Princesse de Monaco Grace - Grace: a biography

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Copyright 2014 by Thilo Wydra

Thilo Wydra: GRACE. Die Biographie Aufbau Verlag GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin 2012

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Cover design by Laura Shaw

Cover photo credit AP Images

Print ISBN: 978-1-62914-541-9

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-62914-967-7

Printed in the United States of America

To my parentsin memoriam

Ursel Wydra & Siegfried Wydra

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Fairy tales tell imaginary stories.
Me, Im a living person. I exist.
If the story of my life as a real woman were
to be told one day, people would at last discover
the real being that I am.

Grace Kelly

Only Grace Kelly could have created Grace Kelly.
It must have been a concept in her head.

John Foreman

Her very nameGracecould not have been
more fitting.

Louis Jourdan

FOREWORD

Reflections:

The Two Lives of Grace Kelly

Grace Kellys apparent frigidity was like a mountain covered with snow, but that mountain was a volcano.

Alfred Hitchcock

The last thing that she may have ever seen was the view from her car of Monaco. Of her principality. Of the azure sea. Of its shimmering, bright light.

Then all must have suddenly gone dark around her.

It is the morning of September 13, 1982, shortly after 9:30 a.m. It is a Monday, a glorious late summer day on the French Riviera. The sun beams. A new week is beginning.

As he follows behind the brown Rover 3500 on the small serpentine road that leads from La Turbie, high in the French highlands, down to Monaco, the truck driver Yves Raimondo notices at some point that he can no longer see the brake lights of the car in front of him. At this speed and incline, the red brake lights should have been burning for a while already. Suddenly the car begins to skid and skirts along the rock wall. Observing all of this, Raimondo honks repeatedly. For a moment, the car seems to right itself. It accelerates down the hill, and the next sharp, hairpin turn is already in sight. There is still no indication that the driver of the Rover 3500 is slowing down to brake. Then, Yves Raimondo witnesses how the Rover, at full speed, races out over the curve. The car plunges off the steep, 130-foot cliff and comes to rest in a clump of trees and bushes in a private garden. A pile of steel. A wreck. Grace Kelly is in this brown Rover.

Alongside her sits her 17-year-old daughter, Princess Stphanie, who survives the fall, crawls out of the left side of the car, and implores the passing motorists for help: Maman , her mother, lays in the car. Maman the Princess of Monaco.

First, cars stop above. People scurry around. One farmer calls for two rescue vehicles, which soon arrive at the scene. Grace Kelly lies across the interior of the car, her head toward the rear, her legs near the front. One of them seems twisted. Her eyes are glassy, she is nonresponsive and clearly unconscious. On her forehead is a gaping wound. The emergency personnel must pull her through the bushes, and she is immediately placed into one of the ambulances and transported to her namesake hospital, Hpital Princesse Grace. Her daughter lies in the other ambulance. At the hospital, Grace Kelly is examined and undergoes a four-hour emergency surgery. She urgently needs a CT scan of her head. However, the only CT machine in the principality is not located in this hospital, high on a craggy hill, but is instead in the office of Dr. Mourou, at the Winter Palace on the central boulevard of Moulins 4, at the opposite end of the district. Thus, the gravely injured woman is transported there. However, when the stretcher does not fit horizontally into the narrow elevator, it is carried up the stairs to the third floor. Valuable time is lost. At this point, thirteen hours have lapsed since the accident.

The night between September 13 and 14 is a night of uncertainty, a night of trepidation and hope for one husband, Prince Rainier III, and his two children, son Albert and daughter Caroline. The third and youngest child, Stphanie, is completely unaware of this. She is in the hospital, suffering from a serious vertebrae injury and concussion, and Rainier wishes to spare her the shock. It is several days later when she first learns the full measure of the tragedy. Only after the burial, in the company of her family, will she be taken to the grave of her mother in St. Nicholas Cathedral.

On the next day, neither the Monegasque people, nor the world at large, know exactly what has happened to the princess.

Now the doctors finally share with Prince Rainier how things truly stand with his wife. They had operated on her the day before, opening her chest cavity as well as the abdominal wall. The bleeding from her head wound is very heavy. Her brain damage is serious and permanent. She lies in a coma from which she will never awake. Since 6:00 a.m., she has been, for all intents and purposes, clinically dead. There is no hope.

The family comes to bid farewell. After son Albert and daughter Caroline have said their good-byes, Rainier stays behind, alone with his wife. They had spent 26 years together. At noon, Rainier gives the doctors permission to turn off the life support machines, which have until now kept his wifes body functioning. It is a difficult decision in a lonely hour.

On September 14, 1982, at 10:35 p.m., the actress Grace Kelly, the Princess of Monaco, Gracia Patricia, dies. At the age of 52, she is much too young.

Only at this point does the world learn of what has occurred.

A legend is born.

In the chapel of the Princes Palace, high on a rocky point, Gracia Patricias open coffin is visited by countless people who wish to have one last look at her. They have come to say farewell to their princess, the mother of their country. It is also a farewell to a legendary actress and beauty icon. Three days later, she is buried. On September 18, the coffin is ceremoniously carried several hundred yards to the Notre-Dame-Immacule Cathedral, Saint Nicholas, and at regular intervals, a bell sounds a single tone. This solemn sound echoes through the streets, landing heavily upon the slow, advancing funeral procession.

About 100 million people worldwide sit in front of their televisions. In terms of viewers, this media coverage is unparalleled.

Among the 800 funeral guests are dignitaries from around the world, old friends, and relatives from Philadelphia. Princess Gracia Patricia of Monaco is finally laid to rest in the choir of the cathedral. It is the same cathedral in which Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier III had married 26 years ago on April 19, 1956.