True Grace: The Life and Times of an American Princess (Thomas Dunne Books) [Paperback]

Wendy Leigh (Author)

Book Description

Series: Thomas Dunne Books | Publication Date: June 10, 2008

On the twenty-fifth anniversary of Grace Kelly’s death, New York Times bestselling author Wendy Leigh has written a haunting celebration of a life that ended far too soon, starring a heroine whose dramatic, star-crossed story is both tragic and inspiring.

Her Serene Highness, Princess Grace of Monaco, the legendary Hollywood screen siren Grace Kelly, is an American icon whose beauty is unrivaled, and whose oft-imitated aristocratic style and cool elegance have never been eclipsed.
            Over the course of three years’ research, Wendy Leigh gained unprecedented access to more than one hundred sources who had never talked about Grace before, including nine of her until-now undisclosed romances (among them an English aristocrat, an American tennis player, and a Hollywood legend), her priest friend, Father Peter Jacobs, and Bernard Combemal, the former head of the S.B.M., the consortium that dominates Monaco. 
Providing new details about Grace’s life, including her premarital romantic swan song that took place during her voyage to Monaco, Leigh also reveals the hitherto untold story of her troubled relationship with bridesmaid Carolyn Reybold, and the moving story of her lifelong relationship with actor David Niven.
True Grace paints a compelling portrait of the ambitious young actress, the dutiful princess who transformed the principality of Monaco into a jet-set haven, the kind-hearted philanthropist, the loving mother, and Grace, the patriotic American. Wendy Leigh has written True Grace not for readers who wish to view Grace Kelly as a saint but for those who, like Leigh herself, believe she was a strong and beautiful woman.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Grace Kelly's public persona sounds glam: a Hollywood star marries royalty. But behind the cameras were decades of unhappiness and a lonely death. And in this well-researched biography, Leigh (Prince Charming: The John F. Kennedy, Jr., Story) presents Kelly as the daughter of a self-made millionaire known for his philandering and emotional indifference. Yet she was eager to impress him and longed for attention. She found it onscreen and in a series of affairs with older, married men: Ray Milland, Bing Crosby, Gary Cooper and the Shah of Iran. In fact, according to Leigh, she had affairs before and after her marriage. Kelly looked cool, but she was sexually aggressive—a subject that Leigh doesn't shy away from. The mystery is why the Oscar winner chose Prince Rainier, the ill-tempered, cash-strapped ruler of a tiny principality. It wasn't a love match: Rainier got a $2 million dowry, while Kelly's glamour turned a dissolute country into a playpen for the rich and famous. Kelly hoped to keep her career and was crushed when she realized marriage had trapped her. She could divorce—but she couldn't take her children. Leigh makes certain to note Rainier's infidelities—along with chronicling Kelly's history, acting career and charitable work in Monaco. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Forever known as "America's Princess," Grace Kelly provided such a rich vein of material for so many biographers that Leigh confesses she was only granted a publishing contract for her project if she could promise not to do anything "warmed over." Accepting the challenge, Leigh discovered that ferreting out new information was not as difficult as she once feared, and her interviews with more than 100 people not previously tapped by Kelly biographers form the basis of this scintillating portrait of a woman best known for her ethereal beauty and incandescent charm. After divulging the salacious details of Kelly's off-screen romances with many of her presumably happily married costars, Leigh focuses on the farce behind Kelly's fairy-tale wedding to Monaco's Prince Rainier in which the once-confident actress is depicted as a Rapunzel-like damsel trapped in the castle tower. Although the wealth of indelicate details may dismay loyal Kelly fans, Leigh's iconoclastic rendering strives to reveal the fragile woman behind the famous image. Carol Haggas
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin; 1st edition (June 10, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312381948
• ISBN-13: 978-0312381943
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (31 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,040,563 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing, June 5, 2007

By 

Silver Screen (Atlanta, GA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: True Grace: The Life and Times of an American Princess (Hardcover)

I picked up this book with very high hopes, but Ms. Leigh left me utterly disappointed. No new facts were revealed and the book seemed to focus mainly on Grace's romantic relationships, with the surprising exception of her marriage with Prince Ranier, which was quickly reviewed. More insight, perhaps, was given to Grace's troubling relationship with her father but, again, her marriage to the Prince and residence in Monaco over the course of 25 years was covered in a minimum number of pages. The book ended suddenly with Grace's death - - no mention of her funeral, how her husband and children dealt with her sudden passing or the people of Monaco's grief and the longterm effect of an American princess in their country. No updates on the children, particularly Caroline, who matured and took Grace's place as a beloved princess of Monaco, or Ranier, carrying on without her.
To add insult to injury, the book is rife with typos and mistakes. And a minor point, but the photographic section in the middle of the book is stingy and leaves much to be desired.
All in all, a very sad effort for an actress and princess who deserved a better biography.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Grace deserved better..., November 13, 2007

By 

Chocoholic (Illinois) - See all my reviews

This review is from: True Grace: The Life and Times of an American Princess (Hardcover)

This is a disappointingly brief and shallow biography of a princess who still awaits the long and detailed biography she deserves. As other reviewers have mentioned, Leigh gets even simple facts wrong (at one point, she states that Aristotle Onassis and Jackie Onassis divorced, though this never happened). For someone who claims to be a "BBC trained journalist", a simple mistake such as this has repercussions for the rest of the book's truth. And because Leigh repeatedly makes controversial assertions about Princess Grace's (such as her affairs before and after her marriage), simple mistakes can't be taken lightly here. In addition, Leigh seems to have conducted numerous interviewers with Grace's family and friends, and even acquires new information about Grace--such as her affair with a friend's husband. However, she also borrows liberally from previous biographies of Princess Grace, and lacks the sources that a more seasoned well-connected biographer would be able to contact. I also can't believe that the book contains only a small photographic section--and no photographs of Grace's children! All in all, I came away with a sour feeling from the book. Even though Leigh claims to have written a revolutionary biography of Grace, I thought she only skimmed the surface a lot of the time. I didn't ever feel that I got close to Grace and gained in-depth knowledge and insight, which is what a good biography should do. Bottom line: save your cash and wait for the day when a more discerning and incisive biographer steps up to the plate.

15 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Good Book, April 1, 2007

By 

Glenn Hopp - See all my reviews
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This review is from: True Grace: The Life and Times of an American Princess (Hardcover)

The book does have the glaring mistake that the other reader mentions--referring to Aristotle Onassis's divorce from Jackie Kennedy--and that will surely be corrected in the paperback version. Probably the author meant to convey that the couple may have been thinking about divorce when Onassis became ill and passed away. The impressive thing about the book is how well documented it all is and how candid Wendy Leigh is about explaining her sources both in endnotes and in an essay/appendix on her sources. She even says that novelist Graham Greene believed that Princess Grace was murdered. This is recounted in one of the lengthier chapter endnotes and somewhat discounted by Leigh (since Greene's nephew said the author had never mentioned it to him). But it is interesting and surprising, and the fact that it got relegated to an easy-to-miss endnote shows that the writer and publisher have some put some restraint on the sensational claims.

I have read many of the other books about Grace Kelly, and Leigh's book does mostly fulfill its aim (and promise to publisher Thomas Dunne) of not just warming over previously published material. She's thorough in that way, but much of this new material concerns lengthening the list of Grace Kelly's likely lovers. Leigh also resists repeating things that previous writers have covered, such as GK's acting in summer stock theater in Colorado, her relationships with Gene Lyons and Mark Miller, well-documented things like that. If this were the only book a person read on Grace Kelly, the reader might get a view of her recklessness that outweighed her other traits and talents. Reading Robert Lacey's book or James Spada's along with this one would furnish a more balanced view.