The Princess of Ocean City
A new exhibit celebrates Hollywood star, princess and one-time OC sunbather Grace Kelly
by Marjorie Preston
Atlantic City Weekly
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Her story almost defies belief: Philadelphia society girl, daughter of a bricklayer, becomes one of Hollywood’s greatest stars. At the height of her success, with an Oscar under her belt, she tosses it aside to become princess of an obscure principality on the French Riviera. Such was the life of Grace Kelly, whose glacial perfection onscreen, and fairytale marriage off-screen, has graven her into the American psyche.
A third act of her life, the final one, was equally dramatic. In 1983, at 53, Princess Grace died shortly after her car plummeted off the winding drive at Monaco’s Moyenne Corniche, site of one of her most famous scenes (in Hitchcock’s To Catch A Thief).
Though she lived and traveled all over the world, Grace Kelly always loved and returned to Ocean City. This year, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of her wedding to Prince Rainier, the Ocean City Historical Museum has mounted a tribute to the screen goddess that includes motion picture lobby cards (Mogambo, The Swan), photographs, and a bisque doll in Monegasque garb donated by the princess. The exhibit is small, but the memory of the golden girl who once summered here still looms large.
Bill D’Arcy may remember her best. The onetime Ocean City lifeguard dated a teenaged Grace Kelly for two years. “We had a summer romance,” says D’Arcy, of the courtship that in fact lasted two summers, in the mid-1940s. “She was a great gal.”
The couple met, of course, on the beach. Grace’s brother, Jack, was also a lifeguard (and later, an Olympic rower). Her father, millionaire John B. Kelly, was a generous patron of the lifeguard team.
Bill and Grace spent idyllic days in Ocean City, strolling the beach and boardwalk, and in Atlantic City, listening to big band concerts with stars like Vaughan Monroe, Glenn Miller and crooner Rudy Vallee.
“That was the highlight of the whole summer, to go to the Steel Pier and spend the whole day,” says D’Arcy. “They had a big ballroom in the middle of the pier and everybody danced.” According to D’Arcy, Grace did a mean jitterbug.
Romance bloomed. Back in the East Falls section of Philadelphia, where both lived in the off-season, Bill went to Grace’s junior prom, and she went to his senior prom. But the next summer, when Bill was pulling duty on Ocean City’s Second Street beach, Grace sauntered by on the arm of another boy. “And that was it, sayonara,” says D’Arcy with a chuckle. “Nothing ever really developed, but it was fun.”
The house that John B. built, at the corner of 26th and Wesley, still stands (once an oceanfront property, the big Spanish style manse is now one block from the beach). A second Kelly home across the street was demolished several years ago. The Kellys attended St. Augustine Roman Catholic Church, and many around town still remember seeing Grace Kelly at Sunday mass.
According to museum president Fred Miller, “She would come back at least once a year to visit her mother, with Prince Albert and Stephanie and Caroline, and it would always cause a lot of commotion.”
Author of the upcoming, Ocean City: America’s Greatest Family Resort (which includes a chapter on the Kellys) Miller says Grace probably spent dreamy afternoons plotting her future stardom at one of four movie houses on Ocean City’s boardwalk: the Village Theatre at Eighth Street, long gone, the Surf (now the Surf Mall), and two theatres that still remain, the Strand and the Moorlyn.
The Kellys in OC circa 1934: (L to R) Lizanne, Margaret, Grace, Kell, Peggy and Jack. RIGHT: Grace Kelly.
She never confided those dreams to Bill D’Arcy, who was amazed and delighted when his former flame became a leading lady. Grace went on to star in classics like High Noon, Dial M for Murder, The Bridges at Toko Ri and High Society, opposite leading men like William Holden, Bing Crosby, Gary Cooper, Jimmy Stewart and Cary Grant. She won the Oscar in 1955, for her portrayal of an embittered wife in The Country Girl.
Rumors of her involvement with Crosby and Holden have never been substantiated, but Grace did enjoy a famous fling with playboy designer Oleg Cassini, who visited the Kellys in Ocean City and got a chilly reception from the straitlaced Catholic clan. Cassini later said the feeling was akin to “mort dans l’ame (death in my soul).”
Cassini soon got the boot. Shortly thereafter, Grace was in Cannes filming To Catch A Thief when a photographer from Paris Match prevailed upon her to do a photo spread with the prince of Monaco. As Rainier squired her around his private zoo, the journalist said later, “We felt like indiscreet onlookers.” Within months, the two were engaged, and Grace shocked the world by announcing she would retire.
Bill D’Arcy was pleased. “Good for her,” he says. “We knew she was going with Prince Rainier, he was at the house in East Falls, and it was great for her.” But long before she became Hollywood royalty, and then European royalty, Grace and her family, says D’Arcy, “were the royalty of Ocean City.”
Marjorie Preston is a freelance writer who has been published in Ladies Home Journal, Fitness, and New Woman magazines. The Ocean City Historical Museum is located at 1735 Simpson Ave. For more information call 399-1801."
