- Hardcover: 320 pages
- Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books; First Edition edition (Mar 20 2007)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0312342365
- ISBN-13: 978-0312342364
- Product Dimensions: 22.6 x 16.3 x 3.8 cm
- Shipping Weight: 544 g
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #541,605 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
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.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
2.9 out of 5 stars (31 customer reviews)
31 of 33 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars
Disappointing, Jun 5 2007
By Silver Screen - Published on Amazon.com
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.
14 of 14 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars
Grace deserved better..., Nov 13 2007
By Chocoholic - Published on Amazon.com
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.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars
Very Disappointed, Aug 29 2007
By Susan Afflerbach - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: True Grace: The Life and Times of an American Princess (Hardcover)
I have to say up front that I didn't finish this book. That's pretty unheard of for me, but from the very start, the author seemed to bounce around from one time period to another, then back again. It was confusing. I also lost track of who all the many characters were. There were several mentions throughout the book of letters Grace Kelly wrote to "Prudy", yet I couldn't remember who exactly Prudy was. Thankfully, her last name was finally mentioned somewhere near the middle of the book and I could look her up in the Index to see who she was. Maybe it's just me, but I was looking forward to reading this book and from the first chapter, I was disappointed in the way it was written and the shallowness of character that was portrayed for Princess Grace. Not finishing this book says it all!
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