This is the story of a Princess, born with no taint of common blood... Wherever she went she aroused affection and adulation. She brought style and elegance toa royal house that ha developed a reputation for dowdiness, and showed a devotion to her job and an interest in various causes that almost went beyond the call of duty. Born a Greek Princess, Marina's life was touched by drama and tragedy from childhood. When she met her prince he was handsome, dashing, wild, and with a racy past. Prince George was the fifth of King George and Queen Mary's six children. He was the best looking, the most cultured, his mother's favorite. But his affairs with women and his drug-taking worried his family - all were relieved when he married Marina. Young and beautiful, the Duchess of Kent brought to the House of Windsor a style and chic that the family was sadly lacking. She and the Duke were at the centre of London society, with friends as much from the theatre as from the upper classes. Princess Marina, Duchess of Kent, was an exceptional woman. She was beautiful, loyal and warm, inspiring a love and loyalty to meet hers. She was not always happy, indeed she often had cause to be deeply unhappy, but her sense of duty, her love for her family, and her own strong character always upheld her. "Her loyalty, her gentle sweetness and charm, which equals her beauty and her saintly character, make her an outstanding woman." He wrote of her, "Whose nobility was printed on features of the outmost refinement, endowed with a gallant sense of humour which enabled her to rise above misfortune." "For people of my age the loss is great for she was so much part of an era and she added so much to the early days. She was always so vividly around, even until now, so that with her going she leaves a very great gap." "She continued to uphold those tenets of duty and dignity and courage that were part of her Royal upbringing and to enhance an ideal of dynastic harmony that seemed to belong to another age." In this she was truly exceptional. Other women have been beautiful, loyal, good company, happy or sad. But her past, and the way she brought it to bear upon her future and that of her adopted country, make her more than just a footnote in history. Her good looks, her ease of manner and the tragedy of her early childhood are sufficient explanation of this but she achieved something more than simple popularity. She made a decisive contribution to the evolution of the subtle relationship between the Royal Family and the British public. It is not so easily explained of someone of foreign birth. Despite, or perhaps even to some extent because of, these handicaps she was able to respond particularly well to the need for some adjustment of attitude by royalty at a time of rapid social change. She could react warmly to public interest and attention without any loss of dignity. She became in a personal sense part of a great popular occasion but remained as gracious as ever. It was this capacity to meet in substance both the old and the new demands upon royalty that won a depth of respect and affection among the British public. Marina, for her individuality, was part of something much larger than herself, something she had been brought up to believe in implicitly: the monarchy. Her strength, and the reason for her success, was not her beauty, it was that belief. It carried her through some dark years and in return she gave of her best to the institution. George was no weak-minded boy happy to play manipulative games with older and wiser men. From the moment he arrived George showed a gravity and commitment to his task that marked him apart, combined with an informality and approachability that soon won him friends. His truthfulness and straightforwardness united to form considerable firmness of character and personal courage, and assured him an exceptional position with his subjects. "Her shy youth and beauty conquered their impressionable hearts that day and, through all the vicissitudes of our House, she at least never lost their love." Their blood was thoroughly royal on every side, but their early years were relaxed and informal. It made for a family whose loyalty was unquestionable, whose respect for their father went beyond that owed to a king and whose love for their monarch was deep and abiding. "Both my parents' aim was to make us forget we were princes; we were to become true gentlemen, capable and disciplined, well-informed, with a high sense of duty and humble about our attainments. We were not allowed to be conscious of our rank except through the responsibilities it entailed and, consequently, it was not regarded by any of us as a matter for congratulation." Not long after Marina was born an old gypsy woman appeared at the palace and made a prophecy about her future: "She is a child of destiny, and there is both sunshine and shadow for her. She will be beautiful and make a great marriage with a King's son. Love will be her guiding star. It will bring her sorrow, for she will lose her husband while she is still young and at the height of her happiness. But she will find consolation in her children." So ran the prophecy, or so the story goes, and it was fulfilled in uncanny detail. "All the family met at lunch. Princess Olga and Princess Elizabeth used to ask all sorts of questions. Princess Marina did not ask questions. She answered them, sometimes very cleverly." This was the old-fashioned style of monarchy to which Marina was born. As a child she would have understood little of the implications of her position, but she would have experienced the roar of a crowd, seen the awe in an old lady's face when confronted with the small royal child or her father. Try as her parents might to bring their children up to be unaffected and modest, they could not deny them the essential fact of their royalty - it was around them every day of their lives. And although Marina was not arrogant, she carried a pride in her heritage which she never lost, neither when she was an exiled princess, nor when she was a loved princess in a new country. Even as princess of England, Duchess of Kent, she never forgot her inheritance as Princess Marina of Greece. Few people can realise that Royal Families are just human beings, that their 'blue' blood is just as red as anyone else's, and their tears every bit as bitter. To be born a prince is an accident, but not always a privilege and by no means a career. Although he may be conspicuous, although his position may be envied by those who know nothing about it, he is less protected by the law of the land than the humblest boot-black and chimney sweep. Many remained in awe of her for her mixture of outspokenness and shyness which could be taken for standoffishness. This trait sometimes made others wary of her. "By those who do not know her well she is sometimes misjudged, for her very shyness and ultra-sensitive air of reserve create a false impression of hauteur. Underneath it she had a kindness and sympathy that one rarely encounters, an unfailing sense of humour for her own troubles and an unlimited compassion for those of other people." "He requires the stimulus of her company to induce him to work. Her lively presence is his mainstay and chief incentive." It all began with a game of croquet. Then George pulled the hoops up, put them in a row and tried to jump them. He failed, and Marina, only four, tried next and also failed. "I remember George gallantly helping her up and then both of them falling on the grass, consumed with giggles. After that...we started playing bowls with the balls and that, too, soon became somewhat out of hand. One of the balls went into the lake, and the Princess took off her shoes and began to wade in, while at the same time Bertie and I, as qualified sailors, launched the rowing boat." "Possesed of an unusual charm of manner and a quick sense of humour and talented in many directions, he had an undoubted flair for the arts." "I had a distinct feeling, as I watched them together, that the older brother was at times a little worried, even anxious, about the younger, perhaps because he was too lighthearted." Ironic, then, that it should be the younger brother who settled down so properly and happily and the older who was to cause disturbance. If the pressure was being put on him at this time, he was lucky. Marina was at hand, was eminently suitable, and was all the slightly confused young man could have asked for in a wife. To his great good fortune, he fell in love. This, then, was the Prince Marina was to marry: a young man fond of pleasure but capable of compassion for those less fortunate than himself and willing to work hard in their cause. A man with charm and wit, and alone among his family, an artistic soul. He had had a gilded life but had suffered and perhaps become a better man as a result. "I hope one day she will make a suitable marriage with the House of Windsor." The likelihood of such a marriage was increasing daily. For the rest of Marina's stay she and George spent a great deal of time together. They went walking, dancing, out for drives in the country. George confided to a friend that "we laugh at the same sort of things. She beats me at most games. And she doesn't care a damn how fast I drive when I take her out in a car." George, with his eye for the beautiful, found Marina very attractive. And with his own liking of fast cars and derring-do he liked a girl with a bit of spirit about her. Marina's uncle was sure that it was the very informality of the affair that ensured its success: "I imagine that it was the very fact of her being so unlike the other princesses he had met that appealed to him. Instead of all the solemn ritual of a royal bethrotal, the formal introduction, the process of mutual inspection with all the relatives waiting expectantly in the background ready to bestow their blessing, they were able to see one another as often as they wanted." Prince George's great good luck was that he could have a truly modern courtship with a girl so suitable that a generation earlier she might well have been forced upon him. On 28 August there was an announcement from Balmoral, where the King and Queen were spending their summer holidays. It was in the traditional format: "It is with the greatest pleasure that the King and Queen announce the bethrotal of their dearly beloved son, Prince George, to Princess Marina, daughter of Prince and Princess Nicholas of Greece, to which union the King has gladly given his consent." "I am convinced this wedding has no political significance. It is the most natural thing in the world for two young people to fall in love." Marina had always been able to charm, but now her charm was to become a valuable asset. She had always been polite, but from now normal politeness to near-strangers would have a huge effect. "Everyone is so delighted with her - the crowd especially - 'cos when she arrived at Victoria Station they expected a dowdy princess - such as unfortunately my family are - but when they saw this lovely chic creature - they could hardly believe it and even the men were interested and shouted 'Don't change - don't let them change you!' Of course she won't be changed - not if I have anything to do with it...It's not so much fun here in London as it's always full of crowds and it's impossible to go anywhere together but everyone is so pleased that one really shouldn't complain." It was on this first visit that Queen Mary looked at Marina's red nails and said, "I am afraid the King doesn't like painted nails; can you do something about it?" To which Marina replied, "Your George may not, but mine does." "The princely brothers plainly enjoyed their friends and loved to exchange quips, but there was no mistaking the fact that between them and even the friends with whom they galloped across country in the closest of companionships was a barrier that could never be breached." So this companionship, the closest of all, was to be interrupted by a third, and however welcome she might be, David could not help but mourn. To the Prince of Wales, George's wedding meant he was not so much gaining a sister-in-law as losing his closest friend. I would like the people of England to share in some way my great happiness on the occasion of my engagement to Prince George. My years of exile have taught me how much unhappines there is in the world. Although I should be happy to think that the preparations for my wedding were in some small measure giving employment to those who need it, I should be more than happy for the unemployed, and particularly their children, to receive any money which has been intended for the purchase of wedding gifts for me. He 'scarcely left her side all that evening, despite the fact that some of the most beautiful women in Europe were doing their outmost to attract his attention. He appeared never even to notice them. He was in love as it is given to men and women to love only once in a lifetime.' "You cannot choose what changes and chances are to befall you in the coming year. You, Sir, have already and fully taken your place in the service of the community. And you, dear bride, as your husband's comrade, will find a new happiness in sharing the joys and sorrows and in ministering to the needs of the good British folk who have already, with a warmth so swift and spontaneous, taken you into their heart. I am sure that that heart is now speaking through my words as I say - God bless you both. God guide you. God keep you always." Only in England now, I think, do you find this personal love of her Sovereign and his family, a sentiment that surpasses even fidelity; a perfect understanding that makes even the poorest subject feel that he has a right to share in the joys and sorrows of the Royal Family. Monarchy can never die out in England. It is too deeply ingrained in the hearts of the people. 'For all its lavish pageantry, its impersonal splendour, the royal wedding remains first and foremost the happy ending to a real-life love story as romantic as any in the fairy tales.' Marina had always been known for her impeccable dress sense, and now that she was Duchess of the blood royal designers were more eager than ever to dress her. The English people had decided to take Marina to their hearts, which meant that from the day of he rmarriage she was watched. The clothes she wore, her mannerisms, her smile, all became news. And to the great joy of the English it was abundantly clear that at last there was a Princess in the House of Windsor with style. The Duchess of York was much loved, but even in her youth her dress was unexciting and conventional. The Duchess of Kent, with her romantic foreign background, her accented voice and her unrivalled bone strucutre, had chic. Her impact upon the country was much the same as was the Princess of Wales's on her marriage. As Dian brought knickerbockers into fashion, so Marina brought a shade called 'Marina Blue'. As Diana patronised English couturiers to help promote the British clothing industry, so Marina took to wearing cotton dresses (unheard of for an upper-class woman) to help alleviate the depression in the Lancanshire cotton industry. "She will not let herself be stormed by any whimsical change of fashion, but wears only what suits her. And her guiding principle is understatement, the unobvious and the unshowy." He said that she would often sketch changes to his designs, showing an unerring eye for design, and added that he believed her to be the greatest influence on fashion since Empress Eugenie set the Empire style throughout Europe. "The place of a constitutional king has greater temptations than almost any other, and fewer suitable occupations than almost any other. All the world and all he glory of it, whatever is most attractive, whatever is most seductive, has always been offered to the Prince of Wales of the day, and always will be. It is not rational to expect the best virtue where temptation is applied in the most trying form at the frailest time of human life." The love affair of the British people with their newest Princess continued, and so did the love affair of George and Marina. "If you want to see two completely happy people, you need only spend a few minutes with my niece Marina and her husband." She recalled being "impressed not so much by the externals of happiness - the brilliance of the conversation, the beautifully arranged rooms, the perfectly chosen meal - as by the deeper harmony of two temperaments." "In spite of the fact that they are now quite 'an old married couple' one still feels with them that life is a glorious adventure." It was an adventure, but not always glorious. Marina was sophisticated and cosmopolitan, but nothing in her upbringing can have prepared her for such treatment. However, she was strong enough - and her undoubted love was powerful enough - for her to live with this without her spirit breaking. She might occasionally break down in tears, but she was determined to hold on to George. Marina was royal by birth, whereas Elizabeth was a commoner, but Elizabeth had been a commoner with a court while Marina had been a Princess in exile. Perhaps the main problem was that both women were shy, yet both had their dignity and consciousness of position. And it cannot have failed to hurt the entirely popular Duchess of York to find the new royal Duchess so immediately step ahead in the fashion stakes. Some, who knew him well, were aware of the immense difficulties he would have in squaring up to his destiny. "My heart goes out to the Prince of Wales tonight, as he will mind so terribly being King. His loneliness, his seclusion, his isolation will be almost more than his highly-strung and unimaginative nature can bear." Not for the royal family a simple burial service with family and close friends; their grief could not be a private affair. "It was a long wait in the cold, but at last the procession came...As it passed, unendingly, a silence fell on the vast crowds...a feeling of awe came over us as we knew that the gun carriage was approaching and at last, at an easy pace, it did. The Monarch of the world lay in that small coffin, draped with the Union Jack, and immediately behind walked his son...Behind him were his brothers and the Princes, and the Kings. Slowly the gun carriage went up to St James's Street, watched by ten thousand wet eyes." "She is bejewelled, eyebrow-plucked, virtuous and wise. She is clearly out to help him. I have an uneasy feeling that in spite of her good intentions she is getting him out of touch with the type of person with whom he ought to associate." "We are all riveted by the position of Mrs. S. No man has ever been so in love as the present King." "In her presence, few other lights shone brightly. This was only one facet of her life. Her serene elegance was matched by a down-to-earth realism as sturdy as her will." "The most adoring of mothers, she watched over her children with a fidelity that was not wholly maternal. She taught them that their lives belong as much to their country as to themselves." "Into the hands of Almighty God...we commend his servant Marina, with thanksgiving upon our remembrance of her grace and beauty, her spirit of spontaneity, her courage in adversity, her unswerving service to this land of her adoption, her faithfulness in friendship, her percipient sympathy with sufferers, her love and knowledge of music and the arts, her knowledgeable patronage of so many human activities; not least do we thank God for the mutual affection which was established between her and our people and for her own loving family." To many she became just another member of the royal family, a foreign Princess who had brought a dash of glamour to England. But those who remember nor more than the craze for Marina Blue and a whimsical smile do Princess Marina wrong. She was an important part of an important process. In her way, she played an integral role in the survival of the British monarchy while so many others in Europe tumbled into the dust. It even appears that the media has won that battle, and she, exhausted by the strains the perpetual intrusion has placed her under since her marriage, is withdrawing from public life. Marina and George trod the fine line between being dutiful members of the family and enjoying a way of life that Edward VII would have understood. The real art in George VI's kingship lay in moving with the times and yet succeeding in retaining that air of mystery, of separateness, which keeps the monarch respected and, more important still, held almost in reverence by the public. Marina, with her looks, her romantic background and her tragic widowhood, had all the ingredients for a mysterious Prince. "Its mystery is its life. We must not bring in the daylight upon magic." It was in keeping the magic and mystery of the monarchy alive that the Queen Mother and Prince Marina were so successful. The Queen with her romantic, diaphanous dresses and radiant grin, Princess Marina with her smart chic, romantic history and wistful smile reminded the people why they had and why they still loved the monarchy. And neither ever let their guard drop in public. She brought her children up to take their part in the modern royal family, but that did not mean they or she should ever forget the essence of their royalty. That Marina could do this while still having that most important gift of modern royalty - the common touch - is proof of her aptitude for her job. Marina took the monarchy, but not herself, seriously. By the time George VI's daughter Elizabeth succeeded to the throne the monarchy was respected, loved and admired by the vast majority of the British public. The royal family had carved out a new niche for itself, made itself once again indispensable. It had moved closer to the people, but when it did so it was in such a way as to make its separateness almost tangible. One notable sign of the monarchy's greater popular approach is the walkabout, a modern invention which owes much to the Queen Mother. She caused the security men endless worries when, in America in 1939, she mingled freely with the crowds who had come to see her. But it touched the people, and was an inspired piece of publicity. Marina was not an intellectual, but her instict and her training taught her all she needed to know about her calling as a Princess of the House of Windsor. "So long as the human heart is strong and the human reason weak, royalty will be strong because it appeals to diffused feeling, and Republics weak because they appeal to the understanding." Marina's heart was strong in just the way that appealed to the hearts of her niece's subjects: were more members of the royal family like Marina, there would have been infinitely less trouble for the monarchy. Could the young, modern members of the House of Windsor remember their aunt, have the humbleness to follow her example and the dignity to carry their trials as lightly as she, the royal house could regain its lost position in the lives of the British. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- July 1935. She was five years old, lithe and skinny. When he picked her up to whirl her around him, she laughed and twirled in his orbit, her feet flying out over the sand. Now, this summer's day by the ocean, he was all hers for the moment, spinning around him until the world was just a blur. Yet even as she circled, she knew what was expected. She could sense the instant she must look up and give her smile, and she gave it just right - as the came around with the ocean behind her. The photographer got a perfect shot. In adult life Grace Kelly was to prove something of a chameleon. Grace the sensible, Grace the sensuous, Grace the frivolous - she had a whole range of personalities, and she flung herself into each with rare energy and commitment. It was not a matter of superficial posing. She passionately believed in every role in which she cast herself, and it was her skill to isolate and insulate her various selves from each other with such success that people often swore they had met a totally different person. Grace was naturally endowed with the tricks and techniques of the actress, and she had a conviction, an absolute belief in the part she was filling at that minute. It was around this time that Grace began to manifest the intriguing dualism that was to become the central feature of her adult character - the prim and proper Goody Two-Shoes inside whom lurked a wild and often reckless spirit. This was not a simple matter of hypocrisy. Grace was never a sly or deceitful person. Grace the naughty was absolutely as authentic as Grace the good, and it was the appetizing tension between these conflicting personalities that was to provide the essence of her appeal as a film star - the outwardly reserved and cool girl who hinted at such wildness underneath. Grace had matured early and looked older than her years, but she suffered from a crippling lack of self-confidence. "I was terribly shy when I was young," she later remembered. "I almost crawled into the woodwork I was so self-conscious." Grace conjured up these painful memories in 1974, when she was nearly forty-five years old, one of the most famous women in the world and universally revered as an example of poise and self-assurance. But the ache was clearly still there. For all her beauty and apparent serenity, the princess retained a core of insecurity that dated back to her childhood years. It was as if she still held inside her the plain and gawky little girl that nobody noticed. Her uncles each had their own ways of shrivelling people with a look - scornful in Jack's case, more brittle and aloof in Geroge's - and Grace developed her own rapier glance that was a combination of the two. It could be devastating. If you chanced to earn Grace Kelly's displeasure, you were left in no doubt that you had offended a member of the royal family of East Falls. This chilly side was to become another of the prominent elements in Grace's public persona in later life. It seemed to go neatly with her cool good looks, and it dovetailed with the plausible but mistaken assumption that was commonly made about her background - that she came from the aristocracy of Philadelphia. In her extraordinary career as an actress and princess, Grace appeared to the outside world to be the very epitome of class and breeding. She successfully conveyed the impression that she was reared in the elite environment of white gloves, white dresses, and fluttering debutantes. She could be distinctly off-hand with people whom she did not know well, and this earned her a reputation as "snotty." "She was a loner. She looked like a model who came in, did her thing, and left. There were students who were in awe of her because of her beauty and that distant quality she had. I always thought she was kind of cold." It was the apparent effortlessness of Grace's success that got under people's skin. "She always seemed sort of swanlike. Grace always seemed to be cruising." When he reflected on the difference between the tigress that he went to bed with, and the proper and demure girl that he escorted in every other context, he came to feel that part of Grace Kelly must be very complicated indeed. "Basically, she was shy. But physically, she was not shy. Maybe it was something she was hiding. She was like a different person." "I sat down and studied this picture, and I noticed something miraculous. It came out in the photograph - the difference between what she was in reality, and the way that she imagined herself to be. You could see it there in the print. When you looked at that picture, you were not looking at her. You were looking at the illusion of her, which is another way of putting that old Hollywood thing, that the camera loved her. And the camera did more than love her - it was insane about her." "You have to learn how not to think any more, and how to act before you think." "Thinking has no part in this process. Work from your instincts. Good acting comes from the heart." Cut off from the world in the most definitive fashion, she did not have to hide her wilder instincts in the sort of secret life that she had created in New York. She could take a few risks and enjoy the sensation of being marginally out of control. The frolics came to an abrupt halt in the new year when the cast got back to civilization. Rumors of romance had preceded them, and reporters looked eagerly for clues as the company arrived in England. Virginia and Deborah were possible Bergman substitutes, but they were too cut-glass and schoolmistressy. It was Grace who had the correct and intriguing mixture of fire and ice. She embodied the ambiguity which had provided the tension in Bergman's creamy presence on the screen. The physical resemblance was quite striking - and with her white gloves, Grace also came wth a social veneer. "It has been quite a few years since we had a girl in pictures that looked like she was born on the right side of Park Avenue." Grace Kelly struck a timely chord. After only three slight roles, she could offer Hollywood the casting equivalent of the Biblical and classical epics that the studios were churning out to prove their respectability in the early 1950s. She was the very opposite of the sweater girls. "We are sick of flamboyant, bouncy, flashy sex. Grace Kelly is all the more exciting for her quality of restraint." With her cool good looks and restrained public style, Grace appeared to be virginity personified - the very essence of pedigree and purity. But this, of course, was not quite all the story. "It is more interesting to discover the sex in a woman than to have it thrown at you." His heroines acted out the intriguing ambiguities of beauty and seduction - the alchemy which transforms apparently chaste purity into flaming passion. Grace Kelly fitted the profile precisely. "An actress like her gives the director certain advantages. He can afford to be more colorful with a love scene when it is played by a lady than when it is played by a hussy. Using one actress, the scene can be vulgar. But if you put a lady in the same circumstances she can be exciting and glamorous." Grace was operating in her frosty, arm's-length mode. She had just arrived back from London, and she was still suffering from the abrupt let-down in her relationship with Clark Gable. She did not intend to get picked up and dropped again. "She was giving out a feeling of great austerity." This lady was not for killing. The director put particular effort into the choreographing of the murder struggle. Grace was to writhe and moan in a nightgown, arching her hands beseechingly into the audience, her bare legs trashing in the yellowy-green darkness. It was a scene that needed a real lady to moderate its evident sexuality, and he could not wait to shape the performance of the young actress who, he felt sure, would prove to be a "snow-covered volcano." Even the master of the unexpected, however, was not prepared for the sort of volcano that Grace turned out to be. A cool professional on the set, she conducted herself as a completely different character when the camera stopped rolling, fulfilling the director's fantasies to a degree he could scarcely have imagined. He recalled the havoc that his not-so-virginal young star wrought among the attractive males on the set. "All the men fell in love with Grace. They were around her in scores - Tony and Frederick really fell for her. The whole cast seemed to fall in love with her. Everyone was sending flowers. Every day another bouquet would come." Grace had not reckoned with the power of gossip in a closed and jealous community. Statuesque and regal, she was a natural model for all the clothes chosen for her, draping them off her finely contoured shoulders with rare elegance and style. As Lisa Fremont, Grace Kelly was frisky, lighthearted, and enchanting. She encapsulaed all the innocence-with-sexual-promise which fascinated the director and which he correctly identified as the essence of the Kelly appeal. Grace Kelly as showcased by Alfred Hitchcock was a captivating and wondrous creation - light, breezy, clean, and wholesome. But the irony of the laughing Snow Princess was that words like light, clean, and wholesome were the very last to describe the imagination of the stout maestro who had first seen the vision and had given it life. She was a warm, vivacious, and satisfyingly solid woman in many ways - but he came to feel she had an innermost emotional core which he could only diagnose as immature. When Grace Kelly arrived in Paris in the spring of 1954 she was exhausted. She had made five movies in just eight months, and Alfred Hitchcock was waiting for her down in Cannes, ready to start another. Grace had only a few hours in the French capital between her morning arrival by plane and her evening departure on the famous Blue Train for the Riviera, and by rights she should have caught up on her sleep. But she could think of better things to do in Paris on a bright spring day. She was full of admiration for the young actress's willpower and sense of purpose. "There is a lot of solid jaw under that quiet face. I have never worked with anyone who had a more intelligent grasp of what she was doing. But she still has this rather charming childish quality - the exhuberance of a child in a candy shop." Grace had gone through some tough times in her long hard winter of filmmaking, and now she was set to have some fun. Grace had another free day before filming started, so lunchtime found her with Oleg, a picnic of cold duck, and a bottle of Montrachet '49 in a romantic cove beside the MEditerranean. Out on the clear blue water floated a swimming raft, and it was on the deck of this raft, beneath the warm June sun, that Cassini made his final pitch. The fiesty and independent girl-about-town was transplanted to the south of France. She was on holiday there, and she was given all the naughtiness and sense of adventure that a healthy trust fund can encourage. The wealthy and wilful Miss Stevens was just the sort of girl who would send a man a postcard reading, "Those who love me shall follow me." The verbal sparring was deliberately tight and suggestive, and it illustrated what the director had said about his first use of Grace - that a lady could help him get away with things he would not dare attempt with a hussy. It was as if people were so mesmerized by Grace Kelly's wholesome aura, they could not believe that a nice girl would really have said those things - or perhaps they were swayed by the sheer exhuberant joy with which she said it. You knew exactly what she meant, but she smiled so sweetly. How could you possibly take offense? Grace enjoyed making the movie. For the first time in her filmmaking career she had an escort whom she could acknowledge openly, without complications. Cary Grant had brought his wife Betsy Drake on location, so with Alfred and Alma Hitchcock, Oleg and Grace completed a natural and merry six-some, dining out in hill villages and in the great restaurants of the Riviera. Grace enjoyed the camaraderie of being away from home in an exotic location, and she was no longer the greenhorn of the party. Grace fell in love with the south of France - the dusty roads, the dark-green cypress trees, the villas on distant hillsides. Several of the movie's sequences were set in and around the little Principality of Monaco, and people later remembered how Grace happened to glance down from the hills onto what seemed to be a secret garden, small and mysterious, surrounded by ancient fortifications. There were enough free days when Grace was not working, and one evening toward the end of the location filming, she and Cassini slipped away for a little dinner on their own, in a simple fish restaurant on a pier by Cannes harbor. The company was due to trek back to Hollywood a few days later for six weeks of studio shooting, and Grace grew serious at the approach of reality. "It was an altogether magical evening. I was filled with pride and love, and was entirely enraptured by her." No longer was Grace the mysterious and unknown predator who represented a danger to happily married stars. Her spectacular new fame had made her the innocent heroine, while the comparatively obscure Cassini was now the figure from the shadows - a marauding playboy whose claims on Grace's affections aroused the suspicions of both her studio and the press. Why, of all the attractive men that were available, had "the ethereal Miss Kelly" picked on the "devilish" Cassini? There were those who disapproved of Grace Kelly kissing Cary Grant so firmly on the lips. The movie, they felt, featured a lady who had become altogether too saucy and adventurous. "There has been a growing tendency to overplay the sexy side of her portrayals. I wonder if Grace Kelly knew she had so much sex appeal." But sexiness, sauce, and adventure were integral components of Grace Kelly's appeal. Without them she was June Allyson or Jennifer Jones. It was Grace's knack to incorporate the primness of these models of propriety with the naughtiness of Jane Russell and the sweater girls. Lisa Fremont and Frances Stevens were characters who were simultaneously innocent and experienced, and the dynamic of Grace's screen persona came from the tension that these contradictions generated. Though Grace's vibrance, polish, and self-assurance were in a well-established movie tradition, her implied sexuality was something new. She was clearly experienced in some way that was only hinted at, but this had not been at the cos tof her freshness or respectability. She was no virgin, but she was no slut either, and in squaring this particularly difficult circle, she spoke to the shy and mysterious questings in the hearts of women across the land. "Hollywood has over-worked the word 'sexy'. It really takes them by surprise when they see it displayed in a new way." The details of this new way were more a matter of instinct than calculation on Grace's part. Bing Crosby won praie for his depiction of Frank Elgin, but the unexpected power and poignancy that Grace displayed in the title role was equally acclaimed. "Kelly extends her range down to the bottoms of un-glamour, dead-faced discouragement. She gives it everything a great actress could." Her acting was described as "intense" and "perceptive". She had made a major contribution to a "trenchant, intense, and moving film...one of the fine and forceful pictures of the year." By now there was scarcely a magazine that had not done its cover story on Grace Kelly, though the writers often found fresh material difficult to gather. Extracting a personal anecdote from Grace Kelly, complained one reporter, was like "trying to chip granite with a toothpick." "A Grace Kelly anecdote?" cheerfully agreed a friend. "I don't think Grace would let an anecdote happen to her." But Grace's inscrutability became the story itself, and this served to enhance her image of intelligent refinement. "A person has to keep something to herself," she said, "or your life is just a layout in a magazine." She was not cultivating mystery for the narcissistic reasons of a Dietrich or Garbo. Her rationale smacked of modernity and thorough good sense, and if a writer worked hard enough, Grace would come up with the goods. "I don't want to dress up a picture with just my face. If anybody starts using me as scenery, I'll do something about it." It was the small hours of the morning by the time that Grace got back to her bungalow in the Bel Air Hotel. She was all alone, with only her Oscar for company, and she set the little metal manikin on the top of her dressing table. She lay down on the bed, she later remembered, and looked across the room at the statuette that represented so much effort and hope and sacrifice, the culmination of her life and work to that point. "There we were," she recalled, "just the two of us. It was terrible. It was the loneliest moment of my life." The cover displayed Grace as an untouchable icon. Shot against a background of bright rose pink, her complexion seemed air-brushed in its perfection. She was like alabaster, an image of fantasy beyond reach. But he felt sure there was more. He found Grace an intriguing and rather challenging person to meet. Beneath the crispness of the professional model, he could detect daring, intelligence, and a certain vulnerability - the whole complex of contradictory impluses that made up her screen persona, and he felt certain there must be a way of capturing this personality in an image that moved beyond the traditional glossy star portrayal. He had been experimenting with underwater photography, and he had an idea for a different sort of pose - Grace rising from the water. They tried it a few times, standing on tiptoes in the ocean to dodge the sea urchins on the bottom. Grace ducked down and surfaced seven times just as she was - and the eighth time, bingo! Howell Conant had got the photo he was looking for. Conant's picture of Grace Kelly's sculpted head rising damp and fresh from the waters of the Caribbean captured all the allure of the actress's ambiguous beauty. It was timeless. It could stand today on a Lancome or Clinique counter: the swanlike neck, the drop of seawater for an earring, the staring eyes with their level look of appraisal - or is it invitation? Chastely but intriguingly enveiled by the ocean, Grace stares up at the camera, exuding wholesomeness and freshness - and a sexuality of extraordinary power. Howell Conant got his pictures back to New York, and he never had to look for work again. When his images of Grace Kelly appeared in Collier's that summer, they caused a sensation. They had a vigor and freshness that lifted them above conventional glmaour photography. Statuesque in a canoe, making a speech to a peeled orange, wearing a man's dress shirt with her hair scraped back simply from her forehead, Grace came vibrantly alive - young and uninhibited, on the very crest of her own personal wave. Conant's shots glowed with the serenity and wildness of this woman. The up-and-coming stars of the era queued to have Conant work the same alchemy for them, and advertisers beat a path to his studio, anxious to bottle and sell the elegance, class, or whatever it was that the photographer had captured in his few days with Grace Kelly on a Jamaica beach. Grace and Jean-Pierre made no attempt to conceal the delight they took in love the second time around. Hand in hand, they made a very public assault together on the sights and excitements of Paris when they went up for the Cannes Film Festival in the middle of May. Jean-Pierre was on his home turf, and he took great pride in introducing Grace to friends and colleagues. Implusive, optimistic, and happily filling his mind with all sorts of ventures for the future, Jean-Pierre saw Grace as the woman with whom he would spend the rest of his life. "When a man is deeply in love with a person of Miss Kelly's quality, marriage is obviously what one would dream of." "I knew then that she was not planning to marry him. She was still waiting for her prince." Mrs. Kelly was talking figuratively, of course - aided by a fair measure of hindsight. Her friends were passing into a new phase. As Grace did a roll call of her contemporaries, every one of them a young mother, the tears welled up in her eyes. "I want all of that," she said. Then, looking hard at her friend, as if wondering if it was safe for her to reveal something that was very, very private, she added the real problem. "But I want more," she said. Grace Kelly threw herself earnestly into every new part that she played. It was a sort of therapy fo rher. Each new character offered her wise words to say and a fresh spirit to inhabit. They were practical tryouts for a young woman who had encountered some difficulty in foreseeing the real-life implications of her dreams, and when she struck a dramatic note she liked, she would weave a strand of that character in her own personality. It was a complex and interactive two-way process - the parts that appealed to her existing impulses, and the parts which helped her to locate something new in her still-developing self. "Think what it means to be a swan; to glide like a dream on the smooth surface of the lake and never go on the shore. On dry land, where ordinary people walk, the swan is awkward, even ridiculous. When she waddles up the bank, she painfully resembles a different kind of bird. A goose. So there she must stay, out on the lake, silent, white, majestic. Be a bird, but never fly. Know one song, but never sing it until the moment of her death." Professionalism, determination, composure, self-control - being a princess apparently called for qualities that were not so different from being a movie star. Real love with a real prince - might it actually be possible? Grace could not yet be sure where her secret correspondence with Rainier might be taking her, but she did know that premature disclosure and the risk of publicity could bring everything to a grinding halt. Grace the practical was taking good care of Grace the dreamer. By the time Marilyn Monroe was joking over Monaco's future, Prince Rainier was deep in correspondence with a film star who had a very different image. Struck at the start by how Grace did not conform to the normal movie-star stereotype, Rainier had felt himself increasingly drawn toward the aura of purity she evoked. Rainier had taken to Grace from the moment she confided in him that she had not wanted to do the photo session that brought them together. Rainier himself had felt just the same. He had been a shy child, just as Grace had been, never feeling quite adequate in the duties placed upon him by membership in a demanding and high-profile family. As adult celebrities, neither the prince nor the movie star had any intention of giving up their fame, but both were starting to betray naggings of unhappiness about it, as if they felt that their public faces did not do justice to their private selves. Grace struck Rainier as steady, constant, honest - and he also liked her sense of humor. She had the spontaneity of an American without the besetting American sin of brashness. Rainier was curious and daring. He was also a spirit who seemed faintly bored and lost. He could be a melancholy fellow, a young man who had so many options, and nothing that he really wanted. Grace Kelly worried a lot. She worried about the "Mr. Kelly" problem. She worried about getting old as an actress. She worried about how she could please her demanding parents while also gaining independence for herself with the man of her dreams - and HRH Prince Rainier of Monaco provided a single, simple, and spectacular solution to all of the above. To be a princess. To be married. To live in a castle in the south of France. To turn real life into a movie, and to live it, securely, forever. All this, plus the love of a witty, red-blooded man with dark brown eyes into which she felt able to gaze for hours. If it took Grace Kelly only a day or so to fall in love with the idea of becoming a princess, it seemed clear that the rest of America would make up its mind even quicker than that. The press would go wild. It was a mingling of so many cherished fantasies, picking up where the dreams of Hollywood left off and giving them an extra twist. Oleg Cassini, she decided, was entitled to a personal meeting, and she selected the Staten Island ferry as the forlorn but sentimental setting for their farewell. "I have made my destiny," she told Oleg, as the cold wind whipped of the gray Atlantic. With sirens sounding in the harbor and the Statue of Liberty slipping by, the only touch needed was background music for the credits to roll - an apt and somehow caring conclusion to a love affair that had always hovered on the edge of make-believe. Grace's ability to play the good girl lay at the heart of her appeal as a film star, and purity was even more crucial to her image as a princess. It was unthinkable in 1956 that a princess should not be a virgin when she married. It was part of the fantasy, the still potent idea that one purpose of celebrity was to set a moral example to the rest of the world. People did not expect quite so much of film stars and entertainers, but virtue was a sine qua non of being royal - and this was the new, grander category of distinction to which Grace hoped to graduate. "First I had to fight the studio to avoid being a commodity. Now my own family trades me on the open market. Doesn't it ever end? When do I get to be just a person?" "Never" was the short, hard answer to that. Making the particular marriage choice that she did was Grace Kelly's definitive farewell to that most basic of human comforts - being able to mind one's own business. Grace had another, equally powerful reason why she should want to keep even the fact of her correspondence with Rainier to herself. Though it seemed to be forgotten sometimes in the blitz of interviews and lights, there was a genuine, private reality to the engagement of the prince and the film star, and the letters that they wrote to each other had contained the real heart of that. It was not much, but it was one corner into which the world could not pry, somehwere that Grace could walk hand in hand with her prince, unwatched and undisturbed in the privacy of their secret garden. From the moment their engagement was announced, Rainier and Grace had been repeatedly asked if Grace's marriage meant the end of her movie career, and they had both answered vaguely - Grace because she did not know, Rainier because he did. The prince had absolutely no doubt that Grace would have to give up her acting. He had first been attracted to her because she was not like a film star, and he could see no way at all that it would be either practical or dignified for his wife to keep on working as a Hollywood performer. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Divided Prince At 21, Britain’s Prince William seems to have shouldered both his father’s destiny and his mother’s myth. Dutiful Will Wales is also the charismatic hope of a battered dynasty – and of many a highborn beauty. But his world is treacherous and filled with the shadows of tragedy. It is one thing to shoulder the lorryload of expectations that go with being heir to the crown. But William is also heir to the myth and mystique of – as his uncle Earl Spencer put it at her funeral - “the unique, the complex, the extraordinary and irreplaceable Diana, whose beauty, both internal and external, will never be extinguished from our minds.” Certainly not when her elder son, who turned 21 in June, is around as a constant reminder. Not that William is likely to escape those ever present royal-protection officers, each with a Glock 9-mm. semi-automatic tucked inside his jacket. They have, it turns out, plenty of reason to be there. But Her Majesty – who much to her own surprise became the youngest queen in the world four years ago – has a great deal more on her schedule than your average soccer mom. As her power and influence grows, the world’s youngest queen is becoming a leader throughout the Arab world – and beyond. Her exquisite face, with its chiseled features, luscious mouth, and smoldering dark eyes, seems custom-made for the doting eye of the camera. Endlessly photographed in a dazzling succession of designer outfits, the willowy, swan-necked queen has become an international fashion icon, her glamour rendered even more potent by her incisive intellect. Quick-witted and unfailingly articulate, she can discuss virtually any topic with extraordinary poise and seeming effortlessness. “I didn’t grow up thinking I was going to be queen, and I think that changes my whole perspective on it. For me, ‘queen’ is not something that I am. It’s something that I do.” “It wasn’t so much about ‘Oh! I’m going to be a queen!’ It was ‘Oh – look at the responsibilities I’m going to have.’ It was daunting, and I needed to figure out how I was going to deal with all those responsibilities.” Her potential for such a role was apparent long before she joined Jordan’s royal family, according to Kirk. “When I met her, I thought, she is going to be a total leader; she is quickly going to become a star. Since that time she has become a stateswoman, and she is looking beyond her own country to the wider world. She’s a very adept diplomat, and she can schmooze any group. Her good looks help, but she has education and poise as well.” Determined and earnest, her approach has struck a responsive chord, particularly among female subjects, who often cite her as a role model. “Our queen is a hardworking professional woman. She’s sincere, she’s a no-nonsense woman, and she takes her job seriously.” These days the Queen seems triumphantly in command of all her roles, although she’s far too smart to crow about her accomplishments. “I feel a little bit more relaxed now. It’s important for me to stay true to myself, and not focus too much on how I want to be viewed, because that could lead to me being insincere. The best route for me is doing what I believe in.” Jordanians seem incapable of imagining their country headed by anyone other than a Hashemite ruler. “After all, their name is the name of the country. It’s the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. You can’t really gauge the popularity of a monarch here; it’s like talking about God.” To a growing coterie of admirers, what most strikingly sets Jordan apart is its very liberated queen. “She’s quite a role model for women. When Abdullah ended up as king, the thought was: Will the palace bureaucracy force her to be a Stepford queen, or will she emerge in her own role? And she, immediately, started carving out her own role. She is a unique asset for Jordan.” “She’s obviously very interested. But she’s not just lending her name or visiting the projects. She’s actually getting into the nuts and bolts of how these programs work. She has depth in the way she grasps the issues, and she commands a lot of respect because of that.” She is also clever enough to avoid the obvious pitfalls. “She knows right where the limits are. She is a master at pushing the envelope for women, always being appropriate while advancing their cause. She is utterly charming to all the old chauvinists, and her fellow Jordanians regard her with great deference and respect. Her internal legitimacy is very powerful. The people identify strongly with her. She has sponsored enterprises throughout the country, with loans that go to everything from buying a sewing machine to start a sewing shop to renting cell phones so a village can get telephone service. She gives them dignity.” The queen is wearing a black suit whose cinched belt and flirty little peplum emphasize her minuscule waist. Her pleated, knee-length skirt swings entrancingly as she walks, her legs as long and perfect as those of a Thoroughbred, her stride surefooted despite her icicle-thin sling-back stilettos. Alone, the King might seem more personable than glamorous. But the breathtaking dark beauty at his side transforms him completely, and the delegates can't take their eyes off her. "It's quite extraordinary, the manner in which the world listens to you." The potential influence of Queen Rania can scarcely be overestimated. She represents not only a bridge between the Arab world and the West but also an educated, empowered female leader capable of facilitating enormous progress for Third World women. "She understands that she can be a role model for women. She understands the nuances of our culture and also understands the WEstern world. She does not mind taking on the tough issues, and she understands what needs to be done. She is still in the very beginning of this process, and there is big potential there." "She's very young, and she clearly has a lot of room to grow. But this is the big leagues, and she's playing a perfect game." She had certainly not gauged her own unpopularity, even though she came up against "the appalling manners of the British upper classes." "As far as I know, there is not one incident to demonstrate that she was ever guilty of the incivility she received from others." "She carried on with great grace until it became too much." Nothing in his manner betrays his status as the most promiment living member of the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha line, as illustrious as any in Europe. For some men power - or "quote unquote power," as he gingerly puts it - can be a kind of hell. "The whole Bulgarian society said no - intellectals, the church, ordinary people, politicians. We all helped our King make the decision." The episode remains a source of justifiable pride to Bulgarians. "I see why they're afraid of him. He is a charismatic, very thoughtful person with the stature and confidence of someone of accomplishment. It was immediately evident to me that he was a force to be reckoned with." Until recently, European royal families formed a clan, seemingly united and hermetically sealed, of between 250 and 300 members. The royal clan has its customs, its tastes, its crazes, its hobbies (jewels and genealogy), its codes, and its secrets, and it keeps a whole crowd of skeletons closely guarded in its closets. The clan's liturgies are its marriages and funerals, which display great pomp and turn into beautifully staged performances. There have been many cases where kings' wives, though not born into royalty, have literally saved the monarchy from decline; cases where young women from various social statuses have married crown princes only to increase markedly the presige of the dynasties they have joined. This is truer than ever today, since there is no other measure for success than each individual's human qualities, and since the destiny of a monarchy now depends mainly on the value of the person embodying it. Thus, if they are worthy of the tradition they symbolize and of the title they bear, kings reassure a public worried by modern problems and lend it confidence by the continuity they provide. When kings assume their position with both pride and modesty, and show that they possess the necessary virtues, especially dignity, self-denial, a capacity for hard work, and a sense of duty, they offer a role model to respect, admire, and even love.