(Credits: Far Out / MGM)
Sun 22 June 2025 20:45, UK
It speaks volumes to the impact Grace Kelly made on cinema that her entire film career lasted six years, and she retired from acting at the age of only 26, yet she remains one of Hollywood’s most enduring and iconic figures.
Kelly only made 11 movies, but still managed to win three Golden Globes, claim an Academy Award for ‘Best Actress’, and star in classics like the ‘Best Picture’ winner High Noon, headline the ‘Best Picture’ nominee The Country Girl, and collaborate with Alfred Hitchcock on a trio of timeless thrillers.
Short-but-sweet probably isn’t doing justice to Kelly’s brief yet unforgettable association with the silver screen, and what’s more impressive is that, for the most part, all of her films drew a strong level of acclaim. Even with her credits barely reaching double figures, though, not many people outside of John Cazale have a back catalogue that contains nothing but filmic perfection.
Ask anyone what they think her weakest picture is, and there could be a variety of different answers. However, if anyone asked Kelly, there was only ever one candidate. The bane of many a star’s existence, the old studio system locked performers into ironclad contracts that meant they had to make the films they were told to, not the ones they wanted to do.
That’s the only reason she led the cast of Andrew Marton’s adventure flick Green Fire alongside Stewart Granger, who once quipped that he “had the misfortune to be in the only really bad movie Grace ever made.” That might have been his personal opinion, but he wasn’t alone.
“Green Fire was not the kind of picture I became an actress to do,” Kelly declared. “I had to accept it for the chance to make The Country Girl, and it taught me a lesson: never agree to a role before reading the script. They told me my pages weren’t ready, but that I had to do it, and that it would be an easy and exciting picture to make.”
After discovering that it was neither easy nor exciting, she was annoyed at herself: “Silly me,” she said. “I agreed to do it.” One positive is that it led her towards The Country Girl, which was released the following year and ensured that her newfound status as an Oscar-winning actor washed away the stench of Green Fire.
Kelly regretted being in it, and Granger was irritated that he was involved with a legend’s worst movie, and even the studio that forced her into it thought it sucked. “It was a dog, and we never should have made it,” were the words of then-MGM boss Dore Schary. “It was just terrible, but we thought it would do well, that it would bring some money in. It didn’t.”
Being blasted by its two stars and the guy who footed the bill hardly paints an encouraging picture, with absolutely nobody benefiting from the Green Fire debacle in the short or long term.
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