Grace

by Thilo Wydra

  As Thomas Veszelits expanded, “If you stood across from Grace Kelly, you would not be able to imagine her having any kind of adventure with someone else, even if the times had been different. She was truly too duty-bound for this. In the end, she had religious reasons to not have an affair with anyone. She could not have reconciled it with her Catholic conscience. Strictly Catholic: thus, it was unthinkable. Also, there was absolutely no private sphere in Monaco. One could not meet anybody there without it being known.”319 It was a life lived inside a gilded cage—on display for all the world to see.

  1962

  The Case of Marnie—

  and a Crisis of State

  It was heartbreaking for me to have to leave the picture.

  —Grace Kelly in a letter to Alfred Hitchcock320

  I am certain that if my mother could have, she would have made more films with Hitchcock. She knew that he wanted her for Marnie—but she would have also made North by Northwest.

  —Prince Albert II of Monaco321

  It was March 1962, when Alfred Hitchcock offered Grace Kelly the title role in his next film, Marnie. He sent her the first draft of the screenplay as well. Grace immediately and enthusiastically accepted his offer. She was ecstatic. This moment was one of the most fateful in Grace Kelly’s life.

  Hitchcock had long waited for just the right moment to offer a new film to his favorite actress. Six years had now passed since Grace and Rainier’s wedding. Hitchcock hoped that enough time had gone by for him to be able to get her in front of a camera again.

  Grace wanted nothing in the world more than this: to finally be able to act on screen again after years of involuntary absence. She had had various offers during the previous years, and in the coming years, she would be forced to give them all up. These included several offers for the role of Mary, mother of Jesus, for Nicholas Ray’s King of Kings (1961) for MGM and George Stevens’s monumental, three-and-a-half hour epic The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965).

  Joseph Stefano, who had previously written the screenplay for Hitchcock’s highly successful Psycho, had again been hired by the director to write the screenplay for Marnie. At this point, they were a long ways from a finished script, an issue that would play a critical role in the complicated genesis of Marnie. Grace was completely committed to playing the main role in Hitchcock’s next film adaptation, which was based on a 1961 British novel. The book had been written by the British author Winston Graham, who between 1945 and 2002 wrote numerous mystery novels, as well as the eighteenth-century historical Poldark series set in Cornwall. The plot was to be relocated from England to the United States, to Philadelphia, Grace’s hometown (and that of Joseph Stefano as well). This geographic shift was not accidental—Hitchcock moved Marnie to Philadelphia in order to give Grace an opportunity to visit her family at home. After Grace’s acceptance, it was clear for Hitch that Marnie would be the screen comeback for actress Grace Kelly. He used this as an argument in discussing casting with his new studio, Universal, and studio boss, Lew Wasserman. Ultimately, the screenplay for Marnie was written by Evan Hunter, who had previously adapted Daphne du Maurier’s short story “The Birds” for Hitchcock. Hunter was the second screenwriter to work on the project, and he was hired after Hitchcock fired Stefano due to dissatisfaction with the latter’s work. While Hunter worked on the screenplay, a photo of Grace Kelly sat the whole time on his desk. He described this in an interview with the Daily Express.322 In agreement with Hitch, Hunter was to develop the character of Margaret “Marnie” Edgar specifically with the former leading lady in mind.

  In any case, Hitchcock and Hunter were not in agreement about the characters and the plot. Hunter did not believe the intended explicitness of the rape scene (between Marnie and her newly married husband, Mark Rutland, on board of a steamer during their honeymoon) was necessary. Hunter was specifically worried about the scene’s overt violence. Then, just as had been the case with Stefano, Hunter found himself, without justification or means of protest, removed from the project. Now Hitchcock hired the young, inexperienced author Jay Presson Allen to finish the seemingly unlucky screenplay. For Hitchcock, the problems and difficulties with Marnie seemed to stretch throughout the entire, prolonged project until its premiere in July 1964. The film was not received well by the public, the critics were mainly negative (some even scathing in their reviews), and filming was stressful and troubled from the beginning.

  For Alfred Hitchcock, Marnie was a total disaster.

  However, at the very beginning of this project, two people were completely delighted to be able to work with each other again. At this time, the plan was to begin filming in the late summer of 1962 and wrap in the fall. The intention was to combine a longer American vacation for the royal family with the filming of the Hitchcock movie. While Prince Rainier and the children Caroline and Albert enjoyed a vacation nearby, Grace would play the role of Marnie Edgar, acting for a fourth time under Hitch’s direction. Years later, in a 1989 interview, Prince Rainier confirmed that not only was this the plan, but he had helped come up with it; he was fully on board at first.323

  At this point, Grace Kelly and Alfred Hitchcock must have felt so close to fulfilling a mutual, long-cherished dream. According to longtime New York friend Rita Gam, “In the back of Grace’s mind was always the possibility of going back to being a film star. I think she kept it there for those rainy nights. And when the opportunity rose to do Marnie, she leapt at it.”324 And then: “Everyone assumed that she would accept the offer. Nowhere in her marriage contract was it written that films were forbidden to the Princess.”325

  On March 18, 1962,326 the royal palace in Monaco finally sent an official communiqué to the press announcing to the world that Grace Kelly would soon return to the silver screen.

  The news hit like a bomb. A storm of controversy spread through Monaco. The citizens and press of the small principality feared that in accepting this role, the princess would humiliate and degrade their country. Going from European royalty back to the life of a Hollywood starlet was seen as a scandalous demotion. At this point, Marnie was the first Hitchcock film since Psycho, which had irreparably shocked the world, forever changing and radically influencing how movie audiences viewed films.

  Furthermore, an unpleasant public debate centered on the salary that Grace would receive for her role in Marnie. The sums cited in the rumors swung between $375,000 to more than $880,000. At one point, she was supposedly going to earn $1 million.327 However, the outcry focused on the spending of the salary, which the royal house could not claim for itself. In reaction, the palace press office sent out another short explanation as a quick defense. The first official communiqué had failed to include the information that the princess’s Hollywood salary would be donated in its entirety to needy Monegasque children, young athletes, and artists. None of it would be kept by the palace.

  Not much time passed after the premature and ill-considered publication of the original communiqué before Grace Kelly had to give in to both external and internal pressures. Thus, she had to retract the announcement and renounce her involvement in Marnie. It was a difficult decision and one which, in the end, was completely against what she truly wanted. After the cancellation was wrung out of her, she retreated to her palace rooms for days on end and would not emerge. The story was that she shut herself away for an entire week and cried.328 At night, driven by her inner turmoil, she wandered the endless corridors of the palace alone. Up until that point, she had been full of hope and confidence, and now she had to painfully admit that she would never again appear before the camera, that she would never again act. A key chapter of her life was officially closed. Grace had to bury her dearest dream. The cancellation would be a lasting, traumatic experience. For a while, there was a fear that she would suffer a serious nervous breakdown. It was said that she suffered from depression and insomnia. There are those who claim that during this time, something died in Grace. Marnie marked a deep break in Grace Kelly’s life.

  As frien
d Judith Balaban Quine recalled, “Grace was unhappy because she had no true task and she was not allowed to work anymore. She felt superfluous. And Rainier absolutely did not understand it.”329

  Four years later, in 1966, Prince Rainier described the situation related to Grace’s reaction and her general state after the cancellation of Marnie. In his statement he emphasized logistical issues of geography as the root cause: “There have been times when the Princess has been melancholy. I understand [she felt] cut off from [an art she loved]. If we had lived in New York or London or Paris [perhaps] she could have still pursued it.”330

  As Grace’s friend Rita Gam commented, “I think the thing that convinced her that she couldn’t do it, do that part, which was just another heroine, was that she was a Princess of the Church, and once she believed that [the] dignity [of] being the Princess of the Catholic Church was more important than being an actress, she accepted it. But I think it took a long time.”331 In terms of the Vatican, “a letter from Pope John XXIII was personally sent to Grace as a Catholic princess, demanding that she not make the film.”332

  It was ultimately Tippi Hedren—born in 1930 in Minnesota as Nathalie Hedren—who played the role of Marnie Edgar. This was her second time starring in a Hitchcock film, the first film being, of course, The Birds. Without Hitchcock, Hedren the model might never have become Hedren the actress. On Friday, October 13, 1961, a very quiet and rather uncreative year for Hitchcock, Alma and Alfred Hitchcock discovered Tippi Hedren during breakfast. It was pure chance. They saw a seemingly cool blonde on a television advertisement during the Today Show on NBC. And it was immediately clear to them: this was the new Hitchcock heroine, the now necessary successor to Grace Kelly.

  The black-and-white ad seen by the Hitchcocks was for Sego, a diet milk drink with chocolate flavoring. Before this, Hedren had worked as a model in New York for eleven years, and she had no acting experience. In the ad, she took a drink of Sego, and a boy whistled at her from the sidewalk. The Birds begins similarly, and at the age of thirty-two, this was the first role she had ever played. In Chasen’s, Hitch’s favorite Hollywood restaurant, he announced to her that he wanted her for the main role of Melanie Daniels in The Birds. With this, he handed her a brooch ornamented with three birds, a piece that she still has today.

  Tippi Hedren described this and the preparations for Marnie as follows: “It was like a fairy tale, like Cinderella. Exactly like it . . . This dream career was simply handed to me on a silver platter . . . And Alfred Hitchcock was not only my director, but also my acting teacher.”333 And further: “She [Grace Kelly] would have certainly been glad to play this role. But due to reasons of state, she had to decline. One cannot be both the Princess of Monaco and a servant ordered about. Even if it is only in the theater. It simply could not be.”334

  The Monegasque did not want to see their princess back on the silver screen. Besides the other reasons, the plans failed, in all likelihood, because of Prince Rainier’s disapproval: “Rainier was not enthusiastic. But I am convinced that she could have changed his mind. However, she respected the feelings of the populace. The Monegasque did not want their Princess kissing some Hollywood star [Sean Connery], even if it was only on screen,” opined Grace’s younger sister Lizanne.335

  On the subject of Marnie, Grace’s son Prince Albert had the following to say: “She never talked about it too much because I think maybe it was sort of a difficult subject for her, as she really would have loved to play that part, but of course, she realized that it would have been awkward and it wouldn’t have pleased my father too much, and so I am sure that she regretted that but . . . I think he wasn’t completely opposed to it but, you know, he was kind of . . . in-between, but I think that he also realized that here in Monaco it probably would not have been very well-accepted and he had to accept that after thinking about it. I think it would have been a very difficult situation for her, and he didn’t want to be in that kind of situation either. And he was also at the time having some difficulties with France, as you recall. So I think he didn’t want to add fuel to that fire.”336

  Another consideration was a new development: Grace learned that spring that she was again pregnant. At the time of the Monegasque communiqué about Marnie in mid-March, she could not have yet known this. However, the pregnancy did not go well, and in June, Grace had a miscarriage. She had three miscarriages in total during the course of the 1960s. Another one occurred in the summer of 1963, and the last one came in July 1967, two years after the birth of Princess Stéphanie on February 1, 1965, during a trip abroad for the World’s Fair in Montreal, Canada. During her lifetime, Grace was pregnant a total of six times.

  It was also in June 1962 that the decision against her involvement in Marnie happened. She informed Alfred Hitchcock shortly thereafter. At this time, Hitchcock was two months into the filming of The Birds, which would have its world premiere in New York on March 28, 1963. In May, it was included on the program for the Cannes Film Festival. The director then announced that the filming of Marnie would be postponed a year and a half.

  To the director’s great surprise, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer contacted Alfred Hitchcock only a few days after the publishing of the Monegasque communiqué. In a letter dated March 28, 1962, studio chief Joseph R. Vogel told him that, as before, Grace Kelly was under contract with MGM, and if she returned to Hollywood, she would have to fulfill her seven-year commitment. According to Metro, the existing and valid contract was still in force for four and a half years. Grace would have to fulfill her contractual obligations if she wished to return to work as an actor. MGM man Vogel continued, the actress’s employment was “an untapped asset to our organization.”337 Vogel assert that Hitchcock himself ought to understand that as welcome as her return to the movie industry was, she was lawfully bound to pick up where she left off—an employee of MGM.338

  After his successful years at Paramount, which ended with Psycho, Hitchcock was now attached to Universal, with whom he would remain until the end of his career. His final film was Family Plot (1976). Grace could not simply be cast in a Universal production. MGM was willing to make this very clear through its studio lawyers. However, it never came to this, even if Hitchcock, his studio, and their lawyers were of a totally different opinion. If Grace had actually been cast in Marnie, there is no doubt that a legal battle would have arisen with MGM and Joseph R. Vogel. As if all of this turmoil was not difficult enough, the political differences between the small principality and its bigger neighbor, France, were escalating, especially during the course of 1962.

  Eight weeks prior to the controversy over the palace communiqué, the following developed on the political level. On January 24, 1962, Prince Rainier III met with the French Minister of State, Émile Pelletier, who was also the Monegasque ambassador. Pelletier had urgently requested this meeting. The former Minister of the Interior under De Gaulle, Pelletier demanded that Rainier promptly lift a Monegasque trade suspension, which Rainier refused to do. Rainier had previously passed the suspension to prevent France from investing heavily in and taking control of Radio Monte Carlo (RMC) and Télé Monte Carlo (TMC). The consequence of this move would have been the loss of control over the Monegasque media outlets to France. This was a development that the prince could not permit, and it played itself out against the flourishing economic situation in Monaco during the early 1960s. Approximately fifty international companies had moved their main offices to Monaco due to the prevailing fiscal advantages that were created in the international accord from July 1918. Under the leadership of President Charles De Gaulle, France was no longer open to tolerating these advantages. Furthermore, in 1960, the prince had brought the young American functionary Martin A. Dale to Monaco as his personal adviser. An increasing number of American firms were moving their headquarters to this part of the Riviera. Thus, the proud Grande Nation, which for years had distanced itself as far as possible from all things American, feared an all-too-great American influence in the small neighboring principality. Martin
A. Dale was even accused of working for the CIA.339

  On January 24, 1962, in Dale’s presence, a loud argument arose between the irritated Prince Rainier and the no-less-miffed Minister Pelletier. Prince Rainier delivered a slap to Monsier le Ministre and directed him to leave the country.340 President De Gaulle welcomed the late evening altercation, the so-called Pelletier Affair, as an excuse to put massive pressure on the principality that he viewed with great suspicion. De Gaulle threatened Monaco: If the principality did not change its tax laws and bring them in line with the French ones, France would cut off Monaco’s electricity, telephone connections, gas, and water at the end of a six-month period ending at midnight on October 11, 1962. Within a very short span of time, life in the principality would be brought to a standstill. This touched on a basic fear among the Monegasque, a fear of France annexing and dissolving their principality.

  Ultimately, the bilateral confrontation culminated in President De Gaulle ordering troops of French customs officials and policemen from around Monaco to march on the country on October 12, 1962. The Monegasque could see that they were caught within their national borders. The access roads along the coast were blocked and controlled. Along the center road lines, customs signs were set up, reading “Stop Customs.”341 On the following day, the newspaper headlines announced “Entre Monaco et la France: Cordon douanier depuis minuit” (“Between Monaco and France: Customs Barriers since Midnight”).342 “Close against the border along the streets and steps, an entire French regiment was posted. The Monegasque approached the troops and gave them flowers and every gift imaginable.”343 It was their way to try to turn the opinion of the more-powerful enemy with cordiality.