Grace of Graustark

The Prince and Princess emerge from the palace, jump into a small car. and speed down the highway. No, no, no, says the man from the ad agency: it looks almost like a European car. A second take. The Prince and Princess emerge from the boathouse, hop into a cabin cruiser and speed across the harbor. Exactly so.

It is never easy to describe the human lives of princes and princesses, but it is particularly tough when one or both have sponsors. The Graustarkian principality of Monaco is, of course, dependent on sponsors of one kind or another, the most influential of whom are the French government and the tourists. There is not much anyone can do about Charles de Gaulle, but something can be done about tourists--as last week's hour-long color telecast, A Look at Monaco (CBS), set out to demonstrate.

The idea for the telecast came from Princess Grace (who planned it before Jackie Kennedy's White House tour). Grace's Hollywood pressagent peddled the idea and remained in Monaco during the shooting, which took five weeks last fall at a cost of $400,000. The show opened with a word from the Ford Motor Co.--its new "command-performance cars" come "direct from Monaco"--and presently disclosed Princess Grace in a mustard suit perched on the top of a cardboard-looking crenelated tower. "Welcome to Monaco," said the Princess, and launched into some local history.

After that, a chatty tour, with occasional breaks while Grace ducked out of the picture ("It's time for the changing of the guard, which I'm sure you'll want to see, so I'll leave you now and see you later at the palace"). Grace in the orphanage, riding into the palace in her Rolls and being greeted by Rainier, Grace in the throne room, Rainier with the kids at the zoo, the whole family putting to sea in the yacht, the Prince and Princess entering the cathedral. And finally Princess Grace signing off with dignified warmth and a generous plug: "Now you've had a look at Monaco, but really it's only a look. I hope you'll come back and see it for yourselves."

It was a slickly handled show--almost too slick. Director Douglas Heyes had occasional trouble compensating for Princess Grace's "adopted diplomatic accent: we tried to keep the pace of her speech up so she didn't sound too British." Offscreen, he combined formality with familiarity by addressing her as "Your Highness--honey." Rainier tended to be more relaxed about the whole thing. When Grace muttered her apprehensions about Princess Caroline going down to the zoo with a cold. Rainier quipped: "In that case let's get some other little brat--nobody will know the difference." Caroline went.

If the daily round of activities seemed a little synthetic, a member of the crew had a ready explanation. "These people have so little to do. really," he said. "There just isn't a helluva lot going on. They show movies three times a week."

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