Initially, she kept her relationship with Don secret, not only from others at the Academy—they likely would have been shocked that she was dating a member of the faculty—but also from her parents.While Carolyn was away, though, Grace decided to take Don home to meet her family. Grace knew that her parents would most likely disapprove of her new boyfriend but was hopeful that Don could still win them over. If they just gave him a chance, she reasoned, they might discover they loved him just as much as she did.
For Grace’s Catholic family, however, Don was instantly unsuitable. There were three strikes against him in their eyes: he was older, divorced, and Jewish. The visit did not go well. By the time the weekend was over, Jack Kelly had told Grace to end the relationship and move back to Philadelphia. “I cried so much,” Grace wrote in a letter to a friend after the weekend was over. “Hell just can’t be much worse than what I went through.” Grace was permitted to return to Manhattan for the day, to clear out her room at the Barbizon and bring home her belongings, but essentially she was forbidden to return to New York for the foreseeable future. For better or worse, Grace’s family had intervened in a relationship with a man they found unacceptable.
Carolyn had no such protection.
* * *
NOW THAT SHE was married, Carolyn set aside her own interests and happily focused on those of her husband. Back then, Carolyn was at the height of her success—making far more money as a model than Malcolm was in his advertising job—and the couple could afford to live well. Malcolm wasn’t interested in the ballet, so Carolyn no longer went to City Center each week to see Balanchine’s dancers. Her new husband preferred to eat at expensive restaurants and go to fashionable nightclubs, so Carolyn stopped going to the Automat for her lunches. Malcolm loved tennis, so she tried to take up the game, but she couldn’t keep up with him. On Friday evenings, the new Mrs. Reybold climbed into the cream-colored Buick Roadmaster convertible that Malcolm had bought her as a wedding gift. Malcolm drove, and she snuggled next to him on the bench seat, wearing sunglasses with a silk scarf wrapped around her hair. The car was just as elegant and modern as the good-looking couple behind the wheel. Malcolm had married his ideal girl—gorgeous, lively, successful, social.
They were headed for Long Island and Sherman Fairchild’s castle, Eastfair, on the edge of the Long Island Sound. At Eastfair, days were long and romantic, spent sunbathing by the pool (for Carolyn) or playing tennis on the clay courts (for Malcolm). There were cocktails and intimate dinner parties in the evenings, everyone gathering in the living room with its two grand pianos, a wide fireplace, and high ceilings. Fellow guests included actors and actresses, fashion models who had come to Eastfair to work on their portfolios at Sherman’s photography studio, and jazz musicians who recorded in the castle’s recording studio by day and entertained the guests by night. Photographs from that summer show Carolyn and Malcolm very much in love, Carolyn smiling over at her new husband on a friend’s boat, or Malcolm wrapping her in his arms in a movie-star clinch.
For Grace—still grounded in Philadelphia—Carolyn had achieved a kind of ultimate freedom. As a wife, Carolyn could go anywhere she pleased. Meanwhile, Grace’s parents remained determined to prevent a reunion between their daughter and Don Richardson: after the disaster of the Barbizon, Jack and Margaret Kelly weren’t taking any risks. When Grace won a part in summer stock in New Hope, thirty-five miles away, Mr. and Mrs. Kelly made her drive there and back each day rather than find lodging of her own nearby. It was while performing in New Hope, however, that Grace heard she’d been cast in a new production of Strindberg’s The Father. The play was opening in Boston before transferring to Broadway in November. Grace’s parents could hardly expect her to drive back and forth to Boston and New York each day during the run of the show. Finally, Grace wore the Kellys down. They were forced to let her go.
On opening night on Broadway in November, both Carolyn and Malcolm were in the audience. “When Grace first walked out onstage, she looked so fresh and pretty and breathtaking,” Carolyn later remembered. “I think that’s when I first realized she was going to be someone.” Grace played Bertha, a young woman whose parents are unable to agree on her future. The mother wants Bertha to stay at home and become an artist; the father wants her to move into town so she can study to be a teacher. As fighting between the parents escalates, Bertha becomes increasingly bewildered and heartbroken. In the role of a daughter with excessively controlling parents, Grace could draw on her own experience.
Although Grace received good reviews in the press, the play failed to capture the imagination of theatergoers. It closed in early February 1950, after only sixty-nine performances. For the first time since she had graduated from the Academy, Grace was out of work. She was single, living with her parents, and not at all happy about it. Malcolm and Carolyn decided to do something to lift Grace’s spirits. They invited her on a weekend road trip to Canada in the new Buick. Malcolm’s plan was to return the favor and play matchmaker for Grace. He invited his friend Jack Duff along for the ride. Jack had a reputation as one of New York’s most eligible bachelors; he was also a member of the exclusive Seigniory Club, in Quebec, where the four friends were planning to
