Amazing Grace: Rare photos of movie star Grace Kelly reveal how a dowdy and shy girl turned into the legendary screen goddess

Her beauty is legendary, but Grace Kelly was never handed success because of her looks. In fact, starting out, she dressed dowdily at auditions, while her early photographs were unremarkable. Many of those photos, plus many revealing and rarely seen images, candid on-set pictures and test shots, can be seen in a new book, Grace Kelly: Hollywood Dream Girl.

Born into a wealthy family in Philadelphia, she failed for two years to win a role on Broadway. But she did find work in TV before being cast opposite Clark Gable in Mogambo. Filming in Uganda, she fell in love with the screen legend old enough to be her father. Her relationship with Gable established a pattern in romances with older co-stars. On Dial M For Murder, she was courted by Ray Milland. She also had a fling with William Holden before receiving a marriage proposal from Bing Crosby.

In 1954 Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window created the glamour girl we know today, while the following year the director made her a star in To Catch A Thief. Yet just as Kelly became queen of Hollywood, her film career came to end, as in May 1955 she met Prince Rainier of Monaco: they married the following year. But life in Monaco wasn’t the fairy tale she might have imagined. Asked in 1966 if she was happy, she said: ‘I’ve had many happy moments in my life… I suppose I have a certain peace of mind.’ Then, in 1982, she died in a car crash. Nearly 100 million people watched her funeral on TV. 

HIT ME WITH YOUR BEST SHOT... Kelly in her role as a big game hunter in Mogambo, filmed in Africa. Largely due to the local water being unsuitable to drink, all the cast, including Clark Gable, Ava Gardner and her visiting husband Frank Sinatra, drank alcohol heavily. Kelly ‘was never much of a drinker’ recalled Gardner, ‘though she tried hard. Her little nose would get pink, she’d get sick and we’d have to rescue her.

MIND THE AGE GAP: Kelly with Clark Cable in Africa, making Mogambo (1953). Gable ended the relationship once they had finished filming. She felt hurt and betrayed but perhaps, as Judith Balaban Quine said later, Gable was being cruel to be kind: ‘A friend of Gable’s told me that he had been seriously in love with Grace, but had determined that they should part as he believed their age difference would bring them unhappiness’