage material,” Margaret continued coldly over lunch, counting the reasons on her gloved hand: he was divorced, he had a checkered past, he was a playboy. “I can see why Grace might have been swayed by you. You are charming and literate. But we believe Grace owes it to herself, her family and her religion to reconsider.”

  Grace did not challenge her mother in 1954. She remained optimistic even after this lunchtime fiasco, and insisted that Oleg come to meet her father and the rest of the family later that month at the Kelly summer home near Atlantic City. That weekend, as Oleg recalled, was “unforgettably unpleasant.” Both Jack Kellys, senior and junior, completely ignored him, even to the point of refusing to answer his questions.

  No sooner had Grace and Oleg fled back to Manhatta
n than the press descended on her family, who were all too willing to speak. “I don’t approve of these oddballs she goes out with,” grumbled Kell, as if Grace had brought home a sword-swallower instead of a wealthy, sophisticated and famous designer. “I wish she would go out with the more athletic type,” interposed Papa. “But she doesn’t listen to me anymore.”

  It was left to her mother to spell out the details, which she gladly did for the entire country: “The situation with Cassini had us all concerned,” she told the syndicated press in early 1956. “Oleg was a charming man. His manners were continental, he had a wide acquaintance in international society, and he could tell a samba from a mambo. He was at Grace’s side everywhere. He literally pursued her across the ocean to Europe. But we in the family were not too happy about it. We knew of his previous marriages—and the mere thought of Grace considering a divorced man was distasteful to us. We all felt she might well go against our wishes and marry him. I put it to him bluntly: ‘Look here, Oleg—you’re a charming escort, but in my opinion you are a very poor risk for a marriage.’”

  And then Margaret Kelly said something that might have turned Grace’s resentment into loud laughter: “Of course I never interfere, even when I do not approve.”

  According to Lizanne, Grace might have acted contrary to her parents’ wishes: “If she had really wanted to marry him, I don’t think you could have talked her out of it, but she didn’t really want to.” But Grace did not fully realize that she “didn’t really want to [marry Oleg]” until almost a year later.

  Meanwhile, notwithstanding the disapproval of her family, she and Oleg remained—in public as in private—very much a couple, despite occasional separations necessitated by work. They were photographed with Hitchcock, for example, at the New York and Los Angeles premieres of Rear Window, and they were often seen dining at this or that restaurant in both cities. More to the point, they were unofficially engaged: they had made a commitment to a wedding, and although the date was continually pushed back, their friends had no doubt about the nuptials, and the principals made no secret of their plans. Their perseverance prevailed until the autumn of 1955.