In one of those life imitates art situations Grace Kelly gave her farewell performance on the big screen playing a princess. She left the screen to become a princess, Princess Grace of Monaco. No Hollywood scriptwriter could come up with that.
I wish she had left after High Society though. The Swan is a rather old fashioned drama set in 1910 with a royal family of some Ruritanian principality finding themselves in a financial bind. Jessie Royce- Landis and her three kids, Grace Kelly, Christopher Cook, and Van Dyke Parks will have to live in reduced circumstances and have to give up among other things, the royal tutor Louis Jourdan. That is unless mom can get visiting cousin Prince Alec Guinness interested in a royal match with Princess Grace. But when he arrives he's essentially quite indifferent to her. Which gets Jourdan's goat because he's crushing out big time.
This kind of work without the accompanying publicity of Grace Kelly's real life wedding to Prince Rainer probably would have died at the box office. It's a story way too old fashioned for 1956 tastes let alone now. The choices that this family is forced to make would be imposed on most of royal Europe by the end of the decade, forced on people holding much bigger titles than this family has.
No one set foot in Europe as this was shot in a recreated castle in North Carolina by the Vanderbilt family. Since that time the location has been used for several films. It certainly is one fine replica.
In a recent biography of Alec Guinness it is reported that Guinness who got along with his co-stars did not with director Charles Vidor. It certainly didn't affect his performance. Guinness was a brilliant player but a strangely neurotic man who had a lot of issues.
Grace Kelly did not end her acting career on a high note with The Swan. More like a middle C.
I wish she had left after High Society though. The Swan is a rather old fashioned drama set in 1910 with a royal family of some Ruritanian principality finding themselves in a financial bind. Jessie Royce- Landis and her three kids, Grace Kelly, Christopher Cook, and Van Dyke Parks will have to live in reduced circumstances and have to give up among other things, the royal tutor Louis Jourdan. That is unless mom can get visiting cousin Prince Alec Guinness interested in a royal match with Princess Grace. But when he arrives he's essentially quite indifferent to her. Which gets Jourdan's goat because he's crushing out big time.
This kind of work without the accompanying publicity of Grace Kelly's real life wedding to Prince Rainer probably would have died at the box office. It's a story way too old fashioned for 1956 tastes let alone now. The choices that this family is forced to make would be imposed on most of royal Europe by the end of the decade, forced on people holding much bigger titles than this family has.
No one set foot in Europe as this was shot in a recreated castle in North Carolina by the Vanderbilt family. Since that time the location has been used for several films. It certainly is one fine replica.
In a recent biography of Alec Guinness it is reported that Guinness who got along with his co-stars did not with director Charles Vidor. It certainly didn't affect his performance. Guinness was a brilliant player but a strangely neurotic man who had a lot of issues.
Grace Kelly did not end her acting career on a high note with The Swan. More like a middle C.