Ice queen’ image was protective shield

Press, 27 April 1984, Page 11

Ice queen’ image was protective shield

NZPA-PA London Grace Kelly’s famous “ice queen” image before she became Princess Grace of Monaco was just a protective screen to mislead the press about her secret sex life, according to a frank new biography. A series of hushed-up scandals — she had a “physical affair” with Clark Gable on an African film location, and nearly broke up Ray Milland’s marriage — persuaded one gossip that she was a nymphomaniac, says the author, Sarah Bradford. Her book, “Princess Grace,” backs the judgment of Alfred Hitchcock, who turned her into a star after sporting what he called “sexual elegance” — a cool exterior hinting at hidden passion. “Grace had normal sexual appetites and she was liberated enough in the context of her time to defy her middle-class Catholic Philadelphia upbringing to satisfy them if she felt the romantic urge to do so,” says the book. “But breaking the rules in private did not mean publicly advertising the fact.

“The cool blonde in white gloves was an image which suited Grace perfectly, a

protective shield behind which the real, warm sexy Irish Grace could operate in privacy.

“She was not promiscuous; each affair was a love affair, a starry-eyed romance which justified her following her instincts and helped her gloss over the fact that this was not the way well-brought-up Catholic girls in the 1950 s were supposed to behave. “Everything she did in private remained a closely guarded secret, because Grace was the kind of person who evoked absolute loyalty from lovers and friends — even after her death.” The book sifts gossip about the young Grace Kelly’s relationship with a Clark Gable twice her age when they starred together in “Mogambo.” The author concludes that Grace’s romance with the King of Hollywood — who preferred “one-night stands” — was strictly one-sided, and ended with “a physical affair behind her which was also her first, and last, experience of being dropped by a man.” Ray Milland, who met Grace Kelly when they filmed Hitchcock’s “Dial M for Murder,” was “gaga over Grace.” But the rising

star “dropped Ray like a hot potato” when his wife threatened divorce, says Miss Bradford. Bing Crosby at first opposed having Grace Kelly play opposite him in the film of “The Country Girl” because a gossip writer, Hedda Hopper, “had told him Grace was a nymphomaniac,” she says. The book tells how a fairytale dream came true with the marriage to Prince Ranier — and how it ended tragically in September,

1982, in a fatal car crash after a brain haemorrhage. Miss Bradford suggests, “perhaps she was the victim of her own fame; perhaps the strain of living up to the image which the public, and indeed she herself, had of ‘Princess Grace’ contributed to her death.” A close friend is quoted on the last page of the book as saying, “She was a very normal human being with basic healthy instincts, and it was a very abnormal way she had to live.”