Hitchcock blonde turned royalty Grace Kelly knew her worth, even when it came to being wooed by Prince Rainier. A new book about the iconic American sweetheart called Grace Kelly: Hollywood Dream Girl written by Jay Jorgensen and Manoah Bowman reveals that while she was dating the Monacan royal, she treated him as she would any suitor, getting him to help her with normal household errands.
According to Grace Kelly’s sister Lizanne Kelly DeVine, she witnessed it first hand when she asked the couple round for dinner: ‘Don and I were at our own little apartment, and we asked them over for dinner. He fit in very well—even helped with the dishes. Rainier, when we first met him, I think might have been a little shocked with us when we’d say ‘Come on, Rennie,’ you know. But he fit into the family beautifully.’
The revelation is interesting considering the overriding attitudes of the era, which would have placed women firmly in the kitchen and men firmly out of it.
The book also tells of how Rainier visited his wife-to-be at her childhood home before he proposed to her, spending Christmas with her family. The couple announced their engagement in January 1956.
Kelly’s bridesmaid Judith Balaban Quine reveals how the remote location allowed love to blossom: ‘They were both these wonderfully attractive people that had all this romantic charm, intelligence and wit, and cosiness,’ she says. ‘[They were] away from all public focus, walking in the woods, driving through the mountains and talking about life and values—and they fell in love.’
So, how would the notoriously attention-shy couple deal with the media intrusions that the A-list suffer today? Not very well, according to her son Prince Albert II.
‘I don't know if she would agree with everything going on today in Hollywood or the world in general,’ he told USA Today. ‘Some things would irritate her, and she would be uncomfortable.
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