The year was 1955, and Grace Kelly ’s name was a familiar fixture on marquees, with recent turns in Rear Window and Dial M for Murder. At the Academy Awards in March—less than two months before a chance meeting with Prince Rainier of Monaco during the Cannes Film Festival would change the trajectory of her life—Kelly took the podium to accept an Oscar for best actress in the film The Country Girl. Her speech was heartfelt, if reserved. “The thrill of this moment keeps me from saying what I really feel,” she said, wearing an ice-blue satin dress by the costume designer Edith Head . “I can only say thank you with all my heart to all who made this possible for me. Thank you.”

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Seventy years later, in the gilded ballroom of the Plaza Hotel, another c

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