High Society: The Life of Grace Kelly |  | Author: Donald Spoto
Publisher: Harmony
List Price: $25.99
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as of 11/21/2009 22:49 CST details
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Seller: a1books
Rating:  4 reviews
Sales Rank: 1299
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 320
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.5 x 1.3
ISBN: 0307395618
Dewey Decimal Number: 944.949
EAN: 9780307395610
ASIN: 0307395618
Publication Date: November 3, 2009 (New: Last 30 Days)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Drawing on his unprecedented access to Grace Kelly, bestselling biographer Donald Spoto at last offers an intimate, honest, and authoritative portrait of one of Hollywood’s legendary actresses.
In just seven years–from 1950 through 1956–Grace Kelly embarked on a whirlwind career that included roles in eleven movies. From the principled Amy Fowler Kane in High Noon to the thrill-seeking Frances Stevens of To Catch a Thief, Grace established herself as one of Hollywood’s most talented actresses and iconic beauties. Her astonishing career lasted until her retirement at age twenty-six, when she withdrew from stage and screen to marry a European monarch and became a modern, working princess and mother.
Based on never-before-published or quoted interviews with Grace and those conducted over many years with her friends and colleagues–from costars James Stewart and Cary Grant to director Alfred Hitchcock–as well as many documents disclosed by her children for the first time, acclaimed biographer Donald Spoto explores the transformation of a convent schoolgirl to New York model, successful television actress, Oscar-winning movie star, and beloved royal.
As the princess requested, Spoto waited twenty-five years after her death to write this biography. Now, with honesty and insight, High Society reveals the truth of Grace Kelly’s personal life, the men she loved, the men she didn’t, and what lay behind the façade of her fairy-tale life.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Not up to Spoto's usual standard November 20, 2009
Richard A. Jenkins (Washington, DC USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Celebrity biographies are one of my favorite junk foods. Genre writing often means bad prose or poor research, and celebrity bios are often the worst offenders. Donald Spoto usually has been an exception, with meticulous research and well reasoned debunking of the kind of scandal that often sells the lesser of these books. Unfortunately, "High Society" appears to be a "clip job" and an instance of Spoto being a little too close to his subject. The book seems to draw a lot on leftovers from Spoto's past research on Alfred Hitchcock and his films. Spoto admits to a great deal of closeness with Kelly and he seems over eager to give her life and talent too many benefits of the doubt. Kelly's reign as princess gets a relatively short shrift. OTOH, the book does a good job of debunking myths about Kelly and her family, who were comfortable lace curtain Irish, rather than up from the bootstraps laborers and provides depth regarding her career and her lack of love for Hollywood, as well as her usually under appreciated stage work. The book plausibly (most of the time) debunks a number of Kelly's purported affairs without assuming that she had been virginal before marrying Prince Ranier. Spoto highlights Kelly's place in the realm of "cool blonds", although he is too Hitchcock-centric in his consideration of this now forgotten kind of mid-century elegance and sophistication (in contrast to "dumb blonds" like those played by Marilyn Monroe and imitators like Jayne Mansfield and Mamie Van Doren), that Kelly helped Americanize. The "cool blonds" later included television performers like Inger Stevens (who was Clairol's pitch woman for blond hair coloring) and the persona brushed off on Doris Day's later still-virginal roles and the later years of Donna Reed's television character. The counter culture and changing styles had more to do with the demise of the "cool blond" than Hitchcock's failure to find another as perfect as Grace Kelly. So, on balance, the book is a quick and mostly pleasant read, but one that pulls punches, is uneven in its analysis and seems particularly weak with regard to Kelly's later years.
 Mostly about her movies. November 12, 2009
Jill Meyer (Santa Fe, NM)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Donald Spoto's new biography of Grace Kelly is a well-written account of Kelly's life, with a special emphasis on her acting career. He bookends his solid accounts of her films, Broadway, and television work with info about her private life. I think most readers of Spoto's book will have already read other biographies of her entire life and so not mind the emphasis on her career.
Spoto's a good writer. He had a long-term friendship with Kelly and she talked to him over the years about her life and career, asking only that he wait twenty-five years to publish what she told him. The book seems restrained about her private life - particularly because other biographers have written about her supposedly voracious propensity to have affairs with her leading men. Spoto writes that most of the speculation about her sex life is just that - speculation - and was not true in most cases.
Spoto's obvious regard for his subject does not extend to fawning over her. Because he was concentrating on her career, I think it was easy for him to avoid making conjectures about her private life. I read the book in one sitting - it's not long - and came away with a very good appreciation of her career.
A Fresh View of Grace Kelly November 10, 2009
Satisfied Reader
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I read Donald Spoto's first book when it came out in 1976, to which Princess Grace generously contributed a foreword, and I have read many of his books since. I'll have to say, as someone who has also read a number of other biographical books about Grace Kelly, this one does seem like something of a labor of love (being very restrained in its speculations), which is not all that bad, I suppose, considering that some of those other books probably adopt too lurid a view of Grace Kelly's Hollywood romances. If some of the omissions are surprising (no mention of Mark Miller, of Grace turned off by Gable's false teeth, of William Holden's trip to Philadelphia to meet the Kelly family and their cold treatment of him, of Grace's quite commendable candor to Gwen Robyns about her love affairs), Mr. Spoto has other things to contribute from his many interviews with Princess Grace and others (like Hitchcock) who knew her. His analytical comments on her films are also excellent (especially on HIGH NOON). He quotes Hitchcock on the essential "anti-cinematic" nature of 3D movies (which was how DIAL M FOR MURDER was filmed) and is consistently interesting on the background topics of the mores and customs of the Fifties. His view about the canceled plans for Grace to do MARNIE are contrary to those of others, but he makes his case convincing (I would say). Mr. Spoto's book is not in the least bit gossipy, and it's smart and enjoyably written (though the word "inchoate" turns up at least three or four times, annoyingly starting to seem like a word admiring itself in the mirror).
The Virgin Queen November 8, 2009
Phil Perry (San Francisco)
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
According to this book Princess Grace was the virgin Queen of Hollywood!
No sex with Gary Cooper, no Clark Gable and most unbelievable no Bing Crosby!!! I think Mr. Spoto is a little too close to his subject and wants to defend her reputation! Nothing about any affairs after her marriage to Prince Rainer. The best bits in the book are the parts that deal with Hollywood and her film career (her life in Monaco only rates 40 pages!)If only he could have been more objective about her love life this book would have been great! It takes nothing away from Princess Grace that she enjoyed her time in Hollywood to the fullest!!!
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