Moon Over Monte Carlo

The Grace Kelly Story, as Hollywood might have called it, was the stuff that celluloid dreams are made of, but the reality kept threatening to get in the way of the romance. With lovely Grace herself to play the part of the screen-star daughter of an American bricklayer turned millionaire, and Monaco's own Serene Highness, Prince Rainier III. as her handsome betrothed, the plot was the kind that producers understand and fans love. But Hollywood, Philadelphia and Ruritania are far easier to mix on film than they are in fact: so pat a plot raised the question whether two hearts were meeting or merely two dazzling luminaries being drawn to each other. The gala celebrations at Monaco last week began to sound like a Graustark script cynically brought up to date by Ben Hecht. Or so it seemed in the beginning.

The Crowd Descends. Prince Rainier's tiny, near-bankrupt gambling principality was suddenly swelled by an invasion of wildly ill-assorted guests, invited and uninvited: friends and members of the bride's and groom's own families, the Kellys from Philadelphia, the Grimaldis and Polignacs from divers corners of Europe, a kaleidoscopic assortment of celebrities from both sides of the Atlantic, ballet troupes from London and Paris, sailors from visiting warships, a scattering of second-class princelings, an unidentified covey of international thieves (who got away with a whopping $150,000 during the festivities), and some 1,600 accredited representatives of the world's press, mostly self-centered and angry.

Fighting bravely to retain their franchise, the moviemakers--in the person of a top M-G-M costume designer--had provided suitable wedding costumes, but everywhere the actors in the play were forgetting their lines and ad-libbing with dire results. Europe's reigning royalty, to a man, refused to show up at all. Hordes of jostled press photographers, miffed at having to wait for hours in the rain while luckier invited guests danced away the night at the famed International Sporting Club, openly booed and hissed the bridal pair when they at last appeared.

Somewhere in the ruckus. Britain's Randolph Churchill picked a fight with his wealthy countrywoman, Lady Docker, and screamed aloud: "I didn't come here to meet vulgar people like the Kellys." A learned representative of the French Academy, Europe's high temple of culture, launched a formal complaint when Monaco's Prince refused to permit the reading of an ode especially written for the occasion by Academician Jean Cocteau, on the grounds that it was too effusive. Highballing away the nights and days in their hotel suites just as though they were in the good old Bellevue-Stratford, Jack Kelly's pals from Philly sent him practical jokes in the form of telegrams. "Report back to the Palace, Kelly," said one. "Your furlough is up." President Eisenhower's personal representative, Hotelman Conrad Hilton, on arrival brushed aside the suggestion that he might want to build a Monaco Hilton: "We never build in resorts or small towns."

The Solemn Moment. By now around the world, great leagues of newsprint sought to bestir readers with a picture of the great events, painted in shades ranging from the jaded blue notes of burlesque to the cloying cliches of a Victorian novelette. London's Daily Express front-paged the news that the American radio sponsor for the wedding broadcast was the Peter Pan brassiere company. Saloon-Gossipist Earl Wilson informed his readers that "Rainier and Grace were real smoochy at the party for bridesmaids." Other reporters, sending out breathless bulletins, had a hard time agreeing on the details (see PRESS).

Somewhere behind this nightmare phantasmagoria of publicity and exploitation, however, two human beings were approaching a solemn moment in which each planned to pledge his life to the other. In the maelstrom of confused protocol and embattled public relations, the strain of that moment was beginning to show on each. Rainier fidgeted nervously during the 16-minute civil ceremony in the palace throne room that made them man and wife in the eyes of Monaco law. By the following day, the wear and tear on his fiancee was beginning to show in telltale circles beneath her coolly beautiful blue eyes. At least one member of the wedding party, Newlywed Actress Rita Gam, got so wrought up that she had to be put under doctor's care.

The Vows. By 6 o'clock on the morning of the wedding day, the happy citizenry of Monaco, glutted with public displays, fireworks, royal salutes and dancing in the streets, began to stream up the hill toward St. Nicholas Cathedral. The church was half-filled at 10, when Egypt's fat ex-King Farouk (the only even near representative of royalty to appear) came lumbering up the carpeted central staircase that was reserved for the bridal party. An alert guard decoyed him to one side. Seated way up front was Britain's frail old Author Somerset Maugham, complaining of cold feet. Near by sat swart Aristotle Onassis, the Greek shipping tycoon, whose ownership of the gambling casino is a far more significant fact in Monte Carlo than the rule of Prince Rainier. Filling other rows were the aging, wheelchaired Aga Khan and his beauteous Begum, the French Academy's Andre Maurois, Broadway's soignee Ilka Chase, and Jack Kelly's pals from Philly.

By 10:30 the guests were all in place. Two minutes later, Grace Patricia Kelly of Hollywood, trailing a lace train ten feet long, entered the cathedral on the arm of her father. As she knelt before a gold and scarlet priedieu, a fanfare of trumpets announced the arrival of her husband-to-be. Tense and nervous, the two sat side by side in the cathedral sanctuary, listening in a hush to a brief sermon by the Bishop of Monaco. Then, in the simple ritual of an ancient faith, they vowed lifelong fidelity each to the other. Rainier slipped the wedding ring halfway onto Grace's finger, and, like many a bride before her, Grace came to his aid and with a sure hand slid the ring firmly home.

It was time for the words "The End" to close in as the royal yacht bore the happy couple off to a honeymoon somewhere behind the setting sun. But for the bricklayer's daughter, Grace Patricia Kelly Grimaldi, and her Graustarkian Prince, it was, after all, less an end than, as in real life, only the beginning.

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