Grace had booked the bridal suite.
A combination living room and bedroom with a veranda on the high sun deck, it was the ship’s most luxurious accommodation.
A party of 70 friends and relatives were sailing with her. So was her French poodle, Oliver.
The only thing she inadvertently left behind was the key to one of her large steamer trunks. The ship’s carpenter had to chisel off the hinges.
However, almost as soon as the Constitution left New York, with the Statue of Liberty in her wake, Grace discovered she had a lot more shipmates than she’d originally bargained for.
It was when the captain called a lifeboat drill. An announcement came over the public address system instructing everyone on board to don a lifejacket and proceed immediately to the designated station nearest their cabin. Each lifeboat on the Constitution was intended to accommodate 150 people. But this was the cruise taking Grace Kelly to Monaco to marry Prince Rainier and there wasn’t a single person on board who didn’t want to meet her.
When she got to her lifeboat she found nearly 300 people also claiming it as their own.
A whole slew of reporters also sailed with her, although they were in tourist class and rules forbid tourist-class passengers to enter first-class territory. Nevertheless, they wired daily reports back to their papers.
She even broadcast a short speech by ship’s radio to the people of Monaco, in French, saying how much she was looking forward to meeting them, promising that she would try her best to be a worthy princess.
Meanwhile, in Monaco, the Prince was frantically busy with all of the last-minute preparations. He didn’t have much time for the press so the reporters gathering there had to find something else to write about.
And it didn’t take them long to discover the best interview in town was the leprechaun priest from Delaware.
“She knows that she’s making history,” Father Tucker told reporters, “and that she has a tremendous duty to these people here. She will not, I am sure, interfere politically, not more than any American girl would whose husband were a Republican and she a Democrat.”
When asked how the Prince was taking the wait for his fiancée, Father Tucker assured them, “He’s as nervous as any bridegroom. He’s pretending to be calm but underneath he’s just like a jubilant boy.”
And when they questioned him about his own role in arranging this, the self-proclaimed matchmaker insisted, “Grace was really the Prince’s choice. I was just a kind of consultant.”
Eight days after she left New York, the Constitution slipped into the Bay of Hercules off the coast of Monaco.
Rainier was waiting for her on the deck of the couple’s new motor yacht, Deo Juvante II.
Built in England in 1928, the 298-ton, 147-foot ship was a wedding gift to the couple from Aristotle Onassis.
The sky was dull and overcast and the seas were slightly choppy as the Deo Juvante II came up alongside the ocean liner. Surrounded by a flotilla of small boats with photographers and cameramen at the ready—plus a helicopter hovering overhead—Rainier waited for Grace to appear.
He admitted that his heart was pounding.
She never hid the fact that hers was, too.
Smiling and waving, carrying a bouquet of roses, she came down the gangplank. He helped her step onto his boat. Sirens and ships’ horns blasted their welcome.
More than 20,000 people lined the streets surrounding the port, waving flags and cheering and applauding as the Deo Juvante II brought her ashore.
Now there were more horns and more sirens. Cannons boomed. Planes flew overhead and parachutes appeared. Flares went up.
It was her greatest entrance.
Only one thing marred it. She’d worn the wrong hat. It was too big and the brim hid her face. The entire population of Monaco had come out to see her but all most of them saw was the brim of her hat. What they missed was the joy, wonderment, excitement, and tears of happiness in what were then the most famous blue eyes in the world.
Chapter 7
The Wedding
The wedding was a complicated affair.
Because this romance had so captured the imagination of the world—the movie star and the fairytale prince—over 1,600 reporters and photographers showed up, nearly three times the number of journalists, photographers, and broadcast crew members who’d later report on the marriage of Prince Charles and Lady Diana.
As if that’s not statistic enough, consider the fact that there weren’t 1,600 reporters and photographers at any one time covering the entire European Theatre during all of World War II.
The problem was that no one in Monaco had the experience to deal with so much press. The principality had never known anything so grand. For that matter, few countries had.
There were lunches and dinners and parades and appearances and great galas where everyone danced on into the night.
There were eight days of festivities that both Grace and Rainier agreed were not quite the way they would have wanted it had they been given a choice.
Rainier could only chuckle when he recalled what he and his bride had to go through. “It wasn’t fun and in the middle of the turmoil, Grace kept saying, maybe we should run off to a small chapel somewhere in the mountains and finish getting married there. I wish we had because there was no way either she or I could really enjoy what was happening.”
Thinking back, he decided, it was simply too big an event for its time. “There’s no doubt about that. It was very over-publicized. The press showed up en masse and because so many of the events were private, they had nothing much to do. One day we went to have lunch at my sister’s villa at Eze. Afterwards we were driving back to Monaco and one of the photographers who’d followed us lay down across the road. He actually lay down, flat on his back. I wasn’t driving quickly and saw him from far away so when I got close I stopped. That was my mistake. All his friends started shooting pictures. The next morning in the papers it looked as if I’d knocked him down. They’d have done anything for a photo.”
In describing the mayhem that had overtaken Monaco, Grace once told her daughter Caroline that those eight days were so awful, and that she and Rainier felt so uncomfortable, they couldn’t look at the home movies of the event for more than a year afterwards.
Everything turned out to be a major hassle. Even the guest list had to be compiled with several thoughts in mind.
Of course, Grace and Rainier both wanted their friends and family to be present. But there were also European royals who had to be invited and political protocol to be considered.
Queen Elizabeth was invited, not just because she was Queen of England, but also because she and Rainier were, to be precise, 15th cousins. Their common line was traced through Monaco’s Prince Albert who married Scotland’s Lady Mary Victoria Douglas Hamilton, who in turn was related to Henry VII and Elizabeth of York.
In fact, most of the ruling houses of Europe are related through that same line to the Grimaldis of Monaco. It ties them to the Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Belgian, Dutch, Luxumbourger, and Greek royals. It also tied them to Elizabeth the Queen Mother and to Winston Churchill.
Anyway, while most of the other royals accepted, the Queen of England declined. Whatever her personal reasons were, the public version was a matter of protocol. As she’d never met Rainier or Grace, neither she nor any member of her family could attend the ceremony. She did, however, send the couple a gift of a gold serving tray.
Cary Grant gave them an antique writing desk. The Societe de Bains de Mer, the company that runs the casino and the fanciest hotels and restaurants in Monte Carlo, gave her a diamond and ruby necklace. Friends in Philadelphia gave Grace a Cinemascope screen and two 35mm projectors to create a movie room in the Palace so that she wouldn’t have to miss any American films. The local American community presented the couple with a solid gold picture frame, the local German community offered them a fine porcelain table service and the French government presented them with a matching pair of decora
ted helmsman wheels for their honeymoon yacht. Grace’s fellow cast members on High Society sent her home with a loaded roulette wheel.
A wedding list was not posted, so there were duplicates. There was plenty of gold, silver, glass, paintings, antique picture frames, and jewelry, although the couple only received one baby lion, for the Prince’s zoo.
Perhaps most touching of all, were the gifts that flowed in from people who didn’t know either Rainier or Grace, but simply wanted to send a little something, people who somehow wanted to feel a part of this wedding. There were dozens of objects people made themselves, whole cheeses and cured hams. There were cookbooks, potholders, shamrocks, wall plaques, knitted goods, and all sorts of ash trays, ceramic animals, and plaster-of-Paris angels.
Many of those gifts are still today scattered around Palace shelves.
Each gift was logged by Grace in a white satin bride’s book and, by the time all of the gifts were accounted for, she’d filled a dozen volumes.
The press, somewhat indelicately, estimated the value of the wedding gifts at well over $1 million.
If putting a price tag on the gifts wasn’t embarrassing enough, the story of the gift from Monaco’s National Council’s certainly was.
A few weeks before the wedding the Council sent one of their elders to a jeweler in Paris, where he selected a necklace worth 39 million francs—then about $72,000. He advanced the jeweler 12 million francs and brought the gift back to Monaco. As far as he was concerned it was wonderful.
Unfortunately, it was awful, a heavy, multi-jeweled, absolutely grotesque object.
There was no way that anyone with taste could imagine this might be suitable for a modern, 26-year-old woman.
When the Prince saw it he supposedly found it so hideous that he doubted it would even be worthy of the Dowager Empress of China.
Adding insult to injury, it turned out that the National Council’s representative had lined his own pocket with a five million franc commission from the jeweler.
To cover themselves, the Council immediately rushed over to the local Cartier’s and bought Grace an even more expensive matching necklace, bracelet, ring, and earrings set. They then tried to return the original necklace to the Parisian jeweler. But he said no, refused to refund their money and demanded that they pay the remaining 27 million francs. The Council said that such a payment was out of the question and threatened the jeweler with a court action. Immune to their threats, the jeweler would not take the monstrous necklace back—it was really so terrible, who could blame him—and instructed his attorneys to block the Prince’s assets in Monaco and in the United States in order to force payment.
To no one’s surprise, that failed.
The Council, in fact, did take the jeweler to court and won. But they lost in the press as the papers turned the affair into a front-page scandal.
Describing the jewelry fiasco as, “sordid,” Rainier admitted it was very embarrassing but out of his control. “The National Council chose the jeweler, they settled on the price with him and that was their gift to Grace for the wedding. We couldn’t interfere at all. Grace wasn’t asked, nor did she ever volunteer to them, or to anyone else, that she might have preferred pearls to diamonds or emeralds to rubies.”
GqH
The way marriage has worked since Napoleon in France, and consequently in Monaco, too, is that a bride and groom must go through two ceremonies.
The law requires that a civil marriage take place first, at the local city hall—where either the bride or groom has been resident for at least 40 days—and is usually performed by the local mayor, a deputy mayor, or a city councilor. Even then, before any civil marriage can take place, banns must be posted. This “official announcement” must be displayed in City Hall, for all the public to see, no fewer than 10 days preceding the date of marriage.
The religious ceremony can only be performed after the civil ceremony.
These requirements cannot be waived.
Unless you happen to be a ruling prince.
Unlike other marriages in Monaco, no bans were posted for this one, presumably so that no one could object to it.
Not that anyone would have objected.
Although, as the wedding day approached, signs of nervousness and tension began to get the best of everybody. Rainier grew especially short-tempered with the photographers and cancelled a photo session that was supposed to re-enact the couple’s signing of the marriage register. During the rehearsal, Grace looked strained and Rainier bit his fingernails.
The civil ceremony took place on April 18, in the Palace throne room, with only the immediate family and a few very close friends present. But television cameras were permitted in, so that all of Europe could watch, too.
Grace wore a pale pink gown and carried a bridal bouquet. Her hair was done by MGM’s own celebrity stylist, Sydney Guilaroff, whom Grace had flown over from Hollywood for the occasion. Her perfume was from the House of Creed and called Fleurissimo, which Rainier had commissioned exclusively for her on her wedding day.
Rainier wore a black morning suit with gray striped trousers. Both were obviously suffering from stage fright and neither of them smiled.
The room was hot, filled with powerful television lights for television and also for MGM’s cameras who had the exclusive film rights to the ceremony.
The bride and groom sat a few feet apart on a pair of red velvet chairs, Grace with her gloved hands in her lap, Rainier nervously fingering his moustache.
As a member of the sovereign family may marry only with permission of the ruling prince, the senior judge who conducted the ceremony in French began by asking for the prince’s authorization to hold the marriage. Rainier gave himself permission to get married and 40 minutes later Grace and Rainier were legally man and wife.
Most couples only have to suffer such an ordeal once. But this wasn’t most couples. Grace and Rainier had to do the whole thing a second time, re-staging it for the sake of MGM.
Later Father Tucker told reporters, “They wouldn’t go through this again for the world.”
That afternoon, the entire Monegasque population, all 3,000 of them, were invited to a gala to celebrate the marriage. That night, Grace and Rainier attended the opera. She wore a Lanvin gown made of hand-embroidered white silk organdy. It featured a V-shaped décolleté, with a high waistline and a bustle. It was decorated with several thousand pearls and rhinestones, and hundreds of thousands of sequins. Across the front of the dress, she wore a sash, marking her first formal public appearance as Princess Grace.
But because that night was not their official wedding night, the official version of the story is that they slept in separate rooms.
The next morning, the religious ceremony was viewed by 30 million people in nine European countries and a full house in Monaco’s Cathedral.
A very crowded, strictly white tie event, Rupert Allan found himself seated next to Ava Gardner. On the other side of him there was an empty seat, the only empty seat in the Cathedral. Puzzled, Allan one day got around to asking Grace, “Who didn’t show up?”
She told him, “Frank Sinatra.”
Allan was shocked. “You put me in the middle of Ava Gardner and Frank Sinatra?”
The couple’s publicly turbulent marriage had gone sour a few years before and Allan couldn’t believe that, had Sinatra shown, he would have found himself literally at the center of their first meeting since the breakup.
“You wanted me to sit between them?” he said to Grace. “Who knows how they would have gotten on?”
She smiled, “I knew you could handle it.”
Actually the reason Sinatra stayed away had less to do with Ava Gardner than it did with his affection for Grace.
He’d flown to London from Los Angeles a few days before the wedding to have final fittings for his white tie and tails. One of the first things he saw in London was that the newspapers were filled with Gardner’s arrival in Monaco. She was attracting a lot of publicity. He knew that once he
arrived the press would be on him, too, because of their bitter divorce.
So he phoned Grace to say, “I won’t be there.”
She wanted to know why.
He told her, “I’m not coming, because this is your day.”
Grace later confided to Allan that she always thought Sinatra was the only man Ava Gardner ever loved. “They were right for each other. I put them on either side of you because it seemed like a good way of trying to rekindle the flame.”
The religious ceremony was held with great dignity.
White lilacs and lilies-of-the-valley filled the ancient Cathedral, contrasting with the red silk drapes and a red carpet that stretched from the altar to the front steps.
Bright late morning sunshine poured through the stained glass windows.
Men in morning suits and women with colorful hats took their places.
Then there was an organ chord and all heads turned and Grace appeared.
It was a breathtaking moment.
Helen Rose, the MGM designer who’d created Grace’s wedding dress, had outdone herself.
Six weeks of work by three dozen seamstresses went into the ivory, Renaissance style regal gown made up of 25 yards of heavy taffeta, 25 yards of silk taffeta, 100 yards of silk net, and 300 yards of Valenciennes lace for the petticoats.
Grace’s wedding gown was the single most expensive item of clothing that Rose had ever made.
The train was three and a half yards long. The long-sleeved, rose point-lace bodice was re-embroidered to hide the seams. The gown fastened down the front with tiny lace buttons and fit over a silk soufflé, flesh-tone under-bodice. The overskirt was bell-shaped without any folds in front. The fullness at the back was laid in pleats at the waist, flaring into a fan shape at the bottom. The underskirt was actually three petticoats in crepe and taffeta.
The veil, which Rose specifically designed to keep Grace’s face on view, was embroidered with 125-year-old rose point-lace which was purchased by MGM from a museum, and had several thousand tiny pearls hand-sewn into it. It was paired with a Juliet cap of matching lace with a wreath of small orange blossoms and leaves fashioned from seed pearls. Appliquéd onto the rear of the veil were two miniature lace love birds. Grace also carried with her a prayer book covered in taffeta to match her gown, with the cross on the prayer book embroidered in pearls.
Grace of Monaco Page 7
