Sunday, June 14, 2009

High Society: Grace Kelly and Hollywood by Donald Spoto:

Christopher Silvester finds a biography by an admirer of Grace Kelly relentlessly well-mannered

By Christopher Silvester: The Telegraph,12 Jun 2009

When Grace Kelly dazzled the screen in her first starring role, as the almost murderee in Alfred Hitchcock’s Dial M for Murder (1954), she represented a new phenomenon in Hollywood. She was an actress trained in the new medium of screen drama, which in those days meant live television, and from 1950 to 1954 she acted in three dozen live dramas. Her film career, though spanning a slightly longer period, was even more concentrated: 11 movies, 10 of which were made in only 42 months. She was also a new kind of object of erotic fascination. Like her contemporary Audrey Hepburn (the subject of a previous biography by Donald Spoto), she represented an alternative type to Marilyn Monroe or Italian imports such as Sophia Loren and Gina Lollobrigida.
In terms of the movie business and celebrity, she was something of a low-key rebel. Although she signed a standard seven-year contract with MGM, she negotiated every other year off to return to the theatre. She didn’t snatch at every part she was offered and even threatened to retire unless she was given the opportunity to star in The Country Girl, for which she won an Oscar. In that film she insisted on wearing glasses and lacklustre apparel in keeping with the character, whereas other actresses would probably have wanted their appearance to be enhanced. Similarly, in a 1955 photo shoot for Collier’s magazine she took the bold decision to be photographed without make-up, wearing glasses, in an oversized shirt and emerging from a pool with wet hair.
She always preferred New York to Hollywood and abandoned stardom to marry Prince Rainier of Monaco.
The full review here.
And a review in The Guardian.

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