11/06/2024 General, Books & Autographs
NEW YORK, NY -- On Thursday, November 14, 2024, Doyle will auction the largest trove of letters from Grace Kelly to come to market. This extensive and important archive of letters, ephemera and correspondence between Grace Kelly and her friend and personal secretary Prudence Wise appears to be unpublished and unknown to biographers. Grace Kelly's rise from her first days as an actress in New York to becoming the Princess of Monaco is a real-life fairy tale. Worthy of collector, institutional, and scholarly interest, we trace no other archive that tracks the career and personal life of Grace Kelly in her own words in such depth.
Prudence "Prudy" Wise Kudner was raised in Jacksonville, Florida and attended Duke before moving to New York City and becoming roommates with Grace Kelly, Sally Parrish, and Carolyn Scott at the Barbizon Hotel for Women. The earliest items in this extensive archive include a photograph of Grace with two of the women, a phone message note on Barbizon stationery, and a note from Grace to Prudy in Jacksonville mentioning both Sally and Carolyn. The first substantial letter is postmarked April 1949, months before her Broadway debut that November, and is eight pages in pencil on a delicate stationery. The letter regales Prudy with the long tale of a dinner introducing a suitor named Don [Richardson] to Grace's parents which went disastrously resulting in the end of their relationship and an argument with her parents, but on the bright side Kelly makes note of the positive theater connections made through Don. Following some successful modeling work and her performance on Broadway in Strindberg's The Father, Grace had her first film role in Twentieth Century Fox's 1951 Fourteen Hours. In early 1952, Kelly answers questions for Prudy regarding her newest suitor Gene [Lyons] and mentions in a postcard that follows seeing a screening of Fred Zinneman's High Noon, her first major film role. High Noon was followed by the filming in Nairobi of John Ford's Mogambo, a role offered to Kelly after Gene Tierney was forced to drop out due to health issues, and two letters are written from Africa, one on fantastic Mogambo stationery. Kelly mentions "after leaving camp two weeks ago, Frank [Sinatra], Ava [Gardner], and Clark [Gable] & I went to Malindi on the coast for 5 wonderful days... there was a terrible champagne binge for about ten days over Christmas ... we all went on the wagon until Rome. Ava and I are now great pals..." before reporting that illness, injuries and deaths had plagued the production and "the old man [Sinatra] is very anxious to leave Africa." Into 1953, Kelly is at the Savoy Hotel in London while Mogambo is edited, she here reports that "Gable and Sam Zimbalist are cutting the picture to pieces which breaks my heart - I'm not speaking to Clark these days and neither is Ava - but don't tell anyone that." For her performance in Mogambo, Kelly won a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress and was nominated for her first Academy Award.
In the few years from mid-1953 through her marriage to Prince Rainier in 1956, Grace Kelly starred in some of the best and most stylish films of the period and became a bonafide movie star. The archive is rich in long letters from this period, including several on the stationery of the legendary Chateau Marmont in Hollywood starting in July 1953. It is here that Kelly first mentions that she "met Hitchcock" at the time she was filming Dial M for Murder, the first film in their important collaboration. In the first letter, Kelly mentions her arm is sore from playing tennis - her character is the wife of a professional player - and that "Tomorrow I test my wardrobe and see how it will all turn out in 3D," the medium for which the film was intended although most theaters showed the film in 2D. She also notes in the next letter that "They are still debating the colour of my hair. It comes out bright red in Warnercolour and Hitchcock is having a fit." In the next letter, Kelly reports "Sat. night I had dinner with the Hitchcocks. We went to Perino's which was lovely... there are really so few nice places to have dinner here - most of them are flashy eating joints." She closes noting how on the one-year anniversary of the Grace Kelly fan club she took time to speak all 15 girls who attended a party and called her on the phone.
Early the next year, Kelly is preparing to move into her new apartment in New York in the Manhattan House but tells Prudy she is first moving to the Hotel Bel-Air in Los Angeles. One short letter is written on Paramount Pictures stationery, possibly during the filming of The Country Girl as in the next letter on Hotel Bel Air stationery Kelly mentions seeing a screening of the film and having spent a day swimming in the pool of the famous costume designer Edith Head. It is in this letter that Grace Kelly first mentions a new suitor, Oleg Cassini, and describes how he procured the typewriter she uses ("the only one in Beverly Hills") and their spectacular outings together, writing "last Saturday we went to a big part at Jack Warners... and the weekend before we went up to Hitch's ranch in Santa Cruz... We had dinner with Bing one night... My father isn't very happy over the prospect of Oleg as a son-in-law ... but the plan now is to be married the first part of October..." This excellent letter closes with a manuscript mention of tickets for Rear Window. 1954 was the most significant year thus far in Grace Kelly's career, having won the Best Actress Oscar for The Country Girl and starred in two Hitchcock features: Dial M for Murder and Rear Window.
We catch up with Grace in early April 1956, just days before her royal wedding to Prince Rainier of Monaco who she had met in May 1955. Kelly tells Prudy "it is alright with me if you want to write an account of the wedding as long as it is not on the spot reporting and written afterwards as I am not supposed to have any press on my list of invitations." From the period of the wedding are invitations and printed materials, picture postcards, and envelopes with stamps bearing images of the new couple, all vestiges of Grace's new life as the Princess of Monaco. Many of Grace's letters from here on are written on royal stationery. In August 1956, Kelly asks Prudy "Can you believe that I am pregnant?" and mentions buying maternity clothes in Paris before heading to the U.S. About a week before the arrival of Princess Caroline in January 1957, Kelly expresses anxiety that "I still can't get used to being a wife let alone a mother... it has been so long since I led a normal life that I imagine it will take a while to become completely domesticated..." A very fine item is a picture postcard depicting Prince Rainier standing in uniform next to a gowned Princess Grace holding baby Caroline. In early 1958, Prince Albert was born and Grace glowingly reports "Our little boy is really too sweet for words. He is gaining weight rapidly and will soon be a big fatty. Caroline loves him but gets very upset when he cries. It is really wonderful having two such beautiful babies and one of each!" Grace has included several pictures of her with the children in these letters. Later that year, Grace is stateside and describes a trip to California to meet with Metro Pictures, a trip to Jamaica with Colliers, and her and Rainier's new apartment on Fifth Ave which she will decorate with a "clock from one of the To Catch a Thief sets" gifted to her by Cary Grant.
While the final years of the correspondence is voluminous, most topics include Grace's travels and instructions for when Prudy visits her, news of her children, and her efforts with orphans, the Red Cross, and other organizations. This group of letters offers insight to Grace's day-to-day in a relatively private time in her very public life. In 1958, Prudy married (with Grace as her matron of honor) and settled on a farm in Maryland where the letters continued to reach her from Monaco, Switzerland, Spain and elsewhere. The correspondence in this archive concludes in 1968, this being about the time Prudy began to suffer the leukemia that ended her life at just 42 in 1973. Grace Kelly died in 1982 at just 52 years old from injuries sustained when a cerebral hemmorhrage caused an automobile accident.
This is a remarkable archive that we believe to be unpublished and unknown to biographers. Grace Kelly's rise from her first days as an actress in New York to becoming the Princess of Monaco is a real-life fairy tale. Worthy of collector, institutional, and scholarly interest, we trace no other archive that tracks the career and personal life of Grace Kelly in her own words in such depth.
Auction Thursday, November 14, 2024 at 10am
Exhibition November 9 - 11
Lot 17. An extensive and important archive of letters, ephemera and correspondence between Grace Kelly and her friend and personal secretary Prudence Wise.
Estimate: $60,000-80,000
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