techniques that he absorbed from Jehlinger. After an award-winning career in television drama, he is a lecturer at the University of California, Los Angeles, and he cannot today recall any particular contribution that Grace Kelly made to the American Academy acting group that he was assigned in the fall of 1948. She was not the red-meat style of actress that he preferred. It was an incident that occurred outside the classroom that drew the pupil to the attention of her drama instructor.
One winter evening, Richardson was coming down in the elevator after class, when he noticed a slim, blondish girl standing in the corner, with a scarf tied over her head. “She did not seem terribly pretty,” he remembers. “She was fragile-looking, about nineteen years old, very well dressed, with a camel coat.”
The girl seemed oddly distanced from her classmates in the elevator—half shy and half aloof—and sensing this, one of them began to tease her. Richardson knew this young man as the class clown. The boy was something of a bully, and he happened to be holding a puppy in his arms. He thrust this puppy into Grace’s face, and instead of laughing, she burst into tears.
“I bawled the guy out,” remembers Richardson. “Then everybody left, and I was alone with the girl. When she finally stopped crying, we were standing by the exit to the street.”
It was snowing outside, and after twenty minutes of vainly trying to hail Grace a cab so that she could get home to the Barbizon, Richardson suggested that they might warm up in the Russian Tea Room next door. “Her eyelashes were frozen,” remembers Richardson. “Then she went to the John to dry her hair, and when she came back and had taken her scarf off, I noticed that she was actually much prettier than she had seemed in the elevator.”
The Russian Tea Room was still quite a bohemian hangout in the years after World War II. You could eat there inexpensively, and you could nurse a cup of tea for hours. But when a waiter came over to the table, Richardson realized to his horror that he only had a few cents in his pocket. So it was out into the snow again to search for a taxi—with Grace sniffling and sneezing rather pitifully, and giving every indication of developing a severe cold.
“Grace was never a great actress,” says Richardson today. “I was her teacher, and I should know. But she had some fantastically advantageous attributes, and one of them was getting people to feel that they should do something to help her. There were times when she seemed so pathetic and helpless. You had the feeling that if you left her alone, she would die. She would be destroyed. Seeing her sniffling there, I felt very drawn toward this girl—and, believe me, it was in no way sexual.”
With no taxis in sight, Richardson suggested an alternative—a bus ride down to Thirty-third Street, where he lived. He could pick up some cash there, and they could go out together for a hamburger. Richardson lived in a small, unheated apartment in an old converted brownstone. Many of the nearby shops were occupied by Armenian rug dealers, and it was Richardson’s practice to gather his firewood from the crates and packing cases that the dealers had discarded in the street. Grace joined in with the fuel-gathering as her drama teacher walked her along through the slush from Broadway. “Here was this pretty girl in a camel-hair coat, stooping down in the snow to pick up those boxes,” he remembers. “It was somehow La Bohème.”
The couple went upstairs to Richardson’s bare and arctic apartment, where he knelt down to kindle the fire. “I got the fire going,” he remembers, “and went out to make some coffee. When I came back into the room, she was waiting for me on the camp bed. She had taken all her clothes off and had pulled up the bed so it was alongside the fire. I never saw anything more splendid. We had no introduction to this. There was no flirtation. We both had a desperate need,
One winter evening, Richardson was coming down in the elevator after class, when he noticed a slim, blondish girl standing in the corner, with a scarf tied over her head. “She did not seem terribly pretty,” he remembers. “She was fragile-looking, about nineteen years old, very well dressed, with a camel coat.”
The girl seemed oddly distanced from her classmates in the elevator—half shy and half aloof—and sensing this, one of them began to tease her. Richardson knew this young man as the class clown. The boy was something of a bully, and he happened to be holding a puppy in his arms. He thrust this puppy into Grace’s face, and instead of laughing, she burst into tears.
“I bawled the guy out,” remembers Richardson. “Then everybody left, and I was alone with the girl. When she finally stopped crying, we were standing by the exit to the street.”
It was snowing outside, and after twenty minutes of vainly trying to hail Grace a cab so that she could get home to the Barbizon, Richardson suggested that they might warm up in the Russian Tea Room next door. “Her eyelashes were frozen,” remembers Richardson. “Then she went to the John to dry her hair, and when she came back and had taken her scarf off, I noticed that she was actually much prettier than she had seemed in the elevator.”
The Russian Tea Room was still quite a bohemian hangout in the years after World War II. You could eat there inexpensively, and you could nurse a cup of tea for hours. But when a waiter came over to the table, Richardson realized to his horror that he only had a few cents in his pocket. So it was out into the snow again to search for a taxi—with Grace sniffling and sneezing rather pitifully, and giving every indication of developing a severe cold.
“Grace was never a great actress,” says Richardson today. “I was her teacher, and I should know. But she had some fantastically advantageous attributes, and one of them was getting people to feel that they should do something to help her. There were times when she seemed so pathetic and helpless. You had the feeling that if you left her alone, she would die. She would be destroyed. Seeing her sniffling there, I felt very drawn toward this girl—and, believe me, it was in no way sexual.”
With no taxis in sight, Richardson suggested an alternative—a bus ride down to Thirty-third Street, where he lived. He could pick up some cash there, and they could go out together for a hamburger. Richardson lived in a small, unheated apartment in an old converted brownstone. Many of the nearby shops were occupied by Armenian rug dealers, and it was Richardson’s practice to gather his firewood from the crates and packing cases that the dealers had discarded in the street. Grace joined in with the fuel-gathering as her drama teacher walked her along through the slush from Broadway. “Here was this pretty girl in a camel-hair coat, stooping down in the snow to pick up those boxes,” he remembers. “It was somehow La Bohème.”
The couple went upstairs to Richardson’s bare and arctic apartment, where he knelt down to kindle the fire. “I got the fire going,” he remembers, “and went out to make some coffee. When I came back into the room, she was waiting for me on the camp bed. She had taken all her clothes off and had pulled up the bed so it was alongside the fire. I never saw anything more splendid. We had no introduction to this. There was no flirtation. We both had a desperate need,
Similar Books
