Spoto spends much time trying to polish a gem that shines all on its own. He strongly wants to convince us of something that is obvious: that Grace Kelly was a woman of unusual grace and beauty and had an exceptional and strong personality. He has not written a good biography but something closer to hagiography. A nicely done biography would go a long way to sole that problem. Yet today most people, especially the young, have barely heard of her. She would have been Princess Di plus Jennifer Aniston. If Grace Kelly had lived in today’s media saturated environment, she would have created a huge TV, internet, celebrity frenzy. She was at the center of the first “wedding of the century” with all the attendant attention and then she mostly dropped out of sight for the rest of her life. Then at the very peak of her fame and achievement she left it all for the Prince of Monaco, in reality, a king. She stared down the old studio system, fighting to do the movies she wanted and on her schedule. Kelly was, by all accounts, a dazzling beauty, a woman who combined those good looks with a genuine gift for acting and a stubborn independent streak to become an Academy Award winner. This book was a fine opportunity for Spoto to introduce Kelly and her work and her journey from the Philadelphia suburbs to acting prowess to the height of Hollywood stardom and onto marriage and life as a real life European princess. This is a shame because Grace Kelly lived a fascinating life. He insists on keeping her far away, insisting on her superior excellence and forcing us to gaze at her from afar. He is so busy pushing Grace Kelly up on the pedestal that he never lets us see her up close. In High Society: The Life of Grace Kelly, Donald Spoto tries desperately to do the opposite. A good biographer brings the famous, the exalted, or the notorious down to our level and makes them human. The art of the biographer is to drag the statue off its pedestal.

Donald spoto grace kelly