40 years ago, the tragic death of the Princess of Monaco
With her, her daughter Stéphanie, 17, who goes to Paris to follow a scene in the styling workshop of the house of Dior, in Paris, alongside the couturier Marc Bohan. The latter is a faithful friend of Grace Kelly, a fan of the brand’s creations. Both are on their way to the airport. Their driver should have driven them, but the back seats are cluttered with slipcovers containing designer dresses. For lack of space, the princess took the wheel herself.
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“Grace of Monaco is dead”
Suddenly, in a switchback in Cap-d’Ail, the car deviates from its trajectory, leaves the Departmental 37, descends a steep slope and lands 35 meters lower, in the parking lot of a villa, in a deafening crash. Alerted by the noise, a neighbor of the property of Roc Agel, rushes. He discovers Stephanie’s bloody face. In shock, panicked, she screams that her mother is dead. But Grace, thrown into the back seat, didn’t die instantly. Urgently hospitalized, victim of a major cerebral hemorrhage, she was operated on. Doctors cannot save. Her coma worsened and she died the next day at the Princess Grace Hospital, which had borne her name since 1958, on September 14, 1982, at 10:30 p.m.
“Grace of Monaco is dead”, soberly titled “Sud Ouest”, on September 15. “At the end of the day, all therapeutic possibilities had been exceeded and Her Serene Highness Princess Grace died of an intercerebral vascular hemorrhage at 10:30 p.m. In other words, Grace of Monaco succumbed to the rupture of a blood vessel irrigating the brain,” the paper explains.
Death from stroke while driving
Stéphanie (we discovered a little later that she suffered from multiple cervical fractures, broken ribs and collarbone) managed to extract herself through the front left door, driver’s side. Hence the birth of the false rumor, relayed by the media, that it was she who was driving the car. In fact, the former Hollywood star who drove the car well presumably suffered a stroke. She had complained a few days earlier of severe migraines. The driver of a truck following the car said that the Rover had continued on a straight path, without braking, which was confirmed by the absence of brake marks on the road.
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His funeral was announced on September 18 in the Cathedral of Monaco where Grace and Rainier had been united 26 years ago. Broadcast on television, they bring together members of Kelly and the main family. Her face marked by pain, her husband, Prince Rainier III, is surrounded by her two other children, Princess Caroline, 25, and Prince Albert, 24. Alone, Stephanie does not attend, still treated in the hospital, her neck enclosed in a neck brace. By their side, many personalities including Princess Diana, the President of Ireland Patrick Hillery, the wives of the French and American Presidents, Danielle Mitterrand and Nancy Reagan, and many of his friends such as actors Franck Sinatra and Cary Grant.
A premonitory scene
It is alongside the latter that, hair in the wind and gloved hands, Grace Kelly makes tight turns at full speed at the wheel of a blue convertible, in the film “La Main au collet”, released in 1955, and directed by the master of suspense Alfred Hitchcock, of whom she was the dazzling muse. A tragically premonitory mythical scene. At the height of her glory, at 27, the American had given up her acting career to marry Rainier in April 1956.