Grace Kelly

            
             Grace, the third of four Kelly children entered the world three weeks after that great Well Street crash, and she grew up through the darkest years of the Depression. But these events had very little impact on her life. Her father had never believed in the stock market. He had avoided debt, and put his spare money in government bonds. With his New Deal connections, Jack Kelly sailed through the depression like a king.
             In May 1947, Grace graduated from the Stevens School. She was seventeen and a half, and she had no idea what she was going to do next. Ma Kelly set about organizing a tour of women's college in the Northeast, and she set off with Grace at the beginning of August 1947. But they were far too late. Everywhere they went the entry rolls were full, and the middle of the month found mother and daughter taking gloomy stock in the New York apartment of Marie Magee, and old friend of Ma Kelly, who lived just off Broadway on the West Fifty-fifth Street. Marie asked Grace where she wanted to go to school and Grace told her that she wondered if she could get into the American Academy of Dramatic Arts? Marie had been an actress herself and her own daughter had been a student at the American Academy, which was one of the country's leading private drama schools. At first the administrator told Marie that they were full and could not take any more students but Marie was persistent and Grace got an audition because Marie told the administer that she was a "Kelly-. They next day they found out she was accepted with the only criticism being her voice. It was "not placed- but it could be fixed.
             Grace had always been photogenic. All the Kellys' were. But dashing to photographers' studios between her Academy classes, Grace rapidly discovered just how much the camera loved her. Her good looks became something extra when translated into silver nitrate. She was not sufficiently hollow-cheeked and starving to get regular work on high-fashion assignments, but she was wholesome and handsome, a dreamy and glamorous version of the girl-next-store.