Rainier & Grace

Rainier & Grace is a biography by Jeffrey Robinson, published in 1989 by Atlantic Monthly Press. The Open Library record gives it 309 pages and files it under family, princes, princesses, the rulers of Monaco and Grace Kelly, entered as Grace, princess of Monaco, 1929-1982. None of those headings names her films, so the record points to a reader who wants the family and the principality more than the screen career. Large type books also appears among the subjects.

Among the books on Kelly in the catalog, it is the only one with Rainier in its title. Six came out earlier, from Marjorie P. K. Weiser’s Grace Kelly (1970) to James Spada’s Grace: The Secret Lives of a Princess (1987), and Judy Quine’s The Bridesmaids shares the year 1989. Eight came later, among them Robert Lacey’s Grace (1994) and Donald Spoto’s High Society (2009). The catalog types Robinson’s book as a biography, as it does every other title except Spada’s, which it types as a memoir.

For fans

What the publisher’s description says

The Google Books record for Rainier et Grace, by Robinson, is dated 27 Apr 2005 and lists 300 pages. Its publisher’s description opens on 20 Jan 2005 at the 29th Monte-Carlo circus festival, where Rainier, in tears, took leave of his people after more than 50 years of rule. It then reports that he joined Grace on April 6, 23 years after the accident on a steep road near Monaco.

The same description calls Robinson close to the family (“Proche des Grimaldi”) and says he gained access to the palace archives. It also says he spent 20 years gathering confidences from members of the princely family. By its account, Rainier told Robinson, for the first time, how he fell in love in 1955 with Kelly, who had come to Cannes to present her latest film. It also promises a series of snapshots of the celebrities who passed through Monaco, naming Frank Sinatra, Winston Churchill, Cary Grant and Aristotle Onassis.

The 1989 record and the Cannes account

The Open Library record for the 1989 edition carries subjects and a page count but no description, so how much of the 2005 text applies to the 1989 book cannot be confirmed. Wikipedia’s entry on Kelly gives a different reason for her presence at Cannes: she led the American delegation to the festival in April 1955. That entry says she was asked to pose for photographs with Rainier at his palace, and that the meeting took place on May 6, 1955, after delays. Its bibliography does not list Robinson’s book, and neither book record quotes a review of it.