Grace
Page 10
A flat cap, cigar or pipe, glasses, and an eye patch—these are the hallmarks of the notoriously bad-tempered director, who rarely gave direction and who did not treat his actors with great respect. In the western genre he tended to work with the same actors (John Wayne, for example, was a favorite) on multiple films. Thus, he had even less experience dealing with actresses. Grace had difficulties with the fifty-eight-year-old director, similar to the ones she faced with Fred Zinnemann while filming High Noon. Zinnemann too had little use for giving direction or even speaking at all. The only difference was that Ford was much more impolite and gruff than Zinnemann had been. Some on the set even described the ill-tempered Ford as a tyrant and an egomaniac.
In his autobiography, the actor Donald Sinden, who played Grace Kelly’s very British and oblivious husband, described how John Ford directed him and Grace on their first day of filming:
Linda and John Nordly arrive. The steamer docks, and on the riverbank stands Victor Marswell to greet the anthropological couple. Without a single rehearsal, without any kind of direction or discussion about how their characters should act or what they could be feeling, Grace and Sinden find themselves on the deck of the steamer while Gable waits on the wooden pier.
Then John Ford’s voice is heard over the loudspeaker: “Grace—Donald—get below deck. OK. Donald—come on deck. Look around at the scenery. Call Grace. Put your arm around her. Point out a giraffe over on your right. Get your camera out—quickly. Photograph it—the giraffe. Smile at him, Grace. Grace—look at that hippopotamus on your left. Get Donald to photograph it. A crocodile slides into the water. You’re scared, Grace—you’re scared! OK. You’re coming onto the pier. Look around. What’s in store for you? Natives run down to meet you. OK! OK! Cut! Print it!”119
Here is the plot of Mogambo: Eloise Y. Kelly (Ava Gardner), a glamorous New York dancer and showgirl, is invited to travel to Africa by an Indian maharajah. However, no one awaits her there, as the maharajah has already left. She goes somewhat unwillingly to Kenya to the lodge and wild animal reserve of big game hunter, Victor Maswell (Clark Gable). At first, he is not at all happy about this unexpected visitor. Through clinched teeth, Marswell offers the prima donna one of his guest rooms. Eloise quickly falls head over heels in love with the attractive loner. Marswell’s corpulent, cheerful comrade and business partner John Brown-Pryce, “Brownie,” (Philip Stainton) recognizes this at once. However, Marswell is not taken with his guest’s directness, and so he sticks Eloise on the steamer to take her home. In the meantime, the British Nordleys arrive at Marswell’s lodge: the anthropologist Donald Nordley (Donald Sinden) and his wife Linda (Grace Kelly). Victor Marswell is immediately fascinated by the young blonde woman and feels attracted to her. Her distant gentility stands in stark contrast to Eloise’s blunt vulgarity. Before too long, Eloise Kelly shows up again on Marswell’s veranda with her mountain of luggage, but this time her dress is muddy and damp. The steamer got stuck. She is delighted beyond words. As Leon Boltchak (Eric Pohlmann), another employee of Marswell’s, notes: now there are two women staying at the lodge. This has never happened before. There is something ironic in the fact that throughout the entire movie, Ava Gardner is called by her character’s last name: “Kelly”!
The dynamic between the lodge’s residents is predictable: Eloise is increasingly jealous of her competition, Linda, and Marswell finds himself caught between the two women. After Donald Nordley recovers from the illness he contracted after his arrival, he arranges for an expedition into the jungle to study, film, and record the behavior of gorillas. Marswell is not thrilled by Nordley’s proposal, since he knows the difficulties and risks that go along with such an expedition. In addition, the aging wild game hunter feels guilty toward Nordley for the obviously growing attraction between him and Linda. Marswell and Linda meet in secret, but Eloise sees them. An attempt to clear things up with Nordley fails when Marswell sees Nordley’s total cluelessness. Marswell is unwilling to confront the work-absorbed husband with the truth. As the situation threatens to escalate, Eloise sets up a one-on-one, rather inebriated conversation in Marswell’s tent. Linda then storms into the tent, deeply hurt and despairing, grabs Marswell’s gun, and shoots him in the shoulder. With this shocking turn of events, Linda returns to her husband, full of regret, and Marswell and Eloise finally become a couple.
The conflict between the protagonists represents the classic love triangle trope. A similar drama played out in real life: Donald Sinden only had eyes for Grace Kelly, who had clearly fallen for Clark Gable. However, Gable was only interested in Ava Gardner. When Gardner rejected him, Gable turned to Grace for a short time. Grace’s friend Rita Gam spoke of “a romantic night in the middle of the jungle.”120 Just like in the film, the romantic entanglements would lead to confusion and hurt.
Mogambo was the first time that MGM costume designer Helen Rose and Grace Kelly worked together. Later, Rose was responsible for two other MGM productions in which Grace appeared: Green Fire (1954) and High Society. Rose also designed the wedding dress that Grace wore to her wedding in Monaco. In Mogambo, Grace wore short-sleeved blouses and long skirts, pants and safari jackets. There was something charming in the fact that she, in her pale uniform-like khaki costumes, was the only one to wear a safari hat.
In one evening scene, during which the three men hold a dinner in honor of their three guests, Grace as Linda wears a violet evening gown that resembles, in shape, the red dress she would wear in her subsequent movie, Dial M for Murder. Short-sleeved with a low neckline and a long pleated skirt, she attracts all eyes to her in this evening gown. During the course of the supper, she sets off a playful, ambiguous conversation between Marswell and the envious Eloise. Although Linda is the one whose appearance has prompted a turning point in the plot, she says very little.
During the time of the filming, an American by the name of Rupert Allan was staying in London, having traveled there for Look magazine to cover the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. One evening, after a day of filming, Allen was introduced to Grace in the London Savoy Hotel by Morgan Hudgins, the press agent for MGM Studios. He would later become Grace’s longtime personal PR adviser and eventually the Monegasque General Consul and Ambassador in Los Angeles.
Allen recalled a significant event that epitomized Grace’s romantic dreaminess, one that was later told to him by Clark Gable about the filming of Mogambo: “She turned to him and he saw that she was crying. And he said, ‘Why are you crying, Grace?’ And she said, ‘It’s so beautiful. I’m reading The Snows of Kilamanjaro by Hemingway. And I looked up and I was just reading about this crazy leopard I think they found way up in the snows of this high mountain—the highest mountain in Africa. And I looked up from my book, thinking about what a beautiful picture it was—Hemingway. And then I saw a lion walking along the seashore. And it was just too beautiful.’”121
As Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer proudly announced, “mogambo” means “passion” in Swahili. However, this word can also carry the connotation of danger. Both of these meanings are applicable to John Ford’s adventure epic. Among the most visually spectacular scenes—especially considering when the movie was filmed—are the scenes involving animals, which were filmed by the second unit camera team under the guidance of legendary big game hunter Frank “Bunny” Allen. Besides the scenes of giraffes, elephants, hippopotamuses, and panthers, the high points of these extraordinary wild animal shots are the extensive scenes of the gorilla area. Described as “an evocative adventure film with striking animal shots which capture masterfully the jungle milieu and atmosphere,” Mogambo is most certainly very different from Ford’s mostly western repertoire.122
On October 1, 1953, Mogambo premiered in New York’s Radio City Music Hall. On October 9, it opened in cinemas across the country and went on to be a box office success. The film was both a financial and critical triumph; it was nominated as Best Film of 1954 for the renowned British BAFTA awards. Above all, the African drama was a great success for Ava Gardner. She cel
ebrated her thirtieth birthday during filming, on December 24, 1952, and soon found herself at the peak of her acting career. Previously she had made The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952) under director Henry King, and she would go on next to make Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s The Barefoot Contessa (1954). For Mogambo, she was nominated as Best Actress for the 1954 Academy Awards.
At the time of the filming, Clark Gable (1901–1960) was fifty-one years old. Since 1924, he had acted in a variety of classics, including Frank Capra’s It Happened One Night (1934) and, most famously, Victor Fleming’s Gone with the Wind (1939). The role of Rhett Butler in Fleming’s monumental adaptation of Margaret Mitchell’s novel was undoubtedly the role of his lifetime. In 1954, his contract with MGM ended, and Mogambo was his next to last film, followed only by Gottfried Reinhardt’s espionage drama Betrayed (1954). The studio did not wish to extend his contract. The affront against this star served as an unmistakable indication that, in the eyes of MGM, his market value was sinking. Furthermore, the charmer’s private life was at a low point. He increasingly drew back from society and was often in a bad mood. From this point on, Gable was no longer bound to any studio, and on subsequent films he began to require a share of the film profits in addition to his normal salary. As a result, he became one of the highest paid actors of the 1950s and consistently rejected the contract renewal offers made by a regretful MGM. Gable’s next film was Soldier of Fortune (1955), which he made for Twentieth Century-Fox under director Edward Dmytryk. Gable himself proposed Grace as his costar, but by that time she was already committed elsewhere. Instead, Susan Hayward was eventually cast in the role.
Eccentric both on and off the camera, Ava Gardner was visited several times during the filming by her husband Frank Sinatra, including Christmas in 1952. Both of them, as well as Grace and Gable, celebrated Christmas together, with Sinatra playing, and singing, the part of a fully costumed Santa Claus. Time and time again, there were emotional scenes and fierce arguments between the married couple, with Ava Gardner arguing especially loudly. Sometimes plates and cups flew through the air, and the atmosphere in the Gardner-Sinatra tent (each cast and crew member had his or her own tent) was a sure sign that an emotional drama was playing itself out. While Ava was on set, Sinatra was bored. New tensions and differences were constantly developing, ones that the team and the actors could not help but witness. To Grace’s dismay, her tent was set up right next to Gardner’s. Furthermore, Sinatra’s jealousy appeared to be justified since his wife had allegedly had an affair with Frank “Bunny” Allen, who was responsible for the handling of the wild animals on set. To make things worse, during Sinatra’s visit he was impatiently waiting for word on his casting as Angelo Maggio in Fred Zinnemannn’s Columbia production of From Here to Eternity (1953). When he finally got the role after New Year’s, his flagging career was given a boost. The marriage between Ava Gardner and Frank Sinatra, however, finally ended in 1957, after lasting six years.
Generally laconic and uncomfortable, director Ford had the following to say about his female star Ava Gardner: “She was an experienced actress. She was upset over Sinatra, but she did the work.”123 One time she caused an uproar when she appeared naked in a canvas bath tub in front of the native workers. In reaction, she ran stark naked through the camp, laughing. As trouble between Sinatra and Gardner escalated—although they had spent their first day married on safari—and as both Grace and Ava wooed Clark Gable in front of the camera, the two very different women became friends behind the scenes. A few years later, between January and March of 1956, Grace and Frank Sinatra would appear together in High Society, the last film of her artistic career.
Rumors of an affair between Grace Kelly and Clark Gable—some even spoke of marriage—were everywhere in the wake of Mogambo’s premiere.124 This was a media development that would be repeated over and over again during Grace Kelly’s acting career. Grace was quite displeased with this dark side to fame, which troubled her anew each time it happened. She hardly knew how to dispell the growing media attention to her family in Philadelphia. While Grace valued discretion and privacy, the press was interested in every conceivable, salacious detail of her private life. There was even talk of Grace proposing to Gable. In terms of actual events, the situation between Grace and Clark Gable was far from this fantasy: “She had a flirtation with Gable.”125 This account (which very much downplayed the affair) was given by her future fiancé, Oleg Cassini, with whom Grace was romantically involved in 1954 and 1955. On the other hand, Grace’s young sister Lizanne provided this commentary: “Grace was crazy about Clark.”126
Gable, the “King of Hollywood,” enjoyed an unsavory reputation as a notorious ladies’ man. On the other hand, during the Mogambo filming, Clark Gable was in the midst of divorce proceedings from his fourth wife, Lady Sylvia Ashley, who had once been married to Douglas Fairbanks. Although unsubstantiated even to the present day, the story is that Grace fell in love with the graying Hollywood star that she had long admired, who was thirty years older than she. They supposedly had a short affair. She frequently accompanied him on the safaris he took on their free days, choosing to wake up extremely early for these while the other actors slept in to recover from the stress of filming. According to Donald Sinden, “They were together most of the time.”127 During the filming, Grace called Gable “Ba,” which is Swahili for “father.” Grace was the only one on set who already spoke some Swahili when the filming began. In the New Stanley Hotel in Nairobi, she would often order the actors’ meals in the native language.
In reference to her filming in Africa, Grace once made the ambiguous statement that when one spends months in the African bush, there is so much that one cannot do there. Whatever the case, after the conclusion of months of filming in Africa, the situation was different. At the Elstree Studios near London, the inside scenes took place in a distinctly different atmosphere. In England, Gable acted decidedly cool toward Grace, who was inevitably hurt and irritated. However, since he was in the middle of divorce proceedings, he wanted to avoid any whiff of scandal in London where the press was harder to avoid. He acted friendly yet distant and professional, nothing more. In addition, Ma Kelly arrived from Philadelphia in February 1953. For three whole weeks, she kept an eye on her twenty-three-year-old daughter. The headlines about a possible affair between her Gracie and the twice-as-old Gable had not failed to reach Philadelphia. Margaret Majer-Kelly also wanted to personally meet the “King of Hollywood.”
At the conclusion of Mogambo’s filming, Grace’s agent Jay Kanter invited her to his wedding, which occurred on April 15, 1953, in New York. He introduced Grace to his new wife, Judith Balabin Quine. Three years later, Judith was one of Grace’s six bridesmaids. The two women would remain friends until Grace’s death.
In 1953, Grace again acted in a live television performance. The NBC program The Way of the Eagle aired live on June 7, 1953. Grace costarred with the French actor Jean-Pierre Aumont. Later they would grow close when they both visited Aumont’s homeland, in Paris and in Cannes. However, for now there was no relationship for Aumont and Grace beyond the television stage. Six days after the program, Grace flew from New York to Los Angeles. In that same week, Grace Kelly was introduced to Alfred Hitchcock in Hollywood. The Master of Suspense was searching for his next heroine. She was supposed to be blonde and to exude a coolness that masked an inner fire and glow.
In terms of her film career, this would be the meeting of her life.
—Alfred Hitchcock
“A lot of people think I’m a monster.”
There was no dark side.
—Patricia Hitchcock128
Alfred Hitchcock once described his childhood: “At family gatherings, I sat in my corner and said nothing. I looked around and observed a lot. So I’ve always been and so I am today. I was anything but communicative. I was always alone. I cannot remember having had a playmate.”129
The primal emotion of fear runs through the entire life and work of Alfred Hitchcock. Next to love, it is the
most basic existential motivation of all people and one of Hitchcock’s central artistic themes. This feeling accompanied him his entire life.
As a boy, Alfred was a loner. Already at a young age, he was acquainted with the feelings of being alone, of not being understood, of being the outsider. He experienced fear during his childhood in the East London suburb of Leytonstone. Perhaps it is not surprising that later he sought to frighten viewers around the world.
There is a story that deals with trust, or rather distrust, which, according to Alfred Hitchcock, took place when he was six years old. Young Alfred loved to take the new public buses into London. He also enjoyed studying the schedule of the buses and the horse-drawn streetcars that were replaced in 1906 with new electric streetcars. He was also intrigued by city maps and ship routes. (In 1939, when he immigrated to America with his wife Alma and daughter Patricia, he memorized a map of New York City.) During one of his exploratory trips through London in 1905, evening came, and he discovered that he did not have enough money for his return trip. Forced to walk, he did not reach home until 9:00 p.m. His father, an “excitable man,” opened the door.130 Wordlessly, William Hitchcock handed his youngest son a piece of paper and carried him directly to a nearby police station. There Alfred handed the paper to an officer named Watson. The policeman read the paper handed to him by little Alfred and promptly put the boy into a jail cell, locking him up for about five minutes. There the local cop delivered to young Alfred the now famous line: “This is what we do to naughty boys.”131