Knight Ridder Newspapers

PHILADELPHIA – The man who transformed one of the most beautiful women in the world into a princess is dead.

Prince Rainier III of Monaco, 81, whose marriage in 1956 to Grace Kelly, a poised, silken, Philadelphia-born film star, captured the imagination of the world, died Wednesday at a hospital overlooking the principality’s yacht-filled main harbor.

A palace spokesman said Prince Rainier, had been placed on a respirator March 21, suffering from cardiac and kidney failure.

The prince outlived Princess Grace by 22 years. She died in September 1982 after a car crash.

Prince Rainier was 31, a handsome and elegant playboy, when he met the serene and classically beautiful actress in 1954. She was the daughter of John B. Kelly, a wealthy masonry contractor who was one of Philadelphia’s most prominent politicians and sportsmen. At 25, Grace Kelly was one of the top film stars in Hollywood.

The prince said he was smitten by the “blond girl with that sort of beauty which grows on you.”

And she, who had starred in films with Clark Gable, Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart, Gary Cooper and others, was taken by the prince. She is said to have told her mother: “I think he likes me. He isn’t at all what you’d expect of a prince. He’s easy to be with.”

Grace Kelly became Princess Grace when they married in Monaco on April 18, 1956. Fifteen hundred reporters swarmed the principality. Prince Rainier later said he and his bride should have been awarded battle ribbons. It was so hectic, he said, he had to watch a film later to remember what had happened.

The prince, born Rainier-Louis-Henri-Maxence-Bertrand de Grimaldi, ruled Monaco for 56 years. The tiny principality – second only to the Vatican as the smallest sovereign state in the world – is famed for its casino at Monte Carlo and its breathtaking perch on the French Riviera overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. It is a speck of real estate less than one square mile, with a population of 32,000.

Prince Rainier’s family, the Grimaldi line, has ruled Monaco for seven centuries, since 1297.

Prince Rainier’s son, Prince Albert, 47, is expected to succeed him as the sovereign. Albert has never married. If he does not produce an heir, the next in line of succession is his older sister, Princess Caroline, 48, and after her, her children. Prince Rainier is also survived by a second daughter, Princess Stephanie, 40.

Prince Rainier was much loved by residents of Monaco. He ascended to the throne in 1949 and gradually transformed the principality from a somewhat disreputable European gambling locale to a premier resort for the rich, a haven for yachtsmen, jet-setters, high-rollers and Formula One racing fans.

But had it not been for his marriage to Grace Kelly, he probably would never have emerged as a well-known figure on the world stage. The two were married for 26 years.

Princess Grace was 52 when she died Sept. 14, 1982, the day after a British Rover she was driving went out of control on a mountain road near the French town of La Turbie and plunged down an embankment.

In the years after her death, the prince had been romantically linked to various women – a wealthy widow in Monaco, a Houston socialite, the widow of a Hollywood actor and German-born Princess Ira von Furstenberg. But he never remarried.

He was quoted in the 1989 book “Rainier and Grace,” by Jeffrey Robinson, as saying he was so haunted by memories of Princess Grace that he could never remarry.

“I see Grace wherever I go,” he said. “Anyway, I couldn’t do it because it would be very difficult for my children. So I won’t.”

Another biographer depicted the royal marriage as less that joyous – particularly in the later years.

James Spada’s 1987 book, “Grace: The Secret Lives of a Princess,” suggested that the couple had drifted apart and that Princess Grace became lonely and unhappy in the last decade of her life.

After her death, Prince Rainier spoke periodically of stepping down as ruler of Monaco and turning over the throne – and the responsibility of leadership – to his son. But he never did.

“Albert is still developing his judgment,” Rainier said in a 1995 interview in the French newspaper Le Figaro. “No date has been fixed. … The transition must be a gradual one.”

Albert took over royal powers, but not the throne, last week after a royal panel said Rainier was no longer able to rule because of illness.

Through the years both daughters Caroline and Stephanie have been much publicized and are perennially pursued by paparazzi.

Stephanie became known as the wild child. She had three children out of wedlock and then married a circus acrobat. In 1985, her father sternly ordered her home after she posed for a photographer at a New York modeling studio while modeling very little in the way of clothing.

But whatever frustrations Prince Rainier experienced with his children, he credited them with helping him through the tragedy of Princess Grace’s death and with picking up many of her public duties.

“I have a wonderful family and I had a wonderful marriage,” he told Robinson, the biographer. “And everywhere I go is so filled with memories of Grace.”

—