Grace Kelly's Storybook Romance with Cannes

1:31 AM PDT 5/5/2011 by Degen Pener

In 1955, the fest was desperate to have a star with her cultivated glamour in attendance; then, a chance meeting with a prince changed her life.

Only a decade into its run, the Cannes Film Festival had gone over the tawdry, topless-starlets-on the-beach edge. So in 1955, organizers worked to persuade Grace Kelly, then 25, to come to promote The Country Girl, for which she'd already won an Oscar. Kelly -- who had shot To Catch a Thief there the previous year -- classed up the place, and in return, indirectly, Cannes made her a princess.