Did Hitchcock predict Princess Grace’s life — and tragic death?
There’s an iconic moment in the hitchcock movie To Catch A Thief when Grace Kelly and Cary Grant park their opentop sports car on the mountainside above Monaco.
‘You have a very strong grip,’ Grace murmurs, before surrendering into the arms of her leading man for a melting kiss. Below them, the yachts bob in Monte Carlo harbour.
When the movie was released in 1955, that scene was sensational, the epitome of romance and glamour. Grant and Kelly were arguably the most beautiful couple ever paired in hollywood.
But a year later, the image was extraordinary for a different reason. Grace Kelly was no longer an actress — she was now the Princess of Monaco, married to its hereditary ruler, Prince rainier.
Grace Kelly: Lost Tapes Of A Princess (C4) added a third and darker layer of resonance to the scene. News photographs from her fatal accident in 1982 revealed her car went off the road at a hairpin bend almost identical to the one Grant negotiates in the movie.
This reverential documentary made no mention of the coincidence. The parallels between film and real life are almost supernatural, though. It’s as if hitchcock predicted her future — and her death.
so much of her life was bizarre, not least her love affair with rainier. They met once, when she attended the Cannes Film Festival in 1955 to promote The Country Girl, which won her the Best Actress Oscar. After writing to each other for eight months, they met again when the prince visited her at her family home in Philadelphia for Christmas. rainier proposed almost immediately.
Aged 26, she ended her career and boarded a transatlantic liner that took her to the riviera principality. This hour-long portrait took as its starting point the footage of fans and journalists, crowding to bid her farewell.
‘how’s your French?’ yelled one hack. Grace gave a Gallic shrug. ‘Comme ci, comme ca,’ she said.
Another sub- stratum of coincidence emerged — and was ignored. here was an American actress whose relationship with her father was rocky at best, marrying a prince amid fervid media excitement — tens of millions watched her wedding, broadcast live.
Any echoes in recent headlines went unremarked. Perhaps this was due to the controlling hand of her son, Prince Albert — who guards his mother’s memory so doggedly that he keeps her childhood home as a shrine-like museum. Or perhaps the filmmakers simply opted to overlook other actresses and their princes. Compared to Grace and rainier,
Meghan and harry are C-listers when it comes to real glamour.
Phil Collins At The BBC (BBC2) served as a reminder that the Genesis frontman headed the A- plus list throughout the eighties. his star has waned, in part because of health problems, and it’s easy to forget that for a decade or more he was easily a match for elton John or Paul McCartney.
This compilation of his hits proved how many great songs he’s written, and how often he’s been No 1 across the globe — three times in 1985 alone, according to the on-screen fact boxes.
Appearances on everything from Wogan to the National Lottery draw, and saturday morning children’s telly to the Two ronnies, also reminded us how live pop performances used to be part of mainstream viewing.
As Gary Barlow pointed out in the Mail earlier this month, television executives say that ‘music doesn’t work on TV’ any more. This nostalgic blast gave the lie to that notion.