by Thilo Wydra
“Most of the people in Philadelphia, as well as I, had no idea that Grace Kelly’s mother was German. I had friends of the same age who, before they entered school, were told by their parents: ‘Do not speak a single word of German, only English. You cannot speak German here!’” recalled Mary Louise Murray-Johnson, a contemporary of Grace Kelly who was born and raised in Philadelphia, until she moved away in 1958.32 “Once, when a friend of mine spoke something in German, the other children began to throw rocks at her. I can understand well why the Kelly family did not want the children to speak German outside. It was forbidden.”33
The German and the Irish, the mother and the father. The duality upon which Grace Kelly’s complex personality was based undoubtedly had its roots in the strongly shaped characters of her parents, as well as their very different ethnic and sociocultural backgrounds. The German element stood for discipline, self-control, and perseverance, for willpower and industriousness, for modesty and frugality, and also for reliability and commitment. The Irish element emphasized drama and humor, romanticism and love of nature, wildness, and dreams. Two polar opposites. Margaret Majer and John B. Kelly could not have represented these any better.
These two equally weighted and contrary—as well as complimentary—forces tugged Grace in opposite directions her entire life. On the one hand, one could argue that this dichotomy was the root, in part, of her intrinsic inner strife. From this struggle sprang her two faces: the private and the public, the open and the closed, the accessible and the shy, the romantic and the disciplined, the dreamy and the ordered.
On the other hand, these two forces complemented each other almost perfectly. They instilled in Grace qualities of gentleness, tenderness, softness, and yearning. These were never expressed externally; however, they were well hidden behind a facade of composure. When she appeared in the public realm, whether as the actress or as the princess, she did not expose her true self. This tendency toward privacy distinguished her from others.
Prince Albert described how his mother also spoke some German with him and his two sisters: “Yes, a little bit. You know, I think she explained it, of course my grandmother tried to teach them German. I think there was a lot of resistance to the war at that time. So, especially in the war years, it was a different attitude. But I think that’s why she encouraged us, her kids—Stéphanie not so much, although she understands a bit, but Caroline and myself can speak more. She encouraged us to speak German also because she probably felt she gave it up too soon. So I wound up saying a few words, every so often, in German, to my grandmother but she didn’t want to speak it; she didn’t want to have one conversation. I guess she had fallen out of practice over the years, although she sort of humored us once in awhile.”34
Even today, the fact that the actress Grace Kelly, later Princess Gracia Patricia of Monaco, had a German mother is often forgotten. This has been the case for decades, and the majority of American and English biographies of Kelly circulated partially false information, handed down simplified stories, or negated the facts altogether.
Even the first Grace Kelly biography, which was published in the United States in 1957 on the occasion of her marriage, only mentions her mother’s heritage in a single, short sentence: “Mrs. Kelly, born Margaret Majer, of Philadelphia, of German parents (themselves talented and strongly individualistic) is a woman whose beauty equals that of her three daughters, and who has achieved success in many ways.”35
In the subsequent, more comprehensive American biography by Gwen Robyns, which was published in 1976 when Grace Kelly was still alive, the author describes in detail John B. Kelly’s Irish heritage over several pages but handles her mother’s heritage briefly and offhandedly: “Princess Grace has inherited her mother’s clear-cut bone structure, which comes from the Majers’ Teutonic background.”36
Only first in 2007 did an American biography appear that was more explicitly and critically focused: “Back in the early fifties, however, just half a decade after the end of World War II, with the majority of Americans still viewing the Germans as the enemy, it was crucial to Grace’s success that the studio publicists promote her as an all-American girl of Irish extraction—completely suppressing the fact that her heritage was as German as it was Irish.”37
Just as Margaret Majer’s German heritage was marginalized to a very few sentences, it is not surprising that through a lack of substantiated sources, the claim has been made occasionally that her family supposedly came from Düsseldorf.38
Because Grace and her three siblings grew up in Philadelphia during the 1930s and early 1940s, it seems as if world events had caused a situation in which it was not opportune or advisable to be German, to speak German, or to declare oneself to be of German heritage.
In the summer of the fateful year of 1933—the year of the so-called Nazi takeover through the appointment of Adolf Hitler to the position of chancellor by President Paul von Hindenburg on January 30—the fourth and final Kelly child was born: Lizanne. And thus, Margaret Majer-Kelly’s repeated attempts to raise her children bilingually came to nothing. In these difficult times, it was better not to be heard speaking German out in society. It was as though she needed to disavow or give up her German identity, here in a place far from her distant, restless homeland. Thus, Margaret implemented a policy through which everything German was not only systematically marginalized out of the story of the Kelly family, and especially that of her prominent daughter, but it was literally cut out and completely negated.
This is ultimately how the historically inaccurate picture was established, which claimed that Grace Kelly had purely Irish roots.
This also explains why Grace Kelly filled out her application to the New York American Academy of Dramatic Arts the way that she did. In October 1947, she completed the form, noting various characteristics, such as age, height, weight and figure, and hair color, and she included under the line for “Nationality” the following information: “American of Irish heritage.”39
The Kelly clan still functions as an Irish group. Few words are ever spent on the familial culture of the mother. Considering the existing intersections that run through Monaco’s royal family, including Prince Albert’s South African wife Princess Charlène and her family roots (in 1861, her great-grandfather Gottlief Wittstock and his entire family emigrated from Zerrenthin, in the modern state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, to South Africa via Hamburg), this decades-long development is quite astonishing.
Years passed before Margaret and John got to know each other better. John had to do much to woo his future bride. A challenge, since Margaret Majer initially did not want to have anything to do with John Brendan Kelly. This was an unexpected experience for this self-assured charmer.
An entire decade lies between the first meeting and the marriage of these two strong-willed personalities. On January 30, 1924, Margaret and John married in their home city of Philadelphia, in St. Bridget Roman Catholic Church, located in the East Falls neighborhood on the Schuylkill River. Margaret had to first convert to Catholicism. (Although her Hessian mother, Margaretha Berg, was Catholic, her Wuerttemberg father Carl Majer was Lutheran, and she was raised in his denomination.) The family moved to the East Falls neighborhood, to the now legendary house at 3901 Henry Avenue.
During their first nine years of marriage, the couple was blessed with four children, born at approximately two-year intervals. The oldest of the Kelly children was Peggy (all three girls were called by nicknames that end in a “-y” sound), whose full name was Margaret Katherine for her mother. She was born on June 13, 1925. The only boy, John Brendan, Jr., named after his father, was always called “Kell,” and he was born on May 24, 1927. On November 12, 1929, Grace (“Gracie”) followed him into the world. For three and a half years, she was the youngest in the family with all the benefits that typically come with this status. Finally, on June 25, 1933, the nestling, Elizabeth Anne, always called “Lizanne” or “Lizzie” within her family, arrived. With Lizanne, now the spoiled youngest chi
ld, the six-member Kelly clan was complete.
Not all the Kellys reached old age. However, excepting father Jack Kelly, all of them outlived their daughter and sister Grace. Margaret Kelly lived the longest. She survived her world famous daughter in a very tragic way.
On January 6, 1990, Margaret Majer-Kelly died at the age of ninety-one in Linwood, New Jersey, in a senior citizens’ home not far from the family’s home in Ocean City. This occurred after she had suffered a stroke and spent many years in increasing senility. At the end, she could no longer register reality, and she even forgot the early death of her daughter, Grace.
Ma Kelly, as she was called by her husband and two of her children (Peggy and Kell), was buried in the Holy Sepulchre Cemetery in Cheltenham Township, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, located north of Philadelphia.40
John B. “Jack” Kelly died at the age of seventy of cancer on June 20, 1960, in Philadelphia. Only reaching fifty-seven years of age, John B. “Kell” Kelly, Jr. died on March 2, 1985, in Philadelphia. The oldest of the Kelly children, Margaret K. “Peggy” Kelly Conlan, was sixty-five years old when she died on November 23, 1991.
Only Lizanne Kelly LeVine, the youngest of the six-member family, survived to see the beginning of the twenty-first century. Until recently, she took part in the documentaries made about the life of her famous older sister Grace. She provided information and talked about her memories during various television interviews. Even as a young child, she often accompanied her sister Grace, and in later years, she kept her company on the film sets. “I can remember Lizanne Kelly quite well. She was relatively well-known because she liked to accompany her sister Grace everywhere. Thus, we began to follow Lizanne around Philadelphia but only because she was the sister,” recalled Mary Louise Murray-Johnson.41
At the age of seventy-seven, Lizanne Kelly LeVine died of cancer on November 24, 2009, in Haverford, Pennsylvania. She too was buried in Holy Sepulchre Cemetery, separately in the grave of her husband, Donald Caldwell LeVine.
The only member of the family who does not rest in the hometown of Philadelphia is Grace Kelly.
Little Flower, you’re a lucky one
you soak in all the lovely sun
you stand and watch it all go by
and never once do bat an eye
while others have to fight and strain
against the world and its every pain of living.
But you must, too, have wars to fight
the cold bleak darkness of every night
of a bigger vine who seeks to grow
and is able to stand the rain and snow
and yet you never let it show
on your pretty face.
Poem by eleven- or twelve-year-old Grace Kelly, circa 1940.42
—I. THE EARLY YEARS
1929–1947
The Years at Home:
Childhood and Youth in Philadelphia
Grace was overly sensitive, as far as her own family was concerned. It [her family] meant a great deal more to Grace, more—so it seemed to me—than Grace was important to them . . . Even if there was a strong solidarity in the Kelly family, it wasn’t necessarily affectionate.
—Prince Rainier III of Monaco43
A German mother and an Irish father. There was the dreaminess, the poeticism, and there was also the very structured, intellectual, punctual, perfectionist German. She was the most punctual woman that I have ever known. The most dependable. When she said, “it will be this way,” then that is the way it was. Nothing could prevent it. At the same time, she could stand at the window and gaze up into the clouds, or she could sit in front of the fire and stare into it for hours on end, dreamy, her head somehow in the clouds. That was the contradiction.
—Robert Dornhelm44
November 12, 1929 fell on a Tuesday. In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the baby, Grace Patricia Kelly, was born in the Hahnemann Medical College Hospital. The hospital was located at the corner of Broad Street and Vine Street in the center of the city, in the City West district, not far from City Hall. At this time, Hahnemann was one of the largest private clinics in America.
Two weeks later, on December 1, Margaret and John B. “Jack” Kelly had their daughter baptized in St. Bridget Roman Catholic Church in the East Falls neighborhood. The baby’s namesake was one of Jack Kelly’s four sisters, one who died at the age of twenty-two of a heart attack that struck while she was ice skating. Interestingly, at the time of her death, this sister Grace had stood at the beginning of a potentially promising career as an actress.
By this point, the Kellys no longer lived in their small East Falls apartment at the corner of Ridge Avenue and Midvale Avenue, which had been their first home after their marriage. Before the birth of their son Kell, they moved in the spring of 1925 into a house that John B. Kelly built. It was a large, Classical Revival, two-storied home with seventeen rooms and a slate roof. The house was constructed in red Kelly bricks, delivered by John’s company, Kelly for Brickworks. The facade of the house at 3901 Henry Avenue was ornamented with a columned porch. Located at the intersection of Henry Avenue and Coulter Street, the house sits on a northward rising hill, and behind it is a small green space. According to Robert Dornhelm, “they did not live very richly.”45 From their old apartment, which was situated only a stone’s throw from the Schuylkill River, Midvale Avenue went uphill from the river bank, past St. Bridget Catholic Church (founded in 1853), and up to Henry Avenue. Stretching several miles to the upper rises and elevations of Philadelphia’s Wissahickon Valley Park, Henry Avenue seems, in character, to fit more into the East Falls neighborhood than into the more prominent neighborhood of Germantown to the northeast, to which it is often ascribed. Germantown was founded in 1683 by Francis Pastorius to accommodate newly arrived German and Dutch settlers and immigrants. It is the oldest suburb in Philadelphia, and over time, with the integration of other neighborhoods, this area became a tightly knit district. Germantown is the area in which the schools that Grace attended in the 1930s and 1940s were located.
“Philadelphia is not pretty. It is an industrial city—many medical schools, much research, much art, much music; but the infrastructure is not good. The Kellys lived in East Falls, in a lovely mansion. It was very pretty where they lived, but it was not the Main Line, which was considered the best neighborhood and was home to the upper class.”46
Nonetheless, Philadelphia’s lengthy Henry Avenue was one of the streets along which the city’s wealthier residents built their homes. Numerous villas and mansions lined the avenue, complete with spacious front yards and driveways that led straight to the front doors. If one lived here, one was well-to-do at the very least. However, despite his greatest efforts, Jack Kelly and his family never succeeded in becoming fully accepted and integrated members of the city’s high society, a clique dominated by long-established, Anglo-Saxon Philadelphians. These were the families that lived along the Main Line. Long-established heritage and wealth were the prerequisites for the highest social status, and the Kellys only met the latter standard. Acceptance into this exclusive, Anglo-Saxon society was impossible to attain by the Nouveau Riche and the immigrants, including the Irish, the Germans, and the Jews. Members of these groups never received invitations to important city events and festivities, such as the exclusive Piccadilly Ball.
The Kellys remained outcasts, even if they did reach an elevated status because of their wealth. People did, indeed, know the Kelly name in the city, in part due to the untiring efforts by Jack to gain recognition. He sought political offices, athletic success, and financial influence. Later, the gossip centered on the continuously neglected young daughter and her ongoing, self-motivated attempts to find success as an actress. The Kellys were always the talk of the town.47
Throughout his life, John B. “Jack” Kelly impressively exemplified the American Dream, the dream of going from dishwasher to millionaire. He pursued this in Philadelphia, in the melting pot of greatly varied ethnic groups that sought new beginnings in this industrial and
manufacturing city. Many older factory buildings still stand today along Scott’s Lane, near the bank of the Schuylkill River. One of these buildings once housed the Dobson textile factory, where John Brendan’s father, John Henry Kelly, once worked alongside several of his six sons, including Patrick, Walter, and John, all of whom were sent to work there around the age of ten.
Outside of school hours, Jack began to work here at the age of nine, first as furniture mover, in order to earn a little pocket money, and then as an apprentice mason. Young Jack later worked in the construction business owned by his brother Patrick, who was eighteen years older than him. Patrick started the business around 1900, and it went by the name P.H. Kelly & Co.
During World War I, Jack Kelly was unable to fly as a pilot due his nearsightedness, so he served as a volunteer for a medical unit in France. In 1921, he established his own company. He borrowed money from two of his older brothers, George and Walter, and personally took over the management of his new construction company, Kelly for Brickworks. In turn, his brother Charles left his job at Patrick’s P.H. Kelly & Co. and took a position with Jack’s Kelly for Brickworks. Charles’s decision, along with the fact that the two firms were now in competition against each other, resulted in a tense situation among the Kelly brothers. Jack Kelly’s construction company, which he later led as its president, grew over the years to become one of the largest of its kind in the United States. This obviously brought great satisfaction to the son of poor Irish immigrants. By the time he married Margaret Majer on January 20, 1924, in St. Bridget’s in East Falls, the church where the Kelly family celebrated Mass every Sunday morning, Jack Kelly was well on his way to becoming a millionaire.