Howell Conant is knee-deep in water. He moves forward, closer, and stands a few meters from his subject.She’s wearing a huge diving mask and snorkel
Howell Conant is knee-deep in water. He moves forward, closer, and stands a few meters from his subject.
She’s wearing a huge diving mask and snorkel that hide half her face. Undeterred, Conant shoots, and then shoots some more. He knows and feels that he is about to capture the image he’s been searching for on this Jamaican beach and that all of his effort will have paid off. The relationship between film icon Grace Kelly and this virile 40-something photographer with his refined manners is as clear as the clear Caribbean water. They don’t know it yet, but this photo shoot will soon be one of Kelly’s most talked-about shoots, and Conant’s work will be admired and envied. She appeared au naturel that day—with moist hair and without any makeup, giving her a certain rebellious look. Conant will long remember that enchanted moment.
A woman in charge
It’s April 1955 on a beach in Montego Bay, on the northwest coast of Jamaica. The woman skipping along the warm sand, in a featherlight dress or white shorts and bra, is not yet the princess of Monaco. That would come a year later, on April 19, 1956, an event captured in newsreels and a ceremony broadcast to over 30 million television viewers. Kelly and Prince Rainier would appear on the covers of magazines such as Paris Match, Jours de France, and Life. That fairytale is, at this point, still in the future. In spring 1955, Kelly was likely more focused on her recent best actress win at the Oscars, for her performance in The Country Girl.
A few days earlier, on March 30, she had received the award from William Holden, her co-star in the film. She beat out formidable Hollywood favorites like Judy Garland (nominated for A Star is Born) and Audrey Hepburn (Sabrina). The unremarkable film directed by George Seaton was soon forgotten, much like most of his other movies. But Kelly’s performance as a somewhat unkempt and surly wife, married to an alcoholic husband, made an impression.
In recent years, she had made a string of major Hollywood films: High Noon (Fred Zinnemann, 1952), Mogambo (John Ford, 1953), Dial M for Murder, and Rear Window (Alfred Hitchcock, 1954). Most notably, she has just filmed a Technicolor romantic thriller also by Hitchcock: To Catch a Thief, starring Cary Grant and shot at the far end of the Côte d’Azur, in a diminutive nation that’s less than one square mile—Monaco. All that was missing from her star status was that famed gold statuette, and now she had one.
But who was Howell Conant, who accompanied Kelly to Jamaica along with her older sister Peggy, who was also a pretty, slender blonde? Kelly had met Conant four months earlier in January, at a shoot for the film magazine Photoplay. Kelly, who by nature tended to take charge of any situation, assured that everything was perfect, right down to the artistic direction. She had chosen the right look, determined the camera angles, and had even encouraged Conant, sometimes somewhat brusquely, to adjust his lighting. The result was worth the effort: on the magazine’s cover, Kelly made an impression with her impeccably styled hair and crimson lipstick. Conant was being auditioned, but he didn’t realize it.
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