Read High Society: Grace Kelly and Hollywood for Free Online Page A

that my parents thought would preserve, protect and defend me, as if I were the Constitution. It was a residential hotel for women only, and to have my father’s consent to audition for the AmericanAcademy of Dramatic Arts, I had to agree to live at that hotel—not in an apartment on my own.” Perhaps because of his own philandering, Jack was not inclined to trust his children. A hotel for women, which denied access to men above the street-level foyer, would keep careful watch and ward over young Miss Kelly.

TWO
    T he Student M odel
    I don’t want to have your mind and will, Father—I want to be myself.
          —GRACE (AS BERTHA) IN STRINDBERG’S THE FATHER
    T HE TWENTY-THREE-STORY B ARBIZON H OTEL FOR Women, at Lexington Avenue and 63rd Street, was designed using an imaginative blend of Italian Renaissance, Gothic and Islamic architectural styles. Admitting its first residents in 1927, it represented an alternative for young women arriving in New York in the Roaring Twenties, leaving home in search of new professional opportunities but wanting a safe, respectable place to live. The owners and managers created and reinforced the values of the mostly wealthy families from which these women had come; in 1947, few others could afford the rate of twelve dollars a week.
    Three letters of reference were required from applicants, and there was always a long waiting list. Dress codes and house rules were strictly enforced; liquor was forbidden on the premises; and men could visit only on the ground floor. Despite—or perhapsbecause of—these apparent constraints, the Barbizon was considered a very desirable place to live. “If a girl put on her résumé that she lived at the Barbizon,” recalled Margaret Campbell, the longtime executive housekeeper, “that was almost enough, morally and socially,” to guarantee employment; at the least, residents had access to some of New York’s higher social life. Several of the Beale and Bouvier daughters lived there in the 1920s and 1930s, and over the years its tenant list included the writer Sylvia Plath and many aspiring or working actresses, among them Lauren Bacall, Barbara Bel Geddes, Gene Tierney, Candice Bergen and Liza Minnelli.
    The accommodations were certainly not luxurious, and a new girl’s first impression might have been that her austere quarters resembled a convent cell or a house of correction. The nine-by-twelve-foot rooms were little more than cubicles, with space only for a narrow bed, an armless chair, a clothes rack, a floor lamp and a small writing desk. Fewer than eighty of the 686 rooms had private baths—the rest shared common facilities on each floor. But everyone had the use of the hotel’s gymnasium and swimming pool, library, music studio, kitchen and dining room. Complimentary afternoon tea with tiny sandwiches was served in a large parlor—close to dinnertime, for the benefit of those on tight budgets. The place was lively with news, gossip and music played on a phonograph that had seen better days.
    Grace settled into the Barbizon in late August 1947. “She kept a great deal to herself,” recalled Hugh Connor, the manager during the years of her residency; he added that she seemed very shy, sitting alone, wearing glasses as she read or knitted. Grace kept a wire recorder in her room and listened to herself reading so that she might improve her diction. But she was not antisocial and established several friendships thatendured for the rest of her life: close companions knew her skill at droll imitations and responded to her infectious laughter. Carolyn Scott, an aspiring model who also lived at the Barbizon, remembered Grace as being sedate in public, given to tweed suits, sensible shoes and a hat with a veil—an image recalled by many that year. “Grace’s usual outfit,” according to another friend, Alice Godfrey, “was a sweater or cardigan, a bandanna or scarf, a simple skirt and always her glasses—nothing glamorous.”
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