#inside me there are two wolves. one wants a picture perfect celebration of my golden birthday

[feytouched]

the 'planning my birthday' catch-22. if i don't speak up and say what i'd like with enough advance time then there will be no time for me and my fam to make those things happen. but if i do start talking abt it 20 days in advance i feel like a self-centered idiot that's bothering everyone :^)

and the bonus wildcard: it's probably pointless to make plans bc my health condition could just deteriorate out of the blue and render all our planning useless

[graceandfamily]

Rita Gam: “My friend Grace Kelly”

A style icon who favoured old sweaters, the Hollywood star-turned-princess was full of paradoxes, friend and fellow actress Rita Gam tells Nick Miller.

By Nick Miller (March 11, 2012)

'THEY used to have stories. Today we don't have stories as good as that,'' says Rita Gam, 84-year-old star from Hollywood's golden age, sitting upright and respectable in her New York apartment as she remembers past roles. ''Even though some of them were B pictures they were terrific - nice stories, interesting.''

There would be a girl, well-bred but independent, glamorous, beautiful, stylish, make-up and clothes just so, admired, feisty. There would be complications, arguments, wit and danger and romance, and then the frame misty as she falls into the arms of a moustached older man, or a prince, then a wedding, a happy-ever-after or a tragic twist.

(Above: Rita Gam and Grace Kelly in 1956)

But I'm not there to hear that story. I'm there to talk to Gam about her close friend, Grace Kelly. We're inside a 100-year-old block in midtown, with an ornate facade, a concierge and that old New York attitude, in an apartment decorated with movie posters from Hollywood's prime.

It must be frustrating for such a successful film, TV and stage actress to be constantly interviewed about her best friend. But Gam only once looks at the absence of a watch on her wrist, saying: ''I've got another five minutes of talking about Grace in me and that's it.''

(Above: Rita Gam at 84)

I show her a book, Grace Kelly: Style Icon, published to accompany an exhibition curated by London's V&A museum and soon to open in Bendigo.

''Oh, this is very Grace,'' she says of the cover, from a 1955 Cosmopolitan shoot at the height of Kelly's movie career.

But when she flicks through the pages, her eyes are drawn to a casual Kelly on the streets of Manhattan, the Empire State Building over her shoulder, her clothes smart but demure.

''That's what she wore a lot,'' Gam says. ''Skirts and shirts. She was not much of a 'lunch girl', who would go to lunch and dress up.''

(Above: Gam [back row, third from left] at the wedding of Kelly and Prince Rainer of Monaco in 1956)

This is Grace Kelly: Style Icon (it says so on the cover). Adored by the public, sought-after by designers. Still the touchstone reference for the Oscars red carpet; the woman who bridged the golden age of movies and the modern era - the first modern celebrity, a Princess Diana-come-January Jones.

But talking to Gam, a more complex version of Kelly emerges. ''She was not a fashionista in any way,'' Gam insists. ''You've got to separate what was created by the studio system, which was a make-believe image of a goddess.''

(Above: Rainer and Kelly with children Caroline and Albert at Princess Stephanie's christening in 1965)

The Kelly that Gam knew exploited, then transcended - but never embodied - the public role that the Hollywood machine decreed for the leading ladies it owned.

Her life was a dance between image and reality, PR confections and real-life fairytales. Yes, she did marry a prince; but their first meeting was a contrived magazine publicity stunt. Yes, she was a fashion icon, but her private dress sense was conservative and her palace closets were packed with old sweaters.

KELLY and Gam met in New York in the early '50s as hard-working young TV actors and models. Pittsburgh-born Gam was married to a young director, Sidney Lumet, and Grace was the daughter of a well-to-do Philadelphia family (her father an Olympic medal-winning rower and construction millionaire), determined to make her own life in the performing arts, and succeeding at it.

They met on the sound stage of a show called Danger. ''She was playing some villainess or other - she was very cute,'' Gam recalls. ''We were introduced by Sidney. He said, 'Oh Rita, this is Grace. Grace Kelly, this is Rita.' 'How do you do?' ''

It was not a movie-star moment. ''She was a very nice girl - she could have been a kindergarten teacher. She had scrubbed clean, sympathetic looks. It's just when the camera hit her she became absolute magic.''

Others noticed, too. John Ford cast her in her first movie role after seeing a screen test and exclaiming: ''This dame has breeding, quality and class … I want to make a colour test of her - I'll bet she'll knock us on our ass!''

Gam and Kelly signed with MGM and became close friends when Gam moved to Los Angeles a year or so later. She had been put up at the Beverly Hills Hotel.

''I was very uncomfortable [there],'' she says. ''I was a woman alone, and if I sat in the lobby I would get hit on, and I was lonely. I would be calling New York and Sidney all of the time.''

At the suggestion of her agent, she called Kelly, who was on the cusp of fame as Rear Window, her second movie with Alfred Hitchcock, was finishing filming. Kelly was lonely too, having left behind in New York her on-and-off paramour, European designer Oleg Cassini.

''I called Grace and she said, 'Oh come for tea today', which I did. She was living with Prudy Wise, her secretary, a girl from the south. It was just a one-bedroom Hollywood apartment in the Hollywood flats. I don't know, we were just having tea and she said, 'Well, why don't you move in with us? Three is as good as two is as good as one.'

''So we did, I moved into her flat and it was rather fun, it was like we were sorority girls.''

In those days, Hollywood was ''a party town'' and ''pretty wide open'', Gam says, in suggestive but decorous tones. ''We would get hit on by industry wolves.

''I remember once, [Kelly] had a little gold Chevrolet, a couple of years older than was current, and [an acquaintance] said, 'Oh we'll send a car for you'. His name was Charlie Feldman, he was a big agent, and I said, 'Grace they're going to send a car for us'. I was on the telephone, and she said: 'No, tell them we'll drive ourselves.' I said: 'Oh, OK.'

''Well of course she was smart, we were in control of our destiny. We left that 'party' of four - two gentlemen, Charlie and his South American friend - and drove safely home down the Hollywood hills. [Kelly] was really much more wise than I was.''

It's a recurring theme as Gam remembers Kelly - a smart girl becoming a smart businesswoman who saw through the Hollywood machine and was fearless about imposing her own demands on it - in fashion as much as anything else.

''Basically, she was suburban in her tastes,'' Gam remembers. ''[Even as a princess] she had closets full of old tweed skirts that she hadn't worn in years, and many many blouses that had long since seen their day, and tonnes of sweaters that were well-washed and well-worn.

''She didn't have any particular style sense, I don't think. I think she addressed that as an actress. She didn't read a lot about fashion. [She relied on] not friends but professionals.''

Kelly befriended and relied on the studios' top designers. But she kept one eye on the result. In her first leading role (Dial M for Murder), even as she was learning how to act on film, she overruled Hitchcock on a costume decision, telling him that if her character got up in the middle of the night to answer the phone, she wouldn't bother putting a big velvet robe over her nightgown. She also had a fight with the make-up man who she thought was putting too much rouge on her. ''After that, I had his confidence as far as wardrobe was concerned, and he gave me a very great deal of liberty in what I wore in his next two pictures,'' Kelly said.

If style means anything, it's not what you wear, it's how you wear it. ''The subtlety of Grace's sexuality - her elegant sexiness - appealed to me,'' Hitchcock told his biographer. ''Grace conveyed much more sex than the average movie sexpot. With Grace you had to find it out, you had to discover it. Everybody wants a new leading lady but there aren't many of them around. There are a lot of leading women, but not enough leading ladies.''

Of their first meeting, Cassini later wrote: ''I saw her only in profile. I saw the utter perfection of her nose, the long elegant neck, the silky diaphanous blonde hair. She wore a black velvet two-piece, very demure, with a full skirt and a little white Peter Pan collar.

''Later, when she stood, I saw that she had a pleasing figure, tall, about five-foot-eight, good broad shoulders, subtle curves and long legs - a very aristocratic girl, not the sort you simply called for a date.''

The Hollywood system marketed her as the antithesis of Marilyn Monroe, whom Fox had recently discovered, feeding magazines lines that drew Grace as the all-American dream, a fine but approachable noblewoman who men wanted but women would also want to be: respectable, white-gloved, fine-bred and pretty. When Marilyn Monroe was asked what she wore to bed she replied ''Chanel No 5''. When Grace was asked, she replied: ''I think it's nobody's business what I wear to bed.'' Article after article punned on her first name.

Grace found it all amusing. But she told her biographer that this ''respectable'' image of Hollywood felt unreal, when the reality too often was ''full of men and women whose lives were confused and full of pain. To outsiders it looked like a glamorous life, but really it was not.'' After her Academy Award for best actress (tellingly, for her role in The Country Girl, in which she played ''a woman who had been married 10 years and lost interest in clothes, herself, everything'') she turned down most of the roles she was offered. The pressure and grind of Hollywood left her exhausted and disillusioned.

But she was also setting the mould for the modern movie star, taking control of her own PR from the studio. For Photoplay magazine she invited a photographer to take unprecedented candid shots of her and her sister on holiday in the Caribbean, in casual clothes and away from the studio's platoon of retouchers. The photographer Howell Conant wrote: ''You trusted Grace's beauty, you knew it wasn't built from clothes and make-up … [it was] natural, unpretentious.''

And then came her prince. Paris Match magazine set up a photo shoot of her with Prince Rainier of Monaco, as a promotion for its Cannes coverage. Gam recalls that the dress Kelly wore for the occasion she considers her biggest fashion faux pas. ''She would make jokes about it.''

Months later, Rainier arrived in New York. ''She called me, and she said, 'Come up for drinks on Thursday, I want you meet my prince.' I thought she meant her newest boyfriend and indeed it was her prince,'' Gam remembers. ''When I first met him … I wasn't blown over - you know, it wasn't Clark Gable, he was just a nice guy. He wasn't handsome, he was short and dumpy - [but] he was fun, he was well-educated, he had a good, funny British sense of humour, and he was intelligent, so I mean, what's not to like? And rich.''

''She was romantic, she would go with somebody for a long time and she was looking for the perfect person. And she fell in love with Rainier and that was that. She just allowed the romance of the times to sweep her away.''

This was the ultimate fairytale - the lavish royal wedding, the palace life in Monaco, dressed by designers.

And then there was the reality. More than 1600 reporters and photographers (more than covered World War II) turned the wedding into a mob scene. ''After the honeymoon she [and] Rainier slept for two days. It was exhausting and it took [them] a long time to recover from it,'' Gam, who was a bridesmaid, remembers.

''She didn't have a clue [what she was in for],'' says Gam of what followed for Kelly. The royal family forbade her from making any more films, which devastated Kelly. But Kelly was resourceful, playing the new role of princess in the same way as she had approached her movie career.

She switched from Hollywood's designers to the cream of the European fashion houses, and took to the kind of roles that princesses perform - benefits and balls, and patron of the arts.

''I don't think Grace changed from the minute I met her to the day she died,'' Gam says. ''She had an extraordinary PR sense and she had a strong sense of who she was and what she wanted to say. She allowed herself to be used by the talented fashion people of the time. And she enjoyed it. [But] I certainly don't think of clothes [when I think of her]. I think of friendship, I think of a loyal good friend, and somebody with a lovely voice and lovely face.

''You know, I see her very clearly, even though it's 35-odd years since she's gone.'' (Kelly died in a car crash in 1982.) ''She had a very strong presence … Everyone should have a friend like that.''

Grace Kelly encapsulated the latter part of Hollywood's golden age. At least, that's the legend, that's what people say. ''And well they should,'' says Gam. After all, it's a good story.

Grace Kelly: Style Icon is curated and organised by the V&A Museum, London, and the Grimaldi Forum Monaco. The exhibition will run from today to June 17 at the Bendigo Art Gallery.

[endlessly-searching-for-you]

Money Talks

Summary: Riley finally reveals the truth about her job. Does waitressing pay enough to buy designer clothes and a racehorse, or is she someone else than she claims she is?

Rating: PG

Word Count: 1000

Author’s Notes: Ever since I started The Royal Romance, I’ve been wondering how on earth a waitress can afford all these premium options. So I decided to have some fun with her. This is certainly not a canonical version, I went for something dark and twisty. I posted my question a few days ago as a challenge on the Choices Writers Facebook group, asking people to write their own stories about MC coming out to her LI about her money. Thank you @blackcatkita for joining me! ❤

I actually broke my own challenge, since my Riley isn't coming out to her fiancee, but I hope you'll forgive me :)

My name is Riley Brooks. If you're into celebrity gossip, you probably know everything about me. I am the humble waitress from New York who caught the eye of a foreign crown prince and joined the court as a suitor for his hand. You know all my gowns, haircuts, hats, witty retorts and gaffes.

But if you want to know my whole story, we have to go back to the beginning.

My real name is Charlotte Thorngate and I'm a spy. I was sixteen when I started to work for Spies Without Borders. It's an international agency that traces and recovers stolen or lost art pieces for their real owners. Or rather, it's what they claim they do. They recruited me while I was still in art school, but I've only had two forgery cases to date, I feel like a regular PI most of the time.

My specialty is going undercover. Taxi driver, barista, gardener, maid - you name it. You would be surprised if I told you how many awful secrets I learned that way. The trick is to be someone invisible, to melt into the background. Do you care about the girl waiting at your table? Nobody ever does.

Nobody did until prince Liam proved me wrong.

I met him while working in an obscure New York restaurant. I was just Riley, a dim-witted waitress with greasy hair and a stained apron, but I somehow caught his attention. Of course, I told my boss he fell for my irresistible charm, but let me be honest - it was pure luck. If you ask me, the golden boy has terrible taste in women.

I knew who he was right from the start. After the scandal caused by his older brother, Leo, who fell in love with an American heiress and abandoned his claim to the throne to marry her, all the gossip magazines printed photos of Cordonia and its handsome prince Liam. I have to admit, the pictures didn't give him enough credit.

Of course, I pretended I didn't know who he was, and he fell for it. He asked me to join his bachelor party as a city guide, but as his friends were mostly interested in booze, he got a private tour. Very private.

I didn't expect anything when I reported my boss of the connection, but I woke up the next morning to see Maxwell Beaumont on my doorstep. All young and broke aristocrats have some secrets they want to keep to themselves, and he is no different. He didn't know who I was; he was just ordered to pick up the waitress his princely friend had a one-night-stand with and bring her to court.

And that's how my journey from rags to riches began.

The lavish Cordonian court dazed me at first and it wasn't hard to play a mortified girl with no knowledge of courtly ways. I got used to working in the shadows, and here I was, right in the spotlight. I still remember my first masquerade ball. I have attended as a devilish seductress in a silk gown so tight I could barely breathe, and my nerves didn't exactly help. I almost fainted.

It was so easy to manipulate the guys, it felt like stealing candy from a kid. Liam is constantly torn between his sense of duty and his dream of One True Love, it took just a few stolen kisses and quick erotic encounters in most unusual places to secure his trust. Maxwell, the little brother who grew up in Bertrand's shadow, wants acceptance and recognition and that's what I gave him. Bertrand is so prim and proper he only cares about the etiquette and his house name. Drake with his grumpy exterior turned out to be a big softie. Even Tariq fell easily for my charms, but the King Father interfered with my plans and it all went terribly awry.

The girls are a totally different story. While Penelope, Kiara and Hana are three sweet little simpletons, Olivia and Madeleine turned out to be two worthy opponents. They are both court prodigies, trained in the arts of diplomacy, politics and seduction from their earliest age. There is so much I could learn from them, I almost regret meeting them in such circumstances.

What really bothers me is that nobody ever asked me about money. Beaumonts were broke and couldn't pay for my expenses. I attended numerous balls and events, wearing one designer gown after another, I even got a friggin' racehorse and nobody cared! Well, I didn't steal anything. My agency paid for everything. They weren't happy at first, but apparently, the things I found out were worth gold, because they stopped lecturing me.

Oh, all the things I found out. On the outside, the nobles are dressed lavishly and their every speech is polished to perfection, but the inside is like a snake nest full of filth. They would throw they own children to the wolves if it meant more money and influence.

I didn't realize what was really going on until it was too late. I suspected they were planning an art robbery; the palace gallery has a few valuable paintings, including original wedding portrait of Queen Kenna of Stormholt, but I never thought they would try to assassinate Liam.

I know it sounds bad. It's not what you think. I'm just a pawn in this game, a pawn they used to their own advantage. I realized that night I really care about my new friends. I just want to stay here with the love of my life.

That gave me one final assignment before that and I had no choice but to accept it.

I'm Riley Brooks.

I'm wearing a very special gown tonight and the man standing next to me is someone special, too. His name is Drake Walker and we just shared our first kiss as man and wife.

And I know the assassins are waiting just outside the door.