Grace Kelly, the nymphomaniac!
PUSSS...@aol.com
'MALICE IS not acceptable; hatred is," wrote Martha Gellhorn who had a
lot of experience as one of the wives of Ernest Hemingway.
ON PAGE 37 of Wendy Leigh's coming biography of Princess Grace, titled
"True Grace" - this sentence rises up: "The writer Robert Slatzer
remembered his brief relationship with Grace: 'The night we first dated
in Hollywood we went back to her apartment. Grace immediately went into
the bathroom, then came out stark naked.' "
Uh-oh! Mr. Slatzer, now in his grave, was the guy who claimed without a
scintilla of evidence that he was briefly wed to Marilyn Monroe, was
her confidant in all matters including her affairs with the Kennedys.
So - what's a reader to do? Stop right there because the author has
invoked a suspect source, or plunge ahead, ready to be amused but
alert. By page 47, the not yet famous Grace Kelly has already bedded
the Shah of Iran and Prince Aly Khan. By page 64, the beautiful actress
is having an affair with her "Mogambo" co-star Clark Gable.
By page 73, in the wake of half a dozen others, including the married
actor Ray Milland, we hear Grace exclaiming: "Hedda Hopper called me a
nymphomaniac!" (Today, I guess we'd call her Paris Hilton!)
Then on page 96 we read that she sexed it up with Marlon Brando after
winning her Oscar for "The Country Girl" in 1954. That night she also
received a drunken call from loser Judy Garland, cursing her. (Judy was
then in a hospital, recovering from giving birth to her son, but who's
to deny a disappointed legend a chance to lash out.) And so it goes,
through a romance with Oleg Cassini and the odd, disappointing marriage
to Prince Rainier of Monaco. We get all of Rainier's immediate marital
infidelities and more of Grace's. (There is a mighty effort to link
Grace with the charmer David Niven. His son, Jamie, and others doubt
it.)
'TRUE GRACE" seems slightly re heated from other books but the au thor
claims 125 on-the-record sources and 98 people who never talked before.
But perhaps Grace's story has been told too often to seem fresh.
Ambitious, promiscuous Catholic girl with daddy-complex sleeps her way
to the middle (her talent then put her on top), weds a squat prince
from a tiny inconsequential country and is pretty unhappy.
One episode is startling. Photographer Jose Quinto recalls the Rainiers
at a performance of "The Little Foxes," starring Elizabeth Taylor. The
Prince and La Liz stole away and "were all over each other, more than
just kissing in a friendly manner." (Oh, those MGM girls!)
The author also addresses the matter of Grace's death, when her car
skidded over an embankment. Leigh asserts Grace was too careful of her
image to have ever let the underage Princess Stephanie drive illegally,
a rumor that has bedeviled Stephanie for many years.
Oh well. One can believe anything if one believes that Robert Slatzer
had Grace naked on a first date. Yeah, just like he married Marilyn
Monroe.