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Preserve The Moment /
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114 - In
Memory:
Rainier Louis
Henri Maxence Bertrand de Grimaldi, Prince Rainier
III ,
b:1923-
d: April 6, 2005
• •
Rainier died at 81, passed away in a Monaco
hospital on April 6, 2005, just a month after he
was admitted with a lung infection, according to an
announcement from the palace.
Prince Rainier III, the Monoco Ruler Transformed
Monaco into a mecca for business men, great film/tv
events, like IMIC. and a powerhouse of
international banking and business during a 56-year
reign, died Wednesday. He was
81
• • Rainier Louis Henri Maxence
Bertrand de Grimaldi was born on May 31, 1923, in
Monaco, a hilly enclave on the Mediterranean nine
miles east of Nice, France. He was the only son of
Count Pierre de Polignac, a member of the French
nobility, and Princess Charlotte of
Monaco.
• • The prince was educated in
Britain, Switzerland and France. In World War II,
he enlisted in the French army. He was cited for
bravery and offered the rank of colonel. After the
war, he attended university in
Paris.
• • He ascended to the throne
after maternal grandfather Prince Louis II
abdicated in 1949 because of ill health. And
Rainier quickly began the search for a
wife.
• • During a photo shoot organized
by the Cannes Film Festival in 1955, he briefly met
Kelly, six years his junior. The prince, it was
said at the time, was
smitten.
• • For months, Rainier tried to
arrange another encounter. On Christmas 1955, the
prince, his priest and his doctor were invited to
dinner at the Kelly family's home in Philadelphia.
Grace's father, former Olympic rowing champion Jack
Kelly, had made millions as the owner of a
construction company.
• • According to biographers of
Grace Kelly, tough bargaining ensued. Rainier
needed a wife who could have children because,
under a 1918 treaty with Paris, the principality
would revert to France if his bloodline died out.
He demanded that Kelly submit to an examination by
his physician to prove that she was capable of
bearing him an heir.
• • His only son, Prince Albert,
47, was at his bedside when Rainier died. The
announcement did not indicate if Rainier's
daughters -- Princesses Caroline, 48, and
Stephanie, 40 -- were also with him at the time of
his death.
• • Europe's longest-reigning
monarch had been in and out of the hospital over
the last year for a chest infection, coronary
problems and general fatigue. He also had undergone
surgery in late 1999 and 2000 and was hospitalized
in November 2002 for a chest
infection.
• • Rainier's body was moved to
his hilltop palace where it will lie in state. The
funeral will be held April 15 at the principality's
cathedral, Monaco's government said. The
Mediterranean enclave's famed Monte Carlo casino
closed its doors Wednesday in a sign of respect.
• • Prince Albert took over the
royal powers last week after it was determined that
Rainier was too ill to rule. After a mourning
period, there will be a formal investiture and he
will take the title Prince Albert
II.
• • "It's a proud principality,
altruistic and confident in its future, that I
would like to leave for him," Rainier said at
ceremonies in 1999 that marked the 50th anniversary
of his coronation. His family has ruled Monaco more
than seven centuries.
• • The prince, long one of the
world's most dashing men, never remarried after the
death of his wife in 1982.
• • Rainier often said Monaco was
so small that he was "probably the last head of
state to be able to recognize all his compatriots
in the street."
• • Most Americans and much of the
outside world would not have known much about him
and his country if not for Kelly, the millionaire
contractor's daughter from Philadelphia who left
Hollywood at the top of her profession when she
fell in love with the
prince.
• • Rainier and Kelly's marriage
in 1956, one of the most publicized events of the
20th century, marked the union of two elites: the
lithe and coolly elegant actress who had won the
1954 best actress Oscar for "The Country Girl" and
the handsome, mustachioed scion of one of Europe's
oldest reigning families.
• • It was said to be love at
first sight. But it was not an easy marriage, and
it happened only after hard negotiation. During
their 26-year union, the prince and princess
reportedly always slept in the same bed, but
visitors to their pink palace on a rock overlooking
the Mediterranean said they often heard loud
arguments.
• • Also, showing the shrewdness
in business for which he would become known, the
prince asked Jack Kelly to give him a $2 million
dowry -- in advance. The construction magnate
reportedly balked, so the bride-to-be ended up
paying half, according to several biographies of
Kelly.
• • After a courtship of less than
two weeks, Rainier and Kelly announced their
engagement. Before marrying, though, she had to
fulfill her contract with MGM by starring in "High
Society." A week after filming ended, she set sail
for Europe, accompanied by an entourage of friends
and relatives.
• • On April 19, 1956, the star
and the prince were married in a three-hour public
wedding at Monaco's Cathedral of St. Nicholas. The
ceremony was watched by 30 million television
viewers, a large audience for the time. In glamour
and star power, the event was the equal of another
royal wedding yet to come, that of Charles, Prince
of Wales, and Lady Diana Spencer in 1981. Kelly
wore an $8,000 ivory dress by Hollywood designer
Helen Rose.
• • Rainier had insisted from the
start that his bride give up her career to focus on
her duties as a princess, and by some accounts
Kelly may have hoped that MGM would refuse to go
along. But the studio agreed, in exchange for world
rights to a documentary about "The Wedding of the
Century."
• • Cultural differences and the
demands of Rainier's family made the union of the
Old World aristocrat and the American movie star
less than a storybook marriage. According to a
recent biography of Princess Grace by J. Randy
Taraborrelli, when Rainier refused to let his wife
return to the screen in Alfred Hitchcock's
"Marnie," she suffered severe depression.
• • But over the years, according
to Taraborrelli, they forged a relationship of
respect and mature love. Kelly once said that it
was their common Roman Catholic faith, as well as
her conviction that a woman's rightful role was as
"pillar of the family," that kept the marriage
intact.
• • The couple had two daughters
-- Caroline, born in 1957, and Stephanie, born in
1965. Prince Albert Alexandre Louis Pierre was born
in 1958.
• • Twenty-four years later -- on
Sept. 13, 1982 -- Rainier lost his consort in a
road accident. As the 52-year-old Kelly was driving
with Stephanie back to the palace in Monaco, Kelly
suffered a stroke. The car veered off the road and
plunged down a steep embankment, turning over
several times and crushing the driver's side of the
vehicle.
• • Stephanie, though seriously
injured, survived. Kelly went into a coma and died
the next day after Rainier, Caroline and Albert
agreed to allow life-support equipment to be
switched off.
• • Rainier and his children, as
well as the principality, were plunged into
mourning. The prince was
59.
• • Early in his reign, the prince
had concluded that it was risky to allow Monaco's
economy to rely on roulette, baccarat and the other
games of chance that had established its reputation
as a destination for Europe's rich in the 19th
century. He set out to make his realm a haven where
the wealthy would come to do business and invest as
well. His success was
spectacular.
• • When Rainier assumed the
throne May 9, 1949, at age 25, the mini-state
derived 90% of its income from casinos catering to
European royalty and the "beautiful people." By the
time of his death, that figure was down to about
4%.
• • When Monaco celebrated
Rainier's 50th year in power, his homeland was
doing $6 billion in tourism, financial services and
annual trade. The principality now has no peer on
the Mediterranean coast for per capita wealth,
quality of public services and concentration of
development in such a confined
space.
• • "It is not necessary to cover
a large territory to have big dreams, nor to have a
large population to make them come true," Rainier
once said.
• • Under the ambitious and
meticulous guidance of a sovereign known as the
"builder prince," Monaco even grew in size by a
fifth, to its current area of nearly 1 square mile,
as landfill projects reclaimed some of the
Mediterranean. In 1993, the principality was
admitted to the United
Nations.
• • Rainier's family, the
Grimaldis, have held sway over the rocky chunk of
French Riviera coastline for more than 700 years --
since Francois the Sly, disguised as a monk,
sneaked into the fortress in 1297, overpowered the
few guards on watch and let in his
followers.
• • Monaco, which, as is often
said, is small enough to fit into New York's
Central Park, is home to at least 44 banks. Its
skyline is jammed with recently built high-rise
apartment and office buildings that, in the words
of one English critic, "all but obliterate the
charm of the Belle Epoque architecture of the
original Riviera resort of which the casino was the
centerpiece."
• • Photo: Prince Rainier of
Monaco, Princess Caroline of Hanover and Prince
Albert stand on the balcony of the Monaco Palace
during the 2003 Monaco National Day
parade.
• • (Villard-Niviere /
EPA)
• • In 1967, Rainier took control
of the Societe des Bains de Mer, operator of the
celebrated Monte Carlo casino, and moved to
increase Monaco's hotel and convention space. He
even courted a more diverse gambling clientele by
installing slot machines in the casinos for
day-trippers on a budget.
• • Under Rainier, Monaco also
earned further cachet as an Eden for the wealthy
and glamorous from sporting events, including the
Monaco Grand Prix motor race and an annual
professional tennis
tournament.
• • But growth was accompanied by
persistent rumors that the longtime playground for
millionaires was being used to launder illicit
gains of the Italian Mafia, Middle Eastern drug
dealers and, increasingly, Russian organized crime.
• • Under Rainier, the joke went,
Monaco became "a sunny place for shady
people."
• • "The principality is a factory
of false receipts and invoices. There is no
control," said Roger-Louis Bianchini, a retired
French police investigator who wrote an expose of
Monaco's business practices. And the citizens of
Monaco "have no interest in changing the system,
because they profit from the money at a personal
level. Monaco has no revenue of its own; if the
money disappears and goes somewhere else, the
principality will fall into
poverty."
• • Rainier's realm, which has no
income tax, became a tax haven for countless
celebrities, from Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti
to Formula One race car drivers and tennis stars.
Less than a sixth of the current population of
32,000 are native-born.
• • "Certain media have long been
striving to turn Monaco into a myth, that of a
superficial playground with no concern for the
great causes of mankind," Rainier complained. But
with the principality stung by a 1992 payoff
scandal, which involved Italian politicians and
businesses and bared Monaco's role as a conduit for
illicit funds, some cleanup efforts were
begun.
• • As Rainier's daughters grew
up, millions of people who had never been anywhere
near Monaco read of the scandalous love affairs and
messy divorces of Caroline and Stephanie, popular
subjects for gossip columnists and paparazzi.
Caroline is now married to Prince Ernst August of
Hanover. Stephanie reportedly had a series of
relationships, including one with Portuguese
handstand expert and juggler Adans Lopez
Peres.
• • Albert, a political science
graduate of Amherst College in Massachusetts, is a
hard-partying bachelor who has squired many
beautiful women, including model Claudia Schiffer
and actress Brooke Shields, but has shown no
inclination to marry.
• • To ensure his dynasty's
survival, Rainier in 2002 quietly changed Monaco's
order of succession to allow his daughters and
seven grandchildren to inherit the throne from
Albert if he remains childless.
• • As the half-century mark in
Rainier's reign arrived, Paris-Match magazine,
which has printed hundreds of photos over the
decades of Monaco's first family, asked him if he
had been a "happy
prince."
• • "Yes. My only regret is to
have not been available enough to take care of my
children during their tender years, and it is too
late to make up for lost time," the sovereign
said.
• •
///
Respectfully
Troy
& Josie Cory
Publisher/Editor TVI Magazine
TVI Magazine,
tvinews.net, Yes90.net, the Academy, Associated
press, Reuters, BBC, LA Times, NY Times and VRA's
D-Diaries were used in compiling and ascertaining
this news report.
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