By 
The day Grace Kelly was to meet Prince Rainier of Monaco for the first time started out terribly. The American actress had washed her hair only to realize a labor strike had caused a power outage in Cannes, France, where she was staying at the Carlton Hotel. Without electricity, she couldn't dry her hair or iron her clothes. She would have to use natural lighting to apply her makeup. So Kelly improvised, putting on her one unwrinkled dress and pulling her hair back and adorning it with flowers. She hurried downstairs, without the aide of elevators, where her new acquaintances waited to accompany her to the Prince's palace.
Then, a minor accident with the car behind them made the group late. The prince wasn't there when they arrived; they toured his 225-room palace without him. Prince Rainier made it back in time to take his guests through his private zoo before Kelly had to return to Cannes for a professional engagement. During the tour, he and Kelly walked ahead of the group, chatting privately. On the ride home Kelly remarked that she'd found the prince "charming."
The meeting was actually a last-minute addition to Kelly's itinerary. Just two days earlier, she'd been approached by the Oscar-winning British actress Olivia de Havilland on the overnight train from Paris to Cannes.
Inspiration had struck de Havilland and her second husband, Pierre Galante, when they learned that Kelly was a fellow passenger. Galante, who'd been born in Nice on the Cote d'Azur, not far from Monaco, had connections to Prince Rainier of Monaco through his job as an editor at Paris-Match. Over dinner with de Havilland and a colleague in the dining car, Galente suggested they introduce Kelly to Prince Rainier.
"I'm tempted to think it was destiny," de Havilland, 100, told People in an exclusive interview.
De Havilland caught Kelly as she was leaving her table. They exchanged a few words on the narrow platform between the dining car and the adjacent carriage. "I overtook her to ask if she would agree to a meeting with Prince Rainier," de Havilland recalled. "Grace struck me on first encounter as a rather reserved, self-possessed, well brought up young woman."
Kelly was in town to present The Country Girl, for which she'd won an Oscar for Best Actress, at the Cannes Film Festival. She agreed to the meeting on the condition that the studio sponsoring her trip, MGM, approved it first.
After that fateful Friday afternoon, de Havilland, who attended a function with Kelly later that evening, noticed her cheerful manner, and "guessed" things had gone well.
"When she took her place at the head of the receiving line at the American reception, instead of offering her hand for a handshake, Grace extended her hand as if offering it to be kissed," said de Havilland. "She was in a state of enchantment."
Though Olivia de Havilland and Grace Kelly only saw each other one more time in their lives, their chance meeting of course sparked a marriage between Kelly and Rainier, who began writing each other after their introduction. Rainier soon traveled to the U.S. and proposed during Christmas, seven months later. The couple married in Monaco on April 19, 1956, and Grace Kelly took her place in history as Princess Grace.
(h/t People)
Follow Country Living on Pinterest.
