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Queens, Kings, and Dastardly Things
Grace Kelly: Hollywood Princess
Season 3, Ep. 76
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Grace Kelly had it all: beauty, an Oscar, Hollywood stardom and a glittering career ahead of her. Then she married a prince.
Robert Hardman and Professor Kate Williams revisit one of the great celebrity fairy tales of the 20th century: the marriage of Grace Kelly to Prince Rainier of Monaco. But behind the wedding-of-the-century photographs lay a rather more complicated story.
From Grace’s battles to make it in the decidedly sleazy world of 1950s Hollywood to an extraordinary royal courtship – involving Aristotle Onassis, Marilyn Monroe and even a young JFK – they explore how an American movie star found herself transformed into a European princess.
There was also a price. Grace was required to give up acting, provide a $2 million dowry and even undergo a fertility test before the marriage could go ahead. Yet the woman who surrendered her Hollywood career would ultimately transform Monaco itself, bringing glamour, money and international respectability to the tiny principality.
So was Grace Kelly’s marriage really the fairy tale the world was sold or did becoming a princess cost her far more than anyone realised?
Hosts: Robert Hardman and Professor Kate Williams
Series Producer: Ben Devlin
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Content Editor: Joseph Palmer
Executive Producer: Bella Soames
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