Grace Kelly

In the summer of 1953, Kelly was summoned to the presence of Alfred Hitchcock, who wanted to inspect her for a leading role in “Dial M for Murder.” He had not yet seen “Mogambo”; he was not even certain, he once told Spoto, that he had seen “High Noon,” which had been released a year before, and in which Kelly played Gary Cooper’s Quaker wife. But he had seen her in the “Taxi” test, and that was sufficient; to those fleeting minutes, therefore, we owe not only “Dial M for Murder” but “Rear Window,” one of the monuments of the medium, and “To Catch a Thief,” one of its blithest feats of seduction. Mathematically, Kelly presents an unusual case. She made only eleven feature films, in a career that lasted just five years, from 1951 to 1956 (...)
If you want to see Hollywood at the last gasp of its otherworldliness, before the old glory gave way, consult the photograph of Kelly and her fellow-presenter, Audrey Hepburn, backstage at the Academy Awards in 1956. (Kelly had returned to present an award.) Both are in profile, gazing in expectation, and both wear white gloves. They could be at their first Communion.