Grace Kelly

Grace Patricia Kelly was born on November 12, 1929, at Hahnemann University Hospital in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, into a prominent Catholic family. Her father, John B. Kelly Sr., was the son of Irish immigrants, a three-time Olympic gold medal winner in sculling, and the owner of a successful East Coast brickwork contracting company. He ran as the Democratic Party nominee for mayor of Philadelphia in 1935, losing by the narrowest margin in the city's history, and was later appointed by President Roosevelt as National Director of Physical Fitness during World War II. His brother Walter C. Kelly was a vaudeville performer who also made films for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Paramount Pictures, and another brother, George Kelly, was a Pulitzer Prize-winning dramatist, screenwriter, and director. Kelly's mother, Margaret Majer, was of German ancestry, had taught physical education at the University of Pennsylvania, and was the first woman to coach women's athletics there. Kelly grew up with two older siblings, Margaret and John Jr., and a younger sister, Elizabeth, in the East Falls neighborhood of Philadelphia, where she was baptized and received her elementary education at Saint Bridget's parish. While attending Ravenhill Academy, she modeled fashions at local charity events alongside her mother and sisters. In 1942, at age twelve, she played the lead in a production of Don't Feed the Animals staged by the Old Academy Players in East Falls.

Kelly graduated from Stevens School in Chestnut Hill in May 1947, having participated in drama and dance programs there. After being rejected by Bennington College due to low mathematics scores, she pursued acting over her parents' objections, particularly her father's disapproval. In 1947 she signed with the Walter Thornton Model Agency. She auditioned for the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York using a scene from her uncle George Kelly's The Torch-Bearers, and was admitted through his influence despite the school having already met its semester quota. Her graduation performance was the role of Tracy Lord in The Philadelphia Story. At her father's insistence, she lived at the Barbizon Hotel for Women in Manhattan during this period, and was hired as a model by the John Robert Powers agency. Television producer Delbert Mann cast her as the lead in an adaptation of Sinclair Lewis's Bethel Merriday, which became the first of nearly sixty live television programs she appeared in.

Kelly graduated from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in 1949 and made her Broadway debut that same year in August Strindberg's The Father, appearing alongside Raymond Massey. She received the Theatre World Award in 1950, having been noted in Theatre World magazine as a most promising personality of the Broadway stage that year. Her Broadway work continued through 1952 and included the production To Be Continued. Director Henry Hathaway, impressed by her performance in The Father, offered her a small role in the Twentieth Century-Fox film Fourteen Hours, which was released in 1951 and marked her film debut.

Her film career accelerated rapidly in the early 1950s. She gained significant attention through Fred Zinnemann's western High Noon in 1952 and John Ford's adventure-romance Mogambo in 1953, the latter earning her an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. In 1954 she won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in The Country Girl. That same year she appeared in Dial M for Murder, Rear Window, and The Bridges at Toko-Ri, and the following year in Alfred Hitchcock's To Catch a Thief. Her final Hollywood studio release was the romantic comedy High Society in 1956. Across her film career she received one Academy Award and three Golden Globe Awards, and was ranked thirteenth on the American Film Institute's list of the 25 Greatest Female Stars.

On April 18, 1956, Kelly married Prince Rainier III of Monaco and retired from acting at age twenty-six to assume her duties as Princess of Monaco. She and Rainier had three children: Princess Caroline, Prince Albert, and Princess Stéphanie. Her charitable work centered on children and the arts. In 1964 she established the Princess Grace Foundation to support local artisans, and her children's rights organization, AMADE Mondiale, gained consultative status within both UNICEF and UNESCO. Her final screen credit was narrating the 1977 documentary The Children of Theatre Street, which received an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary Feature. Kelly died on September 14, 1982, at Monaco Hospital at the age of fifty-two, from injuries sustained in a car crash. In 1984, her son Prince Albert helped establish the Princess Grace Awards to recognize emerging performers in film, theatre, and dance.