Grace

by Thilo Wydra

  According to Grace Kelly’s son, Prince Albert:

  I think she was very pleased with her performance in The Country Girl, but I don’t think it was her favorite movie. I am not sure, which one was. [ . . . ] I think she liked herself in different scenes in different movies. I think she liked (and that’s my personal favorite) Rear Window the best. That’s not why it’s my favorite movie—because I like them all—but it’s a study of, you know, voyeurism and social behavior and psychological intensity. And it is still powerful so many years later.90

  Regardless of her own self-criticism and her distance, Hollywood did bring some good things to Grace Kelly: eleven films, which even today are the basis for her fame and which contributed to her iconization. An Academy Award—an Oscar—for her most unusual and demanding role, filmed in black and white. Hollywood also gave her three opportunities to work and form a lasting friendship with the “Master of Suspense,” Sir Alfred Hitchcock.

  Fourteen Hours

  (1951)

  You make it sound dirty.

  —Grace Kelly as Louise Ann Fuller

  It was on July 26, 1938, that John William Warde climbed out of his room on the seventeenth floor of the New York Gotham Hotel and onto the ledge that ran along the front facade of the building. Friends and family, police and psychologists, all tried to keep him from committing suicide. Then evening came. After eleven hours, in front of everyone’s eyes, Warde leapt to his death.

  Twelve years later, Hollywood turned this real event into movie magic. The screenplay, written by John Paxton, was based on a story by Joel Sayre for The New Yorker, published under the title “The Man on the Ledge.” Fourteen Hours (1951) was adapted from “The Man on the Ledge,” changing the actual eleven hours into the fictional fourteen hours. Sol C. Siegel produced Fourteen Hours for Twentieth Century-Fox. Henry Hathaway (1898–1985) was the director. Two years later, he went on to direct Niagara (1953), one of Marilyn Monroe’s most famous films.

  It is Friday, March 17. Robert Cosick (Richard Basehart) is the young man who is standing fifteen floors up on the ledge of the New York Rodney Hotel. From the street, Charlie Dunnigan (Paul Douglas), a traffic cop, sees the young man standing up on the high-rise building. He hurries into the hotel and tries to help. Passersby start to collect below. Cars come to a standstill in the streets around the hotel. Emergency workers from the police and fire departments arrive and attempt to set a rescue plan in motion. Cosick’s relatives and friends are eventually reached, and they all gather together without exchanging a single word. His domineering mother (Agnes Moorehead) does not speak to his shy, despondent father (Robert Keith); Robert’s ex-girlfriend Virginia (Barbara Bel Geddes) does not speak to either of his parents. As Dunnigan tries to get out on the ledge to join Robert, in order to talk him down—by talking to him about his life and bringing him water, coffee, and cigarettes—it is quickly made clear that the family life of this despairing young man is fraught with suffering. A state of rapidly shifting emotions is set off, and Robert seems about to jump but then he hesitates.

  Already long before this point, radio and television crews have set up cameras and microphones everywhere to report the spectacle live. The salacious relish for sensationalism among the press, as well as the individuals, must have been astonishing, if not actually terrifying, considering the production year for this movie, 1950.

  At the end, dusk has fallen, and it has grown late. Blinded by a sudden harsh, flaring spotlight that was set up in front of the hotel, Robert abruptly, involuntarily falls from the ledge and lands in a net one floor below, which had been spread out by the police. This ending was chosen in 1951 by the test viewers for the movie. Two endings had been made for the sample audience, one in which the young man dies, as had happened in reality, and one in which he was rescued. Reality lost the toss.

  Edith Van Cleve paved the way for Grace to appear in her first silver screen role. Van Cleve was a theater agent as well as an agent for the large and influential Music Corporation of America (MCA), which was in business from 1924 to 1997. Another MCA agent, Lew Wasserman, represented Alfred Hitchcock for a while, and after the merger of MCA and Universal, as studio boss at Universal, Wasserman co-produced Hitchcock’s later films, from The Birds (1963) through Family Plot (1976). After Don Richardson had recommended Grace Kelly to Edith Van Cleve, Van Cleve sent her new young actress to one of many casting calls and auditions, one of which was for Fourteen Hours. In addition to Edith Van Cleve’s endorsement, producer Sol C. Siegel, who had previously seen Grace perform in Strindberg’s The Father, recommended the young actress for the film. After a subsequent costume audition, director Henry Hathaway decided to cast her in a small minor role, in what would be her very first film project.

  The filming took place between early June and early August of 1950, and the film sites were the Twentieth Century-Fox studios and various locations in Manhattan, along Broadway and Wall Street, for the exterior shots.

  During the filming, Gary Cooper dropped by the set of Fourteen Hours to visit director Henry Hathaway. Here, during the summer of 1950, Cooper and Grace met for the first time.

  Cooper was instantly taken with the twenty-year-old theater actress. She seemed to embody an anti-type, like the more androgynous-seeming Audrey Hepburn, who had also been born in 1929. Cooper immediately began to rave about Grace, about her well-bred manners, her charm, her beauty, which was so very different from that of the properly appointed, explicitly provocative silver screen goddesses, which were in vogue at this time. “I thought she looked pretty and different, and that maybe she’d be somebody. She looked educated, and as if she came from a nice family. She was certainly a refreshing change from all those bombshells we’d been seeing so much of.”91

  This was the first time Grace had met a Hollywood star of this magnitude. In the fall months of September and October of the following year, 1951, the two of them would stand together in front of the camera for the filming of Fred Zinnemann’s black-and-white classic western, High Noon. However, Grace had no inkling of this at this time.

  As Mrs. Fuller, Grace had only two or three scenes. One of them was outdoors, down on the street in the middle of New York traffic, through which she would walk to an attorney’s office to sign her divorce papers. In another scene, she is in the attorney’s office and from there she observes everything that is taking place across the way.

  Grace’s work on Fourteen Hours required two days of filming. On her first day, the street scene was filmed on the studio lot of Twentieth Century-Fox, on Stage 8. The scene went like this: Grace sits in a taxi that is stuck behind the blockade in front of the hotel. She rolls the window down and calls to the traffic cop (Dunnigan): “Officer, are we going to be able to get through? I have an important appointment, and I’m late now.”92 He advises her to get out and walk the rest of the way. Grace exits the car and has to climb over the bumpers of two rows of cars. To be helpful, Paul Douglas takes her hand. “Take it easy,” he tells her. “Thank you,” she replies, as he gallantly helps her get around the bumpers. She shakes his hand. “It’s alright,” Douglas responds and smiles. Grace turns around and leaves the scene.

  Grace’s first appearance in the film occurs in the fourteenth minute, and it only lasts thirty seconds. She is wearing a fur coat, black gloves, and a black handbag. On her head is perched a hat that looks like a blend of a pillbox hat and a black circlet, and it is covered by a veil that reaches her eyes. A double strand of pearls and a pair of white earrings complete the ensemble. The lipstick is dark red, a color that she later wore quite often. This outfit makes it clear that this is a lady, a woman with style and class, with taste and manners. Although only twenty, with her stylish, elegant appearance, she seems to be much older and more mature than the majority of her peers. Already in this early screen appearance, Grace Kelly’s trademark style is introduced. It is the same personal and inherent sense of timeless elegance that she cultivated through her work on Broadway, her live television programs, her commer
cial work, and her modeling.

  Her second appearance in the film takes place in a large room at the lawyer’s office, lined with books and furnished with heavy pieces of furniture. She is standing at the window, looking at the building across the way. This is the Rodney Hotel, where a man stands on the ledge and a group of people have gathered to observe what is happening above. The lawyer’s office is located slightly higher than the floor on which Robert Cosick is perched on the ledge. Thus, Mrs. Fuller can watch what is happening from a relatively close vantage point. As the attorney turns to her to discuss the conditions of the prepared divorce papers and the support for her children, she turns in his direction and responds absentmindedly, “Yes?” It is almost as if the events across the way, the life and death decisions of this unknown man are, at the very least, just as important as her own decision to end her marriage. The plotline pertaining to Mrs. Fuller’s thoughts shortly before making her divorce final has no direct connection with the main storyline. Rather, this is set up as an independent parallel story, which reflects, on a different level, the consequences of the decisions that are made in life.

  In the fifty-ninth minute, the husband, Mr. Fuller (James Warren), arrives. He had also been delayed. The lawyer reads aloud the clauses pertaining to the children, and the husband simply nods. The attorney asks, “Do you have any comment?” She finally responds: “Yes. I don’t understand it. It’s too complicated. Issue. One issue. Both issues. You make it sound dirty! They’re children. Why don’t you say ‘children’? I don’t want to do it anymore.” Grace’s voice shakes. At this, her husband almost jumps up from the armchair, on the edge of which he has sat, nervously smoking. He asks her if she really means it, if she really does not want the divorce. And she agrees, saying that she no longer wants to think about it. It is more complicated than being married. “Let’s try again,” Mr. Fuller says to Mrs. Fuller. They hug each other and stand at the window with their arms around each other. Grace turns to watch the events unfold outside the room. Then the camera cuts from inside the room to showing the embracing couple from outside the room. Grace and her costar stand in the left side of the frame, while in the right side, through a reflection in the windowpane, the viewer can see what is taking place on the facade across the way. A policeman is rappelling down the face of the hotel, and the man continues to stand on the ledge. To a certain extent, the drama at the hotel concerning the fate of the man is reflected in Grace’s face. Both of them are standing—she inside, he outside—between the fifteenth and seventeenth floors of two Manhattan high rises, asking themselves if or how they will go on with their lives. Should she file for divorce and fight over the children, or not? Should the man on the ledge plunge into the depths below and end his young life, or not? In the last fifteen minutes of the film, Grace and her movie husband are only visible for a few short seconds, as they stand together on the street in the crowd, arm in arm, gazing up at the hotel.

  Fourteen Hours marked Grace Kelly’s first film performance. The film’s New York premiere was in March 1951, and its US opening occurred in April. It was a flop at the box office, but highly acclaimed by the critics. At the 1952 Academy Awards, Hathaway’s drama was nominated for best set design. However, Grace, whose name is listed tenth in the opening credits, was not mentioned in the reviews. Not yet.

  Grace’s entire screen time only came to three minutes in Hathaway’s very successful, atmospheric, tense ninety-two-minute drama, which was predominantly shaped by humanistic ideas as exemplified by the altruistic, empathic traffic cop Charlie Dunnigan. Despite the brevity of her appearance, several of Grace’s signature characteristics are utilized and recognizable. These remained consistent throughout her eleven films, a common thread that connect her works: a cool sensibility, restraint in sudden shifts of mood or whim, strong poise and posture, and a keen awareness of her strengths—and all this performed with grace, dignity, and respect.

  High Noon

  (1952)

  Gary Cooper taught me that the camera is always in the first row.

  —Grace Kelly93

  In the spring of 1951, Grace Kelly’s agent Edith Van Cleve sent several still photographs to her colleague Jay Kanter, who also worked for MCA as an agent. Immediately, Kanter offered Grace a permanent contract with MCA. Kanter, who was also the agent for Marlon Brando, wanted MCA to exclusively represent her for film and television engagements. However, Grace turned this offer down because she did not want to lock herself into a contract. She wanted to keep her options open; after all, there was still the theater. This suited her much more. But then, in September 1952, she changed her mind and signed a seven-year contract with the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studio, and Mogambo became her first MGM production.

  Jay Kanter was not only Grace’s agent, but he was also married to her friend Judith Balaban Quine. He sent the photos from Edith Van Cleve, along with others, to the producer Stanley Kramer. Besides working as a producer (until 1979), Kramer also had worked as a director, starting in 1955. He mainly made politically and historically oriented films, which met with much acclaim, such as Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967). Stanley Kramer’s (1913-2001) films always grappled with latent or explicit racism. They were shaped by a deep dedication to the implementation and preservation of democracy and justice. Within this social context, one must situate the film High Noon.

  Prior to High Noon, producer Stanley Kramer, director Fred Zinnemann, and screenwriter Carl Foreman had collaborated on the film The Men (1950), which was twenty-six-year-old Marlon Brando’s first movie.

  Stanley Kramer showed the photos of Grace Kelly to his director Fred Zinnemann, who promptly wanted to meet the young actress. What Zinnemann did not know at this time was that, solely based on the photographs and without consulting anyone else, his producer had on his own authority decided to cast Grace in the role of the pious pacifist, Quaker Amy Fowler Kane. Kramer had already even signed the contract. At the time of this meeting, Grace was in Denver for a theater engagement at Elitch Gardens Theatre. From there she flew to Los Angeles in early July, and Zinnemann was taken with her unusual (for Hollywood) appearance.

  Fred Zinnemann (1907–1997) had been born in Austria-Hungary, and he grew up in the Third District of Vienna. In 1929, he immigrated to America, just like his other exiled colleagues Fritz Lang, Ernst Lubitsch, and Billy Wilder, who had been born in either Berlin or Vienna. Zinnemann was the director of such movie classics as the adaptation of Anna Seghers’s novel The Seventh Cross (1944), The Nun’s Story (1959) with Audrey Hepburn in the title role, and the film version of Frederick Forsyth’s The Day of the Jackal (1973). His films, some of which deal intensively with the Third Reich and its fatal influences, such as The Search (1948), reflect a humanist perspective, as exemplified by The Seventh Cross and The Nun’s Story. This humanism was again revealed in High Noon, which more closely resembles an intimate play than it does a typical western. As in other socio-critical works by Zinnemann, in this film, he explored a variety of themes, including the concept of the engagement of the individual to benefit a larger group, and the happiness derived from such an altruistic sacrifice.

  Generally speaking, Fred Zinnemann is credited with the discovery of later Hollywood stars, such as Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, and even Grace Kelly. This was definitely the case for the first two actors. Marlon Brando’s very first film project was Zinnemann’s The Men, and the young Montgomery Clift was seen for the first time ever in The Search. With Grace Kelly, one must be more specific. Excepting her three-minute appearance in Hathaway’s Fourteen Hours, High Noon was Grace’s first larger supporting role, earning her fifth billing on the cast list. However, her role as Amy Kane, which in the broader context was relatively small, did not yet win the lasting attention of the press and the public. This first came after her next two films, John Ford’s Mogambo and Alfred Hitchcock’s Dial M for Murder (1954).

  Fred Zinnemann described the role of Amy in simple terms: “We simply needed an
attractive, virginal-looking and inhibited young actress, the typical Western heroine.”94 Grace Kelly was ideally suited for the role of the newly married, very young Quaker Amy Kane. According to Zinnemann, Grace Kelly seemed to fit the part of newlywed Amy Kane “perhaps because she was technically not ready for it, which made her rather tense and remote.”95 Grace was nervous. At their first meeting, she sat there shyly, since Zinnemann’s name demanded respect. Perhaps she was a little afraid. She was also only twenty-one years old. Except for the two days of filming for Fourteen Hours, she had no Hollywood film experience. She wore white gloves to this fairly short introductory conversation, and she answered most of the director’s questions falteringly with only “yes” or “no.” Zinnemann himself was a man of few words and did not care for lengthy conversations, but as he recalled, the situation was too much for her. “Our conversation soon came to a halt,” and he sent her “with a sense of relief [ . . . ] on to Foreman’s office.”96 For the time being, he bid Grace farewell and sent her on her way with a word of advice that she should learn how to talk with people and to lead a conversation whenever she was introduced to someone.

  Composer Dimitri Tiomkin described Grace as someone who often seemed out of place on the set of High Noon: “Nobody could foresee Princess Grace.”97

  Finally on July 19, the American press announced that Stanley Kramer Productions had scheduled the filming of High Noon for late August and early September. Gary Cooper was cast in the main role, and he would be acting alongside movie newcomer, Grace Kelly. However, it was not until August 10, only eighteen days before the advertised production start date, that Grace received a telegram with the final confirmation from producer Stanley Kramer. At the time, she was in Denver for an acting appearance. The telegram read as follows: “Can you report Aug. 28, lead opposite Gary Cooper, tentative title High Noon.”