Grace Kelly’s Personal Letters Describing a Real-Life Fairytale and Early Ambition Go Up for Auction at Doyle
Grace Kelly’s real-life Cinderella story continues to intrigue millions, and now a trove of her personal letters that draw back the curtain on her early days and her journey to becoming the Princess of Monaco will soon be auctioned.
Handwritten and typed letters, postcards, photos and other ephemera that Kelly sent to her former roommate and personal secretary Prudence Wise Kudner will go under the gavel at Doyle on Thursday, Nov. 14. In addition to a years-long friendship, they spell out Kelly’s ambition, ascent and engagement to the late fashion designer Oleg Cassini.
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“What’s amazing is the wonderful arc of her being this unknown, talented and obviously quite beautiful young woman, who arrives in New York hoping to become an actress, and ends up being married to the Prince of Monaco,” Peter Costanzo, Doyle’s director of rare books, autographs, maps and photographs department, said on Friday. “It’s a fairy tale and it’s all played out in these letters.”
Kelly died unexpectedly at the age of 52, after suffering a stroke while driving with her daughter Stephanie in the Cote d’Azur. That tragedy only enhanced the lore.
With a pre-auction estimate of $60,000 to $80,000, the bounty is part of Doyle’s “Stage & Screen” sale. The lot includes many items that are believed to have never been published or seen publicly and may be unknown to biographers. Other lots will include sketches of Edith Head’s designs for Kelly from “To Catch a Thief,” which have estimates of $5,000 to $8,000.
Spanning from 1949 to 1956, the letters shed light on her personal and professional life. “In those early years, it goes without saying that Grace Kelly was being pursued by many suitors,” Costanzo said. “Many of those early letters regard the various efforts of gentlemen of all ages to win her hand in marriage, including the fashion designer Oleg Cassini. Something that you see over and over again [in the letters] is the suitors seeking out Grace, then Grace getting more serious with them and introducing the men to her parents. And her father had a harsh reaction to several of these gentleman who wanted to marry her.”
Before Kelly wed Prince Rainier III of Monaco in front of 700 people in a Helen Rose-designed lace gown, she gave her friend permission to pen a play-by-play account. “It is alright with me if you want to write an account of the wedding,” Kelly advised Kudner, adding, “as long as it is not on-the-spot reporting and written afterwards as I am not supposed to have any press on my list of invitations.”
That union to Cassini never transpired but Kelly wore a Cassini-designed dress when she set sail for Monaco to marry the prince. And throughout his lifetime, Cassini frequently spoke of Kelly fondly and his influence on her eternal style. The designer, who had previously been married to the actress Gene Tierney, said of wooing Kelly, “It was to be the greatest, most exhilarating campaign of my life.”
In her pre-stardom days in New York City, Kelly lived with Kudner, Sally Parrish and Carolyn Scott at the Barbizon Hotel for Women on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Remnants of that time can be found in a snapshot of a few of them and a phone message jotted down on Barbizon stationery. The lot’s first substantial letter — eight pages written in pencil on delicate stationery — was postmarked April 1949, seven months before Kelly’s Broadway debut in August Strinberg’s “The Father.” In her letter, Kelly regaled Prudy about how an abysmal introductory dinner with her parents and her then-suitor Don Richardson led to a breakup and an argument with her parents. But on the upside Richard had helped Kelly make some theater connections.
After some well-received modeling work and her Broadway debut, Kelly did her first film “Fourteen Hours” in 1951 and then “High Noon” and “Mogambo.” Of shooting the latter in Africa, Kelly mentioned in a letter to Kudner of a five-day getaway with Frank Sinatra, Ava Gardner and Clark Gable to Malindi on the coast, and how there had been “a terrible champagne binge for about ten days over Christmas…we all went on the wagon until Rome. Ava and I are now great pals…”
In a 1953 post written from the Savoy Hotel in London while “Mogambo” was being edited, she reported that Gable and director Sam Zimbalist were “cutting the picture to pieces which breaks my heart — I’m not speaking to Clark these days and neither is Ava — but don’t tell anyone that.”
After that Oscar-nominated performance, Kelly established herself as a sought-after Hollywood actress and style-setter. From mid-1953 to her 1956 fairy tale wedding to Prince Rainier, the Pennsylvanian starred in “The Country Girl,” “Dial M for Murder,” “Rear Window” and “To Catch a Thief.” In July 1953, Kelly clued Kudner into how she had met the director Alfred Hitchcock, while filming “Dial M for Murder.” Kelly mentioned how one of her arms was sore from playing tennis, due to her role as the wife of a professional player. Interestingly, the quintessential style arbiter wrote, “Tomorrow I test my wardrobe and see how it will all turn out in 3D.” That was the medium intended for the film, but it wound up being shown in most theaters as 2D. She also wrote, “They are still debating the color of my hair. It comes out bright red in WarnerColor and Hitchcock is having a fit.”
After taking up temporary residency at the Hotel Bel-Air in early 1954 Kelly described spending a day swimming in its pool with the esteemed costume designer Edith Head. She also mentioned new paramour Cassini, who had procured for her a typewriter, “the only one in Beverly Hills.” The letter described their spectacular outings together, such as “last Saturday we went to a big party at Jack Warner’s…and the weekend before we went up to Hitch’s ranch in Santa Cruz…We had dinner with Bing [Crosby] one night…My father isn’t very happy over the prospect of Oleg as a son-in-law…but the plan now is to be married the first part of October…”
Strategically, Costanzo reached out directly to a Grace Kelly Fan Club about the upcoming sale “but they had already found it on [the] website.” “They are over-the-moon about this,” Costanzo said. In a full-circle moment, one of the letters reveals that the actress-turned-princess told Kudner how she had fielded a call from the Grace Kelly Fan Club on its first anniversary, and had taken the time to speak with all 15 members.
Bidding for the collection of Kelly’s letters and ephemera opens Thursday, Nov. 14 at 10 a.m.
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