Ice-Cold Grace Kelly Has She Got A Heart?

Can Grace warm up? Her closest friends don’t know. The most significant twist to the Kelly-Aumont romance is Hollywood’s skepticism. People took a “we’ll see” attitude as soon as the story broke. Not that they doubted Aumont’s persuasiveness and charm. Not that they considered the affair a press agent’s dream. Put bluntly, their question was—can Grace Kelly love any man?

It looks as though Grace is trapped in her own legend. She’s been billed as unapproachable, reserved, self-controlled, to the point where everyone believes she just couldn’t break down and be human. Or could she?

Self-appointed experts on Kelly can marshal evidence on both sides of the question. With no malice intended either. Everybody hopes Grace can warm up—to Aumont or some other man. Her friends feel it’s high time she let herself behave like a woman as well as a lady.

Certainly the photographs of Grace on her Paris holiday with Jean-Pierre document a new and very warm Kelly, radiant, pliant, in love. She looked like any woman who’s been flattered, courted and charmed.

Adulation is no new experience for Grace. She’s had tons of it in the last two years. Sought after for photographs, personal appearances, films, endorsements. Rewarded by Hollywood’s highest honor—the Oscar. The Kelly Look has become a national byword. The Kelly face has been imitated, unsuccessfully, by young hopefuls. The Kelly comments, infrequent though they are, make news. But this was different.

Jean-Pierre treated Grace like a woman. And so she behaved like one. Besides—and this is important—it was only an interlude.

The door to freedom, a freedom she craves, was still open. She was going home in a few days. This was only a whirl, an escape if you will, an emotional binge.

Champagne, the perfumed Paris night, the magical city of lovers, the romantic Aumont, conspired, not to turn Grace’s head but to open her heart. And for the moment they succeeded. But when Grace got off the plane in America again She was wearing her white gloves once more—and that cool, collected Kelly look.

She admitted that, “Jean-Pierre has asked me. I haven’t said no. He’s awfully nice you know.” Another time she flatly denied there was anything between them now but added the teaser, “There would have been two years ago.”

Two years ago Grace Kelly was nobody. Today she’s somebody. She would benefit little professionally from a romance with a star like Aumont. Now she knows her way around. She doesn’t need to be tipped off on the right places and people. She’s arrived, and she’s gotten there on her own terms.

Jean-Pierre, although popular in France, is hardly a big name in the States. A link with Grace is invaluable to him, publicity-wise. He doesn’t deny that. He doesn’t even deny that his first interest in Miss Kelly was publicity-inspired; JeanPierre has always had a knack for headlines. But that was just the start. Now he is deeply, sincerely involved with her. His proposal was no joke, no attention-getter. Proof of his sincerity is the fact that he has stopped talking about Grace and his own feelings. Reporters have had, recently, a hard time getting statements from Jean—formerly the darling of the give-us-a-quote boys. “Please don’t press me,” Jean-Pierre begs now. “Grace’s family is very proper, very careful. I do not want to make a bad impression. Any statements must come from them.”

Grace’s family hovers in the background of her every move, her every relationship. She may not be entirely typical of them, but her upbringing colors her life, her reactions to the world. The Kellys make a habit of success on their own terms. (In any field.) Grace went into acting. Being a! Kelly she won without compromising herself. The Kellys have taken home Pulitzer prizes, Olympic gold medals, diamond trophies and now they have an Oscar on the mantel. It’s just another trophy.

It’s hard to believe Grace would have used Jean-Pierre two years ago to climb the ladder of success. She’s always made it on her own. Natural beauty and competent acting have carried her to the top. Perhaps she only meant that two years ago she hadn’t tasted success and so love and marriage would have appealed more.

Certainly Jean-Pierre has done everything he can to show her the delights of both. In Cannes they swam by day and romanced by night. They had amusing lunches, romantic, candlelight dinners, wine in sidewalk cafés. They held hands in the movies. In Paris, Jean-Pierre showed Grace every aspect of that varied and wonderful city. They night-clubbed. They danced. They sight-saw. Then he started on the joys of domesticity.

Grace had installed herself in a Champs Elysees hotel. She was seldom in it. Every morning she left for the country with Jean-Pierre. He owns a charming manor house near Malmaison—a town famous for the house Napoleon built there for Josephine. She died there five years after he divorced her, and the town has much that is quaint and curious and historic.

There Grace met Jean-Pierre’s daughter Marie-Christine. She is a delightful child. Nine years old, she speaks three languages perfectly. She adores her father, loves playing hostess for him. She takes care of him like a little mother. Every night. she sees that there is a snack and something warm to drink waiting for him. If he comes home too late for her to be up, she leaves a tray at his bedside.

Jean-Pierre returns her affection with interest. Once he gave her a mink coat. Nobody laughed. He was trying to relive the moment of pride and happiness he knew when he gave her mother her first. They have preserved as best they can the feeling of being a family. They look like two who have known a happy home.

Marie-Christine is a good hostess, solicitous of her guests. Grace was welcomed with dignity and aplomb. She must have reminded Grace of herself as a child, poised, not easily embarrassed. The picture could not help but be appealing.

But Grace loves her career. Not because of the money or the adulation. Because of the power. She doesn’t misuse power. No temper tantrums, no regal commands, no ultimatums. The power Grace enjoys is the power to be her own boss, run her own show. Independently wealthy, thanks to her father, Grace could buy her way out of any film contract. And she needn’t even mention it to Dad because J. P. Kelly has made his four children legally independent of him financially. He believes in letting them handle their own affairs and made it possible years ago. The Kelly family is more like a corporation with the children paying their parents their share of family expenses.

Happily, the role Grace wants to play privately fits her public personality. Or rather it did before Aumont. He managed to crack the Kelly composure, and even though her armor looks as good as new Grace may well become dissatisfied with the life she leads and professes to love. Grace probably learned some things about herself in Paris. Having tasted romance briefly she may not be able to repress her basic feelings so successfully.

Hollywood’s amateur analysts insist that Grace doesn’t need a husband and knows it. They say she doesn’t really want to be married and feels safer with men who don’t want to be tied down either. Like Oleg Cassini, of whom Gene Tierney said, “I adore that man. I’m crazy about him but he doesn’t want to be married and I can’t live with him unmarried.”

Grace may be one of those women, rare as they are, who will never need a husband. She may be slow to marry like Olivia De Havilland. Or she might arrange her life like that of Garbo or Katharine Hepburn. She won’t be lonely, because she can take care of herself.

Grace likes men and men like Kelly. She enjoys being courted but shies away when the man gets serious. One observer suggests that Grace is practiced in the art of turning down a proposal, “We must be moving along—things to do—places to go—Oscars to win—you know . . .” Another says she’s probably had few proposals because no man wants to take such an excellent chance of being rejected. And Grace looks so remote up there on a pedestal.

Who put Grace on the pedestal? Did she? Or her father? Does she feel superior to men? Or is she afraid of them? What about women? Does she want to be one of them, a wife and mother? Can she play the female part off-stage?

Significantly enough, one Hollywood wife commented recently that she never worried about her husband when he played opposite Grace. Grace would probably consider that a compliment where another woman would call it a crack. The truth is that Grace doesn’t compete with women. Even in Hollywood, where you’re supposed to. She’s different. She’s a lady. She’s a law unto herself. If she has a fling it’s in Paris. She assumes a man is free and able to take care of himself and his heart. Grace is no predatory female. Which may explain why some women consider her cold and insist she’s disinterested in romance. Grace’s code is very nearly a man’s, unusual in Hollywood but conventionally Philadelphian, where girls play the game fair and square.

The only trouble is, Aumont is not a Philadelphia boy. Nor a Hollywood wolf. For all his worldly ways he is emotional, able to be hurt. His love is not given lightly. He loved his wife, Maria Montez, with all his heart. He grieved over her death for years. He began dating, eventually. He laughed and was gay and very French. That was publicity. Beneath the laughter he was still lost and lonely. Perhaps frightened. Afraid to risk such deep sorrow again by opening his heart to a woman. Then Grace walked in. His defenses crumbled. He offered her all the affection he had buried with his wife. He laughed because he was happy.

Between her clean white gloves, Grace Kelly holds that happiness. She can cherish it or crush it. So far she has done neither. Jean-Pierre has said, “I would give anything to have her give me her consent. I would give anything to have her give me an answer—one way or the other.”

Grace’s friends—and they are many—say she hasn’t given him an answer because she doesn’t know. She must reconcile love and career. She must decide if love means Jean-Pierre. She must not be rushed. Those who resent Grace say she knows she will never marry him. She keeps him dangling because he is a good escort, a charming companion. Because she might go to France again some day and what is France without an adoring man at your side? Jean-Pierre is a perfect escort.

Only Grace knows the truth about that. Jean-Pierre intends to fly to America this fall. He wants to meet her family. He wants to marry Grace. Perhaps he wants to see the white gloves permanently removed.

But that is not the Kelly way. The rest of the family may wear catchers’ mitts instead of white gloves (they are all sports-mad) but the traditions are the same. Thoroughbreds don’t cry—or fall madly in love. Old pros perform. No one can know what goes on inside. Feminine wiles are foreign to Grace’s background and personality. She doesn’t wear her heart on her sleeve. That, her friends say, is why people think she doesn’t have one.

Maybe. But those who know Jean-Pierre have one thing they would like to say to Grace Kelly: If you can’t love him, leave him. Step down from the pedestal long enough for that. Take off the little white gloves and do it—very, very gently. That will be proof enough that Kelly has a heart—even if it hasn’t yet been touched.

THE END

—BY ALICE FINLETTER

Grace Kelly’s next is MGM’s The Swan.

 

It is a quote. MODERN SCREEN MAGAZINE SEPTEMBER 1955