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templeofgeek · 6 years

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Building cosplay can be a fun but challenging craft. This cosplayer takes it to a whole new level! Meet Amanda aka Rumplestilt Seam. She is a Texas based cosplayer that builds elaborate costumes that are quite frankly stunning to look at in person. Amanda is a seamstress who does commission work which you should go take a look at. I reached out to Amanda and asked her some questions in regards to her cosplay hobby.

(Danniel Slade) Can you start off by telling me a little bit about yourself?

(Amanda Phillips) My name is Amanda, I’m 25 years old and I’m from The Woodlands Texas. I go by Rumplestilt_seam in the cosplay community and I have over eight years of stage and theater experience under my belt, so naturally it was the obvious progression to move onto cosplay. I’ve been doing cosplay and costuming for a little over seven years; I’ve created award-winning costumes and skits, as well as having a piece accepted in the Dallas A-Kon 28 Cosplay Museum. I enjoy cosplay from different genres including anime, video games, comics, TV shows, and Movies. I tend to lean more towards DC Comics heroines and video game characters as well as a plethora of mashup and crossover pieces.

(DS) How did you come up with the name Rumplestilt Seam?

(AP) It’s kind of a funny story. I was for the longest time going under the alias “Adnamana12” which is my name backwards and the number twelve, and not so surprisingly people had a hard time pronouncing that. So, one evening I was posting about a costume I had finished recently, and I had a friend comment, “Wow! Girl, you spin out costumes faster than Rumplestiltskin spins gold!” and then it clicked. I came up with a play on Rumplestiltskin, RumplestiltSeam since I sew/am a seamstress.

(DS) What fandoms are you into?

(AP) So MANY! To name a few though would be: Supernatural, Game of Thrones, Marvel/DC, Harry Potter, Stranger Things, Anime, and some old school 90’s-00’s sci-fi like Stargate SG1 (and Atlantis), as well as Farscape. But really, I’m into a lot of different stuff including Video Game famndoms, if I were to keep going this whole interview would be about Fandoms haha.

(DS) When did you get into cosplay?

(AP) VBS of 2011. It was video game themed and they allowed the volunteers to dress up and I went as the cheapest looking thrift shop Princess Peach in a Dolly Parton wig (I kid you not) haha! But the kids loved it, and I loved it, so I started to do it more often and put more thought into my costumes. Eventually I took the big leap and started making my own costumes from scratch and the rest is history.

(DS) How do you choose what you are going to create for cosplay?

(AP) That’s a question with a very dull answer haha. I usually just choose things on Impulse. I’ll see something I like A LOT and just BOOM that’s what you’re cosplaying next. Unless it’s for a competition, then I listen to a bunch of different music/song tracks and try to narrow down who would fit what best, figure out a routine, and then choose.

(DS) In total, how many costumes have you created over the years?

(AP) It’s somewhere around 20ish.

(DS) Do you have a favorite costume that you want to wear over and over?

(AP) Sith Snow White definitely! I also love wearing Ciri, but she’s so dang hot to wear here in Texas with our Summers.

(DS) What was your easiest build?

(AP) Easiest build was Genderbent Meriln (BBC) I made for TRF last year. It was easy because I literally made it from fabric scraps I already had, I only needed to buy the fabric dye (Blue dress wasn’t always blue) and the jacket.

(DS) Now on the flip side, what was your hardest build?

(AP) Hardest was an all foam armored Cat Woman that I hand sculpted and built up the motorcycle style helmet with long angular cat ears. Took me almost 9 months to complete, mainly because I didn’t know squat about foam smithing at the time.

(DS) What is your favorite convention to cosplay at?

(AP) Right now, it’s Comicpalooza in Houston. It’s local to me so it’s almost guaranteed that I will attend every year, I also usually compete in the Cosplay Contest.

(DS) That was my next question! So you have competed in a cosplay competition, have you ever placed?

AP: I have! I’ve competed six times and placed in five of them! I usually compete in the skit division (as I mentioned before I used to be a pro dancer) since I like entertaining, but that doesn’t mean I skimp on craftsmanship! I always do prejudging and try to make at least 80% of my costumes for professionality sake.

(DS) What is your next convention that fans will see you at?

(AP) The Texas Renaissance Festival (Unsure of which weekend(s) right now), and Oni-Con in Galveston Texas on November 9th- 11th (Oni-Con: https://oni-con.net/ , TRF: https://www.texrenfest.com/)

(DS) You recently acquired an embroidery machine. How has your life changed now that you have it, what are your plans with all that power?

(AP) I feel like He-Man “I have the POWER!!” haha! But for real, I’m still only learning how to use it. Right now, I’ve been making Dice Bags; but as I familiarize myself with it I do plan to use in I’m my commissioning business as well as personal projects. I feel it’s a game changer for any cosplayer to invest in an embroidery machine for sure.

(DS) What is on your cosplay bucket list?

(AP) SO MANY THINGS. Flame Atronach from Skyrim with lights and smoke effects. Anything designs from Artist(s) Noflutter, Hannah Alexander, or Sunset Dragon. I LOVE detailed pieces, and those artists make DETAILED pieces.

(DS) Outside of cosplay, what do you do for fun?

AP: Not much really. I know that sounds kind of lackluster, but what I mean is I’m a pretty simple and easily entertained person. I’m satisfied to sit and watch Netflix all day or read a book (Currently engrossed with The Witcher series). I’m seriously awkwardest of potatoes in real life haha.

(DS) Are there any other cosplayers that inspire you?

(AP) Yaya Han, Kamui Cosplay, Jessica Nigri, and Cowbuttcrunchies are my biggest Cosplayer inspirations in craft and business models. They’re all such strong women of the cosplay community, and I want to be like them when I grow up.

(DS) What would you say to someone who might want to build their first costume but don’t know how to get started?

(AP) Find your niche and grow with that until you’re ready to build a new skill. For example, I am a pretty solid seamstress, it’s what I’m good at. But I can’t really craft with Worbla or foam at the same skill level, but it’s one I currently working on. It may not be the same for everyone, some may start out being a makeup/wigs wizard but can’t figure out the working end of a sewing machine or start out with people thinking you’re part Tolkien Dwarf because you can craft armor like one, but you don’t know the first thing about styling a wig. And vice versa. Don’t get overwhelmed by trying to learn and do everything all at once, ease into it and learn it all at a healthy comfortable pace.

(DS) How can our readers find out more about you? (please plug away)

(EP) Here are my links!

Facebook: Cosplay – https://www.facebook.com/RumpleandCatcosplay Commissions – https://www.facebook.com/RumplestiltSeamCosplayCommisions Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rumplestilt_seam Etsy: https://www.etsy.com/shop/RumplestiltSeam Blog: https://rumplestiltseam.wordpress.com

Temple of Geek’s Featured #Cosplay – Rumplestilt Seam Building cosplay can be a fun but challenging craft. This cosplayer takes it to a whole new level!

#Cosplay #DC Comics #Esmeralda #Gaming #Raven #Rumplestilt Seam #Seamstress #Sith #snow white #The Hunchback at Notre Dame. Catwoman

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artikgato · 7 years

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long post sorry

I never fully realized how big a part of my life conventions/cosplay had become. I mean, I knew it was a big part of my life - heck, I even help run a convention. I’ve been going to at least one convention (Animazement) since 2005 - that’s twelve years. And after twelve years of convention-going and, especially the last nine or so years of going to multiple cons every year - cons and cosplay have become the rhythm of my life without me realizing it.

Okay, so: I play a new video game, or watch a new anime/tv show/whatever, usually out of a desperate need to escape my life for a little while. Let’s say I like the game/show/etc: I go to social media and say “hey, I’m playing/watching this thing, and it’s great! wow!”. Many of the comments are “who are you cosplaying?” or “who’s your favorite character?” (secondary meaning: who are you cosplaying and/or writing fanfiction about?). A lot of the time, I do end up picking a new cosplay (or several depending on just how much I like the new game/show/etc.).

So I’ve picked a new character I like that I’m going to cosplay. Then I get to do research (fun!) and maybe order a new wig or track down some new shoes. Depending on how Extra I’m feeling I either commit to making the whole damn costume from scratch, or I decide to thrift as much of it as possible. Then I get to go fabric shopping (fun!) or thrift shopping (also fun!). Then I look at the rest of the year, pick a convention to have this costume ready by, and get to work. (Well, procrastinate for a while, panic about the con being too close and then get to work.) And then I make the cosplay which, despite all my bitching to the contrary, is also fun. Despite the fact that I never sleep enough and seem to run on caffeine and adrenaline, the week or so right before a con is always a great time - I get into that amazing flow state with the cosplay where my skills are heightened and I can do Great Things. It’s an awesome feeling. Then eventually I get to wear the cosplay, and have random strangers (and also friends) come up to me and express positive emotions at me solely for existing while looking like a character they like, which is a huge confidence boost and overall a good time. And many times, I make new friends! Win/win!

I’d settled into this groove with my life - get into a new fandom, pick a new favorite character, cosplay them, wear the cosplay at cons. Stressful, but generally fun all around - the “good” stress, if you will.

I just moved to a new job. I asked during the interview and again once I’d gotten hired, about going out of town for a weekend every once in a while. They, like every other reasonable employer, said as long as I gave enough notice (and I always do) that it would be fine.

I get to work the other day and I’m told that I can’t leave for lunch - which I’m pretty sure is illegal but is definitely just not cool - and unless it’s an emergency or something very important like a wedding of a close friend or a family reunion or something, I can’t take time off. Because I’m the “only one that can answer the phones”. Or talk to customers. I should bring my lunch and take my breaks “in the back” and still answer the phone. I should just “try not to get sick”. If I want to leave for a weekend they’ll have to close the shop and lose money, so I should take days off “only if you have to.”

I just moved down here. I’ve lived here before - the reason I left was because I couldn’t find a good enough job down here. I could go back to where I was before, and my old job would probably take me back, but the reason I was so eager to change to this job was, among other reasons, because I was having a hard time finding anywhere to live near my old job, and my lease is expiring at my old apartment. And the pay is better at this job, and for someone that’s been struggling to pay bills some months for the past forever it was a very enticing offer. So.

Rock, meet hard place.

I don’t know what to do anymore. I’d been thinking about cutting back on going to conventions anyway - the scene has changed so much, and it’s so expensive now...but I don’t want to cut out cons entirely. I help run one. I have friends I very rarely see outside of conventions because we’re busy adults with busy adult lives. I don’t want to just never see them again - and that is almost a guarantee with this job, because if I’m not seeing them at cons and I can’t leave for a weekend I’ll just never see them aside from social media.

I’m not the most social person, to be fair. I’m sure people would probably miss me, but I don’t think anyone would be devastated by not being able to see me once or twice a year. And conventions are a thing for teenagers and 20somethings, right? I’m going to get to old for cons eventually. I could probably make this work. Or at least, that’s what I’m trying to convince myself of, because what choice do I have? No other options are presenting themselves.

But circling back to the problem at hand - now I don’t even want to bother playing a new video game or starting a new show which, basically, is the only way to make my brain shut up for extended periods of time. When I get into a new fandom I love talking about it (I haven’t shut up about Persona once for the past two years). And because most of my friends know me as a cosplayer first, they are inevitably going to ask “who are you going to cosplay?”.

And even if they don’t - even if I ask them all to not mention cosplay or cons to me, I’ll still see their cosplays on social media, see them having fun at cons. Okay, so just stay off social media?

But even then, if I do all that, I’ll still have the impulses that I’ve been honing for the past twelve years: “ooh, you have a wig that would work great for that character” “that character would be so fun to cosplay” “I’ll bet I could convince Best Friend to cosplay this character with me”, etc. etc. etc. Even if I gave away all my wigs and threw away all of my fabric and sewing stuff, I’d still have the impulses. Also my best friend/roommate is even more into cosplay than I am, and that will be a constant reminder of what I’m missing. My ringtones are all Persona music. My phone background is my favorite character, incidentally also my favorite cosplay to wear. One look around my room and I’ll be reminded, constantly, that I’m just going to have to give up a huge part of my life for this job. How am I supposed to live like this?

#long post #personal #and if anyone actually read this and is wondering #no i can't explain this to my boss #she won't understand

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e-losers-blog · 7 years

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strange nerdy vld headcanons

-keith loves evangelion and watches it regularly with lance, most likely while cuddlin -pidges favorite 00s cartoon is My Life as a Teenage Robot -hunk binge watches cake wars with allura -lance likes to teach coran how to make latino foods -[CORRECTION] everyone loves to teach coran and allura on how to make foods from their culture -the ship holds a lil cooking contest every once in a while -after binge watching cake wars with hunk, allura got really into hell’s kitchen and just any show with gordon ramsey -allura’s mice have been shown cinderella. they Do Not like Cinderella's Mice. -keith has a thing for sewing -allura like ratatouille unironically -coran would love to visit australia if he ever gets the chance while at earth -pidge highly relate to the new velma from scooby doo: mysteries incorporated -shiro calls cds donuts -lance's favorite video is the pepe silvia scene -allura loves 80s movies like The Breakfast Club and watches them with Coran -shiro loves stars wars and he watched with hunk when he watched it for the first time -actually, sorry the whole gang loves star wars -keiths really into the costume design of it -allura and coran like watching what humans mustve thought space and aliens was like -pidge lived for that star wars drama (ex w/o spoilers, obi wan kenobi) -hunk loved the robots and machines and star wars (ex r2d2, c3po, TIE fighters, millinium falcon) -shiro just loved the creativity of the movies -and lonce-y boy loved character potrayals and their devolpment and interactions and such -lance likes to make everyone food every once in a while and everyone loves it -shiro went to a convention once and was freaked out by the cosplayers but eventually came to admire them -lance has a video of keith doing the lucky star theme dance in an empty garrison break room -shiro favorite way to move, that isnt walking or running, would be hopscotching* -keith used to be an emo weeaboo at that same time when he was 12. its a burden he must carry for the rest of life -while lance loves himself some super dance-able bruno mars, he also likes to chill out and listen to some coldplay -allura and lance regularly joke about "lonce" and its adorable** -pidge and shiro love going to ikea -the word black will make keith have a very That's So Raven-like flashback to when he was an emo-weeaboo twelve year old -hunk has a scar on his arm from when a climbed a really tree as a kid Notes: *in case you dont know, hopscotching is when hop with both feet once, and then hop on your left leg once, you hop with both legs again one time, and then hop with your right leg once, and it repeats. it makes more sense if you watch a video **i am not a lallura shipper at all i ship klance and shallura

#for my add kiddos #long post #volton #keith voltron #voltron coran #allura volton #voltron lance #hunk voltron #voltron shiro #pidge voltron #alluras mice voltron #headcanon #voltron headcanons #sorry for so man tags kiddos

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anothergracekellyblog · 7 years

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Taken from Good Housekeeping, May 1977

A noted novelist visits Princess Grace and finds laughter and tears beneath her serene armor of “glacial perfection.”

The Other Princess Grace by Budd Schulberg

When I was invited to write the scenario for a television special on the life of Princess Grace of Monaco, my gut reaction was: What an odd bit of casting. I write about prizefighters, brawny longshoremen, the fight for survival in the inner cities. I root for underdogs.

Princess Grace wasn't exactly my idea of an underdog. Her father was rich and she is immaculately beautiful. Her career from Philadelphia to New York to Hollywood to Monaco seemed to be up, up, up to the top of the mountain. For a child of Hollywood who had been raised with - and, accordingly, took a rather dim view of - movie stars, and of establishments in general (from film moguls to European royalty), a pilgrimage to the crystal chandelier world of Princess Grace Patricia Kelly Grimaldi of Monte Carlo would not seem to be my cup of tea, or should I say, my Venetian glass of champagne.

Is that a nice way to talk about a princess? A princess, especially an American born princess, is the stuff and the fluff of fairy tales. Hans Christian Andersen (with an assist from F. Scott Fitzgerald) should be writing this story instead of a follower of the fight game, a self-appointed expert on Muhammad Ali.

But it's a little late in the day for Andersen or Fitzgerald. And so...

Once upon a time there was a beautiful Irish-American girl whose grandfather had sailed as an immigrant boy in search of his fortune in the New World. If we had told John Henry Kelly as he stepped off the gangplank of a creaky old sailing ship in Boston that his granddaughter would return to the Old World and become the Princess Grace married to Rainier III and help to rule a sovereign principality from a 200-room palace that is one of the most majestic living museums in all Europe, that sturdy greenhorn would have put us in our place.

Grandfather Kelly made his way in the green world of 19th-century New England. His sons moved on to Philadelphia, where they prospered. Patrick, the oldest, made a success of the construction business and Grace's father, Jack Kelly, went to work for him as a hod-carrier and a bricklayer. A fierce second-generation competitor, Jack thrived on work. He could lay bricks fast and make money fast and row fast - somehow he found time before and after work to train for hours every day in a racing shell on the Schuylkill river and to become the national sculling champion. Wife Margaret was an ideal mate, not just a successful magazine cover girl but an athlete, too: the first co-ed physical education teacher at the University of Pennsylvania. “Way ahead of her time,” Princess Grace would reminisce, “the completely well-rounded modern woman. Now there's someone you could do a special on!”

We were sitting with her in the drawing room of the Grimaldi’s Paris townhouse in a courtyard of lovely old houses just off the Avenue Foch. When we rang the buzzer, she came to the door herself, with a warm and easy welcome to Bill Allyn, who would produce the TV special. Allyn had been a friend of hers from live television days in the early 1950's when they were both young actors scrounging around New York for work.

I was pleasantly surprised at the informality. No liveried servants, no bowing or scraping. Dressed in slacks and a light brown sweater with another shade of brown sweater over it, she might have been a suburban housewife in her late thirties, an especially pretty housewife. Marvelous eyes, marvelous nose, marvelous bones, marvelous skin. Yet neither in dress nor in manner anyone's conception of a fairy-tale princess. More like the girl next door, albeit the beautiful girl next door, 20 years later. I had pictured the cool grace of the Hitchcock movies and palace receptions. Instead, in a most friendly manner she led us into the drawing room, tastefully furnished but lived-in and warm. A big old dog called Andy bounded at her side. Chatting and reminiscing with Bill, she was shy and diffident with me, a watchful stranger. But quicker to laugh than I would have expected.

Spread on the coffee table were snapshots of a recent family trip to the Sahara. "I'm the family photographer," she said. "I really think these are pretty good, don't you?"

She picked one out, a moody sandscape relieved in the distance by what looked like an oblong glass. A mirage, she said proudly. "That's awfully hard to get. Rainier didn’t seem so impressed. But even when you can see it with the naked eye, it's tricky to pick up with a camera."

We asked about her family, the Philadelphia Kellys. Jack Kelly Sr. had been a driving spirit whose motto in life was, "I don't care what you do but whatever it is, don't just be good at it, be the best!"

He had gone to England's Henley Regatta to race in the Diamond Sculls, but had been forbidden to enter because he had the hands of a working man. "This is an event for gentlemen." A generation later, the Kelly family had gone to England to cheer Grace's brother "Kell" on as he won the cup that had been denied his father.

"There aren't any words that can do justice to my feelings." Father Kelly had said. "I feel a tremendous sense of pride for Kell. He's the one that matters, not the thwarted ambitions of an old guy who once got his fingers publicly burned over here because he was born without a silver spoon in his mouth."

"It must have been a heavy load," I said to Princess Grace, "to keep up with the Kellys, to keep up with yourself - to be the best."

She crossed her legs and thought a moment, as if there were still a challenge in the question, some lingering sense of childhood hurt. We had heard from friends that not only had she been a shy child, but rather sickly, too - unlike her outgoing, tomboyish older and younger sisters. She liked to stay in her room and read, draw, sew and dream, try to turn her introspection into poetry.

"Yes, it was - it is - a heavy load," Princess Grace said. The silence that followed seemed to hold its own inaudible sentences: Loads are to be carried. Burdens are to be borne. Challenges are to be met. And overcome. You could almost hear the convent sisters teaching her character with a stinging ruler. And the voice of Jack Kelly Sr. echoed in the room: "Be the best, Grace Patricia, be the best!"

UNCLE WON PULITZER

The mood changed suddenly when we talked of her two theatrical uncles: Walter Kelly toured the vaudeville stages of the world as "The Virginia Judge," and the famous playwright of the 1920's, George Kelly, won the Pulitzer Prize for Craig's Wife. Grace warmed to his memory. "I think Uncle George was a great American playwright, but there's a whole new generation that doesn't know him as well as I wish they did. He knew his people. Exactly how they talked and what they felt. Both The Torchbearers and The Show-Off are wonderful plays, human, funny and moving. In his preface to The Show-Off, the great humorist Heywood Broun wrote, ‘This is the best comedy yet written by an American.’”

Then it was Uncle George who influenced you to go into the theater?" She thought a moment.

"We were always doing plays. I was Cinderella in my sister Peggy's play when I was twelve, and I had a part in an Old Academy Players production in our hometown, called Don't Feed the Animals. I did Peter Pan as our graduation play at Stevens - but we were talking about Uncle George."

Clearly, of the two theatrical careers, she was much more at ease with George's than Grace's. "Uncle George was one of the most fascinating men I ever met. He could remember every poem he ever read. He loved poetry and language and the theater. He could recite favorite poems all night long. So wise, witty, human - there was simply no one like him in the whole world."

I had once been aware of, and then half-forgotten, the George Kelly-Grace Kelly family relationship. Certainly I hadn't realized until now what a driving force it has been in her life.

Then, with both of them remembering lines from another of Uncle George's plays, Behold, the Bridegroom, Bill Allyn and Grace (for she was all actress now and not at all princess) fell to reminiscing about those live shows they had done in what is now looked back on nostalgically as "the Golden Age of television": Studio One, Lights Out, Philco, The Kraft Playhouse. They were both talking at once. "Those were really insane days... absolutely hysterical... things are so much more ordered now, on film or tape, but live, going on in front of all those viewers... how did we ever get through it?"

"It was like living on the edge of a precipice!" Grace was laughing. "I'll never forget one time I was playing a scene in bed with all my clothes on under the covers so I'd be ready to run into the next scene dressed. But the camera didn't stop in time and they didn't cut away, so there I was, on the screen getting out of bed with all my clothes on!"

Now she and Bill were trading bloopers. She was up on her feet, standing in front of the mantel, trying to stop from laughing so she could demonstrate a dreadful mishap in The Cricket On The Hearth. "It was supposed to be snowing and a wonderful English character man and I were coming to bring an orphanage a hot pie for Christmas. The prop men were throwing salt down but we were told to walk close to the window under the eaves, so it wouldn't actually fall on us, because there we'd be with snow on our costumes that wouldn't melt when we got inside. We were to wave through the window, and the pie was too hot. So I set it down and the old actor stepped in it. He came limping into the place with half the pie spread over his shoe. "Look what we brought you - this nice, hot pie - Merry Christmas!"

INFECTIOUS LAUGHTER

As I listened to her laugh, I thought of all the people who had warned me about her "glacial perfection." But the laughter was infectious - from a real live girl with an appealing, self-deprecating sense of humor.

She was still getting money from home in those early theatrical days, but that streak of independence led her into modeling to pay for the acting classes. Before she was 19, she was earning enough to move out of the Barbizon Hotel for women and into her own apartment. A nesting sort of person, she enjoyed fixing up the place.

"Remember giggle belly?" Allyn said.

"Giggle belly!" Again Grace laughed as she tried to describe this silly game. A group of young actors would lie on the floor with their heads on each other's stomachs and tell funny stories that would make their heads bounce up and down as their bellies giggled. "We did a lot of silly things," they both agreed. "And we all laughed a lot. But along with the fun there was hard work... "

"Like Strindberg's The Father," we prompted.

That was Grace's Broadway debut, with her name in small print under the starred names of Raymond Massey and Mady Christians. Grace still says she only got the role because both stars were tall and her rivals for the part were all too short. "Nonsense,” says Raymond Massey. "She got the part because she showed the most promise. All through the rehearsal period we were impressed with her earnestness, her professionalism and her good manners. She was organized and dedicated. Between rehearsals she would ask Mady if she could sit in her dressing room and talk about the theater. She was a delight to have in the company. A rare kind of young person who had a hunger to learn and to improve herself."

"It ran only a short time," Grace said, "but it was wonderful experience."

Young Grace Kelly soon became a favorite cover girl, so it was inevitable that Hollywood would tap her on the shoulder - Hollywood personified in the ebullient, English-fracturing Russian director, Gregory Ratoff, who screen tested her for a somewhat less than immortal film entitled Taxi.

The Taxi story turns out to be another funny bit. I'm not studying her anymore, I'm laughing with her. It has ceased being a job and has become a vacation.

The role in Taxi, she told us, called for an Irish brogue. Although her name was Kelly, she sounded not at all like forebears from County Mayo. More like a proper Philadelphian. But, like any aspiring actress, she assured Mr. Ratoff that the brogue was no problem. Then she ran home to ask how one went about acquiring an overnight brogue.

"One of my friends had a maid just ονer from Ireland I hurried oνer to listen to her speak. But she was too shy to open her mouth. I'd ask questions to try and get her talking, and all she'd say was, ‘Yes, Mum,’ or ‘No, Mum.’ So I handed her the newspaper and asked if she'd mind reading it out loud. The poor girl finally admitted that she could hardly read. I put together what thought might pass for a brogue - and flunked the screen test."

But Grace Kelly had what Frances Fuller, head of the American Academy, described as, "A very special quality. Also the face of a Grecian goddess, but it was that extra something that is more than beauty, some special poise, an inner light."

When her New York agent, Edith Van Cleve, described that "special quality" to Jay Kanter, a youthful but influential Hollywood agent, brogue or no brogue, Kelly was movie bound.

AGAIN THE PRINCESS

"You must be getting hungry?" was Grace's answer to the first question about Hollywood. “If it's alright with you, I've made a reservation at a club nearby - the food is quite good." She rose briskly. Suddenly she seemed the princess - a gracious, down-to-earth princess, but clearly in command. Now it was difficult to imagine her ever playing "giggle belly" or impersonating an old actor with a meat pie on his shoe.

A blonde, middle-aged, bejeweled houseguest materialized. A friend from Grace's Philadelphia days. Having lived at least four different lives in four different times, places and worlds, Grace cultivates a capacity for not losing touch with anyone of them.

There was a waiting chauffeur and limousine. The princess asked us if we'd prefer to walk. The gentlest of commands. People who recognized her pretended not to, as if they understood that she preferred it that way.

We were ushered to a round table in a corner of the Club Rothschild with the most muted of fanfare. Luncheon conversation was easy but disjointed because Grace's houseguest was something of a dangling participle to a life story I was trying to piece together. It was like a flashback to Philadelphia adolescence while I waited to move forward to Hollywood early maturity. The princess was being the perfect hostess, somehow managing to talk old times with her hometown friend and films and filmmakers with us. On her way out, I noticed that fellow members of the club stepped back or moνed to one side so they could gain a clear view without being ostentatious. She pretended not to notice.

Back in the comfortable and now familiar drawing room, we were returning to the Hollywood of my youth. After an uneventual role in a forgotten movie called Fourteen Hours, Grace was on her way to the most remarkable five-year career in the history of motion pictures. A mouthful of a statement, but there it is. In 60 months, a classically photogenic face, the stamina of a marathon runner, an obsessive drive for self-improvement and a little bit of luck that was parlayed into great gobs of luck by the power of the will, swept Grace Kelly from obscure starlet to international star.

The luck began when Jay Kanter "sold" her to producer Stanley Kramer and director Fred Zinnemann for High Noon. In her big scene, she is finally driven to pick up a rifle and kill the fourth outlaw to save her husband, played by Gary Cooper, after Cooper has dispatched the other three.

A nomination for Best Supporting Actress in Mogambo didn't convince her that she was all that good in it. "I really wasn't," she said straightforwardly. "I was lucky. I was in awfully good hands. I was new in the business."

To master film technique, so different from either live television or the theater, was a challenge. "Be the best!" was echoing in the hall again. But from the outset Grace Kelly was a different cut from the lovely blonde starlets so overjoyed and overwhelmed by Hollywood. With her two sisters to keep her company, she stayed at that Sunset Boulevard relic of lost elegance, the Chateau Marmont. She would only sign her seven-year contract at MGM with the provision that she could go back to New York and the theater every other year. Remembering her as a star on the rise 25 years ago, agents, producers, directors, fellow actors and friends all draw a consistent picture of a girl with a steel trap mind who could not be dissuaded once she set that mind on what she wanted to do.

LUCK AND WILL

Now the Kelly luck embraced the Kelly will: the screen test that had failed her in her quest for a role in Taxi impressed that crustiest of critics, John Ford, who cast her in Mogambo - a remake of Red Dust, with Grace playing the Mary Astor role of the genteel but adulterous wife, Ava Gardner taking on Jean Harlow's "Honey Bear" and Clark Gable repeating the role he had created in the original. Two more disparate ladies than Ms. Kelly and Ms. Gardner could hardly be imagined, but they got on surprisingly well. Ava threw tantrums while Grace tended to her lines and her knitting. Frank Sinatra, in Africa for a visit with his unpredictable Ava, pronounced Grace Kelly the squarest of the squares. Even when columnists hinted out loud that Graces love scenes with Gable were unusually convincing. Grace never lost her Kelly cool.

Back in Hollywood for the Mogambo interiors. Grace and fellow-actress Rita Gam found an unpretentious apartment on Sweetzer Avenue. A pair of hard working bachelor girls, they were an odd couple: the cool golden girl who all ways seemed to have her emotions in check and the dark, exotic beauty whose emotions kept spilling over, "We both kept falling in love with the wrong men,” Rita remembers.

But if there were emotional frustrations and dead ends, the Kelly career kept climbing smoothly upward. The same, now-famous test that Ratoff and 20th Century-Fox had thumbed down caught the eye of another film master, Alfred Hitchcock. There was Dial M for Murder opposite Ray Milland, Rear Window opposite Jimmy Stewart and To Catch A Thief vis-a-vis Cary Grant.

With top directors Zinnemann, Ford and Hitchcock and leading men Cooper Gable and Grant, could a girl ask for anything more? If her name is Grace Kelly, the answer is yes.

We were still sitting in the Paris townhouse, but our minds were now focused on The Country Girl. The Clifford Odets Broadway hit was to be done as a film Every female star in town was after the role of the drunken actor's wife, described by Odets as "the broom behind the door." Grace knew that this was a part that could prove she wasn't just an elegant clotheshorse.

But winning that role was one of the longer shots in the Hollywood sweepstakes. In the first place, MGM, her "home studio," didn't want to loan her out. In the second place, Paramount and the producers of The Country Girl - wanted a bigger name to match the star male leads, William Holden and Bing Crosby. And, finally, even Crosby, looking for all the help he could get in playing a complex and difficult dramatic role, expressed his doubts that the elegant Kelly girl could handle a part so totally out of character for her.

The more opposition, the greater the determination. Grace told Jay Kanter and Lew Wasserman, representing the sinew and brains of the powerful agency that represented her, that they had to get Metro to release her for the role. She had to get this part. Otherwise, she was ready to go on suspension, quit Hollywood and return to New York to concentrate on the theater.

Thus are Hollywood legends born. For the screen test, Edith Head, whose mantelpiece is a parade ground for Best Costume Oscars, and who had dressed Grace in dazzling gowns for those high fashion movies, now helped Grace completely transform herself into the worn and weary country girl. And in the film, which she subsequently made, it wasn't just an outward change. She gave a performance from the inside such as she had never given before. At the end of the first week, a convinced Bing Crosby said, "I'll never open my big mouth again!"

It was Oscar time and Grace was nominated for Best Actress. But everybody agreed that Judy Garland had a lock on the little statue - the sentimental favorite making a dramatic comeback (on and of the screen) in the musical remake of A Star Is Born. But when Bill Holden opened the envelope on the stage of the Pantages Theater, we heard: "And the winner is . . . Grace Kelly!"

That same night Marlon Brando won his Oscar for On The Waterfront. While they posed together, swarming photographers shouted, "Kiss Marlon, Grace! Go ahead, kiss him!”

Suddenly Miss Kelly was from Philadelphia and the Stevens School, and her father was Jack Kelly, Sr. and her uncle was George Kelly, who had won a prize she respected perhaps even more, the Pulitzer. "Don't you think he should kiss me?” asked Grace Patricia, looking cool and elegant in aquamarine satin. On she swept to a party at Romanoff's - the girl who had everything. "Miss Perfect," people were calling her, some in awe and some inspite

"How did it feel?” I asked her in Paris.

Another long pause. "I was unhappy. Now I had fame, but you find that fame is awfully empty if you don't have someone to share it with."

As she sat there remembering that triumphant and lonely night, I found myself thinking of a note that F. Scott Fitzgerald had written to himself while preparing to write his heroine Kathleen in The Last Tycoon: "People simply do not identify with people who have all the breaks. I must endow this girl with a little misfortune.” I was beginning to find it in the girl who had everything.

Meanwhile, back at the Palace...

In 1955, the principality of Monaco was not the flourishing place it is today. The casino was run-down, the ancient palace itself in disrepair. Aristotle Onassis, George Schlee and Gardner Cowles were meeting to discuss how to save it.

Running the troubled affairs of Monaco for seven years, already in his mid-30's and still a bachelor, Prince Rainier III knew he must find a suitable wife with whom to share his life and the duties of the principality. Remembering his own unhappy childhood (a broken home at age six, lonely and disoriented at a British boarding school), Rainier insisted he would not make a marriage of convenience.

LOVE STORY OF THE CENTURY

And so the stage is set for what the press of the world called, "The love story of the century." The Prince had met Grace casually in Monaco when she attended a showing of To Catch A Thief the year before. Now he came to Hollywood on a visit less casual. Then went on to Philadelphia to meet her family.

I begin to ask direct questions and get surprisingly (although less surprised now than when I first met her) direct answers.

"Did you ask your parents for permission to marry Rainier?"

"No, I made up my own mind. I had asked them once or twice before and it hadn't worked out. This time I knew I had to make my own decision."

In fact, Father Kelly disapproved of the match. Rainier seemed like a nice fellow. But European princes are notorious playboys. And she'd be an American living far away in a foreign land.

I took a breath. “Princess Grace, do you mind if I ask you a very personal question?"

"Well, suppose not."

"I'm trying to put myself in your place. Every writer has to do that. It must have been a terribly difficult moment. You were marrying a man you barely knew… going off to a strange world… knowing as a member of your church there was no turning back. Giving up a film career on your way to becoming a superstar - you must have felt... well, how did you feel as you went up that gangplank?"

This time the pause was so long that I thought she resented my question too much to answer. She stared at the floor. When she looked up, her eyes were wet. If she had glacial perfection, the glacier was melting. She spoke quietly, with total simplicity:

"The day we left, our ship was surrounded in fog. And that's the way I felt - as if I were sailing off into the unknown. I had been through several unhappy romances. And although I had become a star, I was feeling lost and confused. I didn't want to drift into my thirties without knowing where I was going in my personal life."

As if she had been conceived by Scott Fitzgerald, here she was, endowed with a certain misfortune.

"I guess I'm a homebody at heart, she was saying. But I didn't have a home. Rainier came into my life at just the right moment. I needed someone who wouldn't be Mr. Grace Kelly. I could see that Rainier was a dedicated man. He had liberal ideas for making the principality more than a playground. While life on board ship must have seemed to the world like one continuous party, I couldn't help looking out into the fog and wondering: ‘What is going to happen to me? What will this new life be like?’ I had never met his family, except for his father, I must say he was wonderfully supportive. But I had no idea how the rest of the family, and the Court, would accept me. What sort of world was waiting for me on the other side of that fog?"

A friend said to Princess Grace, "But it was such a gorgeous wedding. The loveliest royal wedding of the century. European royalty. World celebrities. And so beautifully organized."

Now Princess Grace laughed.

WEDDING SHEER CHAOS

"Chaos! Fifteen hundred invited guests. And most of them wanting extra tickets for the balls and the dinners and the two weddings, first the civil one in the throne room of the palace, then the religious one in the cathedral. The weather was foul. And more journalists than they had covering D-Day. The language barriers! And the palace wasn't ready to be lived in yet. Sheer chaos!"

Bridesmaids, including Rita Gam, remember it as the most romantic time of their lives. But for Princess Grace the summer was long and hot. There was resentment from the traditionalists. What was an American, and from Hollywood at that, doing in their palace? Rainier understood the difficulty of the transition and was of great help to her But there were times, Grace admits, when she would stroll the palace walkway and wonder....

But time is a patient teacher. "Once Caroline was born, and then Albert, I began to feel my roots in Monaco. I was finally beginning to master the language, by osmosis. You might say I worked from the inside out. Now that I had my new family around me, I could move outside the palace into the community."

Once she got her bearings, Grace of Monaco became the most active princess the principality has ever had. Realizing that the local hospital was run down, she found ways to modernize it. She founded a daycare center and enlarged the old people's home. "She brought us heart," an old man says.

"She brought the palace back to life," says a staff member. "Inviting the children of the village into the throne room for a Christmas party. And the flowers everywhere. The Garden Club that grew into an International Flower Arranging Festival. The Children’s Village she set up through the Monegasque Red Cross to help keep together children of the same family who have lost their parents. Bazaars promoting the arts and crafts of Monaco. Using the courtyard of the palace as a natural stage for the International Arts Festival."

I was standing in the courtyard of this ancient castle, with its gracefully winding stairway. The chief of the secretariat was speaking with an enthusiasm he had drawn from Princess Grace. "She wants the palace to be used, to be alive, to help make the world more beautiful. Nureyev has danced here, and Danny Kaye has entertained, and the Paris Opera Ballet, Yehudi Menuhin, the Mexican Ballet Folklórico... She's brought a special quality to the palace that enriches the life of the principality. That's why we love to work with her. She gets up early and never stops.

"It's not just because she's our princess,” says Paul Choisit, the former consul for Monaco in New York, who now runs the secretariat, "I think she's the most unusual person I've ever known And with all the demands on her, the official duties, she still manages to save a great deal of time to share with her children. It's a known fact throughout the principality that Caroline, Albert and Stephanie are blessed with a supporting and loving mother."

I'm back at the townhouse in Paris, having returned from the old-world new-day atmosphere of the palace. We're talking of the ballet school I’ve toured (where teenage ballerinas are schooled by masters), through which Grace of Monaco hopes to restore to its former grandeur the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. The phone rings and it's Arthur Rubinstein. The phone rings again. It's Moscow. The International Television Festival is coming up and her staff has been at work on it, reaching out to renowned guest artists to appear at the gala after the awards. Monaco's Festival, far purer than the now corrupted Film Festival in Cannes, gives awards for such shows as the best on protection of the environment and best children's program, as judged by children themselves.

I see that Grace Kelly of Philadelphia, daughter of self-made millionaire Jack, niece of the Fabulous Uncle George, has found her way through the fog to a creative world she has made for herself on the other side.

As Hans Christian Andersen might have said, "And so the princess lived happily - and busily - ever after."

#grace kelly #princess grace of monaco #budd schulberg #1977 #good housekeeping #sheila scan

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