suppose.”
Grace and Alex D’Arcy said their goodbyes when the actor had to leave New York for some work in Paris. Shortly before he left, Grace did mention the fact that, aside from her modeling, she had hopes of becoming an actress. But she did not make much of it, and she certainly did not pump her older lover for the useful advice and contacts that a well-connected movie actor might be able to offer a girl who was just starting out on her career.
“In this business, it’s ninety percent phony,” says D’Arcy, who went on to make sixteen more movies, among them How to Marry a Millionaire, with Marilyn Monroe and Betty Grable. “Grace was not a phony. She was a very warm and wonderful girl. I do not look back on the month I spent with her as a cheap adventure. I felt it was a real friendship. It was precious to me, a rather beautiful fragment of romance.”
Just over a dozen years later, in the early 1960s, D’Arcy found himself on the beach at Monaco, sitting in the cabana of some French friends who were members of the Monte Carlo Beach Club. Their tent was about thirty yards away from that of the princely family, and suddenly D’Arcy saw his former girlfriend, now a world-famous princess, stepping out elegantly onto the sand. Grace seemed more demure than ever, and D’Arcy’s first instinct was to look away, to avoid any embarrassment. But Grace had caught sight of him, and she started to peer hard across the beach, straining her eyes in her shortsighted fashion to try to recognize this face that she evidently thought she knew.
D’Arcy was hit with a flash of panic as he realized that the memory bank was going into action. It was more than likely that he was quite forgotten after all the years. Or was he, perhaps, too well remembered, so that he had put himself in line for a right royal blank?
Suddenly the Princess of Monaco recognized who her old friend was. Her face lit up with her magical smile, and she threw him an affectionate wave in which the actor felt he could glimpse just a little of the warmth and companionship that he had enjoyed in his brief time with the young Grace.
“I did not go over to talk to her,” says D’Arcy. “Not with her family there. That would not have been right. But I still have that memory of her, the shy girl who was modeling hats when I met her, smiling and waving to me across the sand.”
5
THE ARMS AROUND HER
I n October 1948, on the eve of her nineteenth birthday, Grace Kelly moved into her second and final year at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. This was no small achievement. A gruelling obstacle course of tests and grading reports often eliminated as many as half the Academy’s students before the end of their first year. Charles Jehlinger wanted only the tough and the talented in his graduating class.
It was the Academy’s policy to treat its final-year survivors less as students than as young working actors and actresses. They were organized into acting companies under the supervision of professional directors, and Grace was assigned to the group working with Don Richardson, a thirty-year-old protégé of Jehlinger’s who had been a student at the Academy, and who already had several groundbreaking professional productions to his credit. He had recently directed Burt Lancaster’s debut on Broadway.
Richardson was an intense and voluble young man, dark-haired and dark-eyed, with a gypsy look about him. Born Melvin Schwartz, he had worked as an actor in radio and theater, but had changed his name after a producer denied him a role in a Christian drama on the grounds that he was Jewish. Richardson’s training was evident in the ringing tones he used to declaim his directions to his students, and he was a fierce knight-errant on behalf of Charles Jehlinger’s battle against the self-absorption of the “Method” school of acting.
Now in his seventies and living in California, Don Richardson continues to teach the deft and creative acting
Grace and Alex D’Arcy said their goodbyes when the actor had to leave New York for some work in Paris. Shortly before he left, Grace did mention the fact that, aside from her modeling, she had hopes of becoming an actress. But she did not make much of it, and she certainly did not pump her older lover for the useful advice and contacts that a well-connected movie actor might be able to offer a girl who was just starting out on her career.
“In this business, it’s ninety percent phony,” says D’Arcy, who went on to make sixteen more movies, among them How to Marry a Millionaire, with Marilyn Monroe and Betty Grable. “Grace was not a phony. She was a very warm and wonderful girl. I do not look back on the month I spent with her as a cheap adventure. I felt it was a real friendship. It was precious to me, a rather beautiful fragment of romance.”
Just over a dozen years later, in the early 1960s, D’Arcy found himself on the beach at Monaco, sitting in the cabana of some French friends who were members of the Monte Carlo Beach Club. Their tent was about thirty yards away from that of the princely family, and suddenly D’Arcy saw his former girlfriend, now a world-famous princess, stepping out elegantly onto the sand. Grace seemed more demure than ever, and D’Arcy’s first instinct was to look away, to avoid any embarrassment. But Grace had caught sight of him, and she started to peer hard across the beach, straining her eyes in her shortsighted fashion to try to recognize this face that she evidently thought she knew.
D’Arcy was hit with a flash of panic as he realized that the memory bank was going into action. It was more than likely that he was quite forgotten after all the years. Or was he, perhaps, too well remembered, so that he had put himself in line for a right royal blank?
Suddenly the Princess of Monaco recognized who her old friend was. Her face lit up with her magical smile, and she threw him an affectionate wave in which the actor felt he could glimpse just a little of the warmth and companionship that he had enjoyed in his brief time with the young Grace.
“I did not go over to talk to her,” says D’Arcy. “Not with her family there. That would not have been right. But I still have that memory of her, the shy girl who was modeling hats when I met her, smiling and waving to me across the sand.”
5
THE ARMS AROUND HER
I n October 1948, on the eve of her nineteenth birthday, Grace Kelly moved into her second and final year at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. This was no small achievement. A gruelling obstacle course of tests and grading reports often eliminated as many as half the Academy’s students before the end of their first year. Charles Jehlinger wanted only the tough and the talented in his graduating class.
It was the Academy’s policy to treat its final-year survivors less as students than as young working actors and actresses. They were organized into acting companies under the supervision of professional directors, and Grace was assigned to the group working with Don Richardson, a thirty-year-old protégé of Jehlinger’s who had been a student at the Academy, and who already had several groundbreaking professional productions to his credit. He had recently directed Burt Lancaster’s debut on Broadway.
Richardson was an intense and voluble young man, dark-haired and dark-eyed, with a gypsy look about him. Born Melvin Schwartz, he had worked as an actor in radio and theater, but had changed his name after a producer denied him a role in a Christian drama on the grounds that he was Jewish. Richardson’s training was evident in the ringing tones he used to declaim his directions to his students, and he was a fierce knight-errant on behalf of Charles Jehlinger’s battle against the self-absorption of the “Method” school of acting.
Now in his seventies and living in California, Don Richardson continues to teach the deft and creative acting
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