In a post about Alfred Hitchcock's great Rear Window a few years ago, James Lileks wrote:

Jimmy Stewart does a nice job playing the stupidest man in the world, i.e., a man who does not want to marry Grace Kelly and spend his 40s photographing New York and beautiful models.

In an obituary that first ran in The Atlantic a couple of months ago, Mark Steyn looks at the man who did marry her, Prince Rainier of Monaco, who would live for two more decades after Princess Grace's tragic death in a 1982 car crash:

the men who fancied breaking the bank at Monte Carlo had moved down the coast to Cannes and elsewhere and the bank itself was near broke. The Societe des Bains de Mer, which ran the casino and hotels, reported huge losses that year. Next, the Société Monégasque de Banques et de Métaux Précieux, which held 55% of Monaco’s reserves and much of the Grimaldi fortune, went bust. Aristotle Onassis, who served as the young Rainier’s eminence Greece, thought a marriage into movie-star glamour might restore the Principality’s fortunes, and sounded out Marilyn Monroe, to no avail. Then, while in the neighborhood for the Cannes Film Festival, Grace Kelly was taken to the palace for a photo shoot and Rainier made his move.

It worked out well. His bride embarked on the usual charitable activities associated with Royal consorts but with the benefit of a much livelier Rolodex: throughout the Sixties and Seventies, old chums like Sinatra and Bob Hope turned Monegasque fundraising galas into the touring version of the starrier Friars’ Club roasts. Tourism and development followed. Monaco is a small town of 30,000 people, mostly tax exiles but with about 6,000 Monegasques to play the role of Rainier’s loyal subjects. As land was reclaimed and skyscrapers loomed over the fishing boats, Monaco’s stellar princess gave her husband a cachet denied to such other mini-me Euro-royals as the Grand Dukes of Luxembourg and Liechtenstein.

Princess Grace missed movies and Rainier gave her permission to return to her old job for Hitchcock’s Marnie. But his people found the idea vulgar and demeaning, and so High Society remained the House of Grimaldi’s last on-camera performance until Princess Stephanie’s husband made his film debut with Miss Bare Breasts of Belgium. By then, Rainier was old, stooped and exhausted; his princess was dead; and his children seemed determined to return the family name to its seedy antecedents. He made his dilapidated casino kingdom briefly romantic and, when he couldn’t maintain the romance, he had the satisfaction at least of knowing he’d made Monaco bankable again. But the 13th century family curse came along for the ride and in the end it broke the man at Monte Carlo.

Hollywood's cache has fallen mightily since the days when Kelly was the ultimate Hitchcock blonde. Is there any comparable celebrity today whom a European royal would look to marrying in order to restore luster to his or her fading crown?