Grace Kelly was with Jean-Pierre Aumont, trying to get over the loss of Ray Milland when she met Oleg Cassini. Cassini had recently seen Grace Kelly in the film Mogambo and was already besotted when he spied her in a restaurant in New York. She was with Aumont whom Oleg Cassini already knew (they had competed for the love of Gene Tierney in the past). According to Oleg, when they met, Grace dressed ‘like a school teacher’. He encouraged her to ‘put a little sex in her clothes’. Cassini was something of a Casanova, an ‘accomplished seducer’ he set his sights on winning Grace’s heart and did so in typical fashion. ‘It was to be the greatest, most exhilarating campaign of my life.‘ He remarked later. Cassini set about developing a plan of seduction which involved sending a dozen red roses to Grace’s home for ten days, he did not sign the card, instead he wrote ‘from the friendly florist’ on the tenth day he called her saying he was the friendly florist. He got her laughing and got her to join him on a date (she was chaperoned by her sister on this occasion). Grace told Oleg she was in love with Ray Milland. The silver-tongued and confident Aries told her it was not a problem and that she would be engaged to him within a year. Grace left for LA the next day, but Oleg made sure he was seen by gossip columnists in the company of beauties such as Pier Angeli and Anita Ekberg in order that he would be seen and read about by Grace in their columns. They eventually met up again on the French Riviera where they spent an evening together in what Oleg describes as a ‘distressingly platonic’ situation. He poured out his heart to Grace, declared the essence of his inner desires and that was it, his persistence paid off. Oleg Cassini’s biggest obstacle to life-long happiness with Grace Kelly was his past (he had been married before and linked with many beautiful women) which caused a problem for Grace’s mother who considered Oleg a bad risk for a husband. Her father, who was an old-fashioned racist, considered Cassini to be too much of a foreigner (Oleg was a son of a Russian and born in Paris). Grace was persuaded not to marry designer Oleg by her mother and father. “Do you realise if my mother hadn’t been so difficult about Oleg Cassini, I probably would have married him?” the screen goddess is quoted as saying. Marrying into the Monaco royal family in 1956 was an apparent attempt to gain the approval of her father, who had failed to congratulate her on any of her past accomplishments, including the Oscar she was awarded for The Country Girl. Once married, Grace realized that there was no way of continuing the Hollywood career that she had so loved and began to regret not choosing a marriage that would have allowed her to work. “How many wonderful roles I might have played by now?” she apparently lamented. “How might my life have turned out? That one decision (to marry Prince Rainier) changed my entire future.”