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Sparkling Royal Jewels From Around the World

Costume Jewels: Royal Ladies on Stage and Screen

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Dame Anna Neagle and the cast of 1938’s Victoria the Great
[Photo: Hulton Archive/Getty Images]
Royalty has often been a favorite subject of playwrights and screenwriters; movies, television shows, and plays are full of portrayals of royal figures from throughout history. Because today is Halloween, the greatest costume festival in my part of the world, and because we’re counting down to the release of  The Crown on Netflix this Friday, let’s have a look at actresses in royal costume over the years.

Sarah Bernhardt as Queen Elizabeth I of England, ca. 1880s
[Photo: Hulton Archive/Getty Images]
Ellen Pollock plays Queen Hortense of Holland in the play Napoleon, The Hundred Days, 1932 [Photo: Sasha/Getty Images]
Merle Oberon as Anne Boleyn in 1933’s The Private Life of Henry VIII
[Photo: Sasha/Getty Images]
Elisabeth Bergner plays the title character in 1934’s Catherine the Great [Photo: Tunbridge-Sedgwick Pictorial Press/Getty Images]
Madeleine Carroll as Queen Caroline Mathilda of Denmark in 1935’s The Dictator [Photo: Henry Guttmann/Getty Images]
Dame Anna Neagle, as Queen Victoria, is crowned in 1937’s Victoria the Great [Photo: Hulton Archive/Getty Images]
Norma Shearer portrays France’s doomed queen in 1938’s Marie Antoinette [Photo: Hulton Archive/Getty Images]
In a 1954 one-woman musical review, Cornelia Otis Skinner plays Katherine of Aragon
[Photo: John Pratt/Keystone Features/Getty Images]
Dame Judi Dench plays the Queen in a 1960 production of Shakespeare’s Richard II[Photo: Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty Images]
Dame Dorothy Tutin rehearses the role of Victoria in a 1965 production of Portrait of a Queen [Photo: Harry Todd/Fox Photos/Getty Images]
Vanessa Redgrave as Mary, Queen of Scots and Glenda Jackson as Queen Elizabeth I in 1971’s Mary, Queen of Scots [Photo: Dennis Oulds/Central Press/Getty Images]
Pauline Tinsley as Queen Elizabeth I in a 1973 production of Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda[Photo: Michael Webb/Keystone/Getty Images]
Dame Judi Dench as Queen Elizabeth I in 1999’s Shakespeare in Love [Photo: Miramax/Laurie Sparham]
Which bejeweled movies and plays about royalty are your favorites?

The Sunday Ring: The Elizabeth Taylor Diamond Ring

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The Elizabeth Taylor Diamond Ring (Photo: FACUNDO ARRIZABALAGA/AFP/Getty Images)

Yesterday, we marveled at the diamond tiara worn by the late, great Elizabeth Taylor. Today, we’re looking at one of the most spectacular diamonds in her collection: the Elizabeth Taylor Diamond, an remarkable stone set in a classic ring.

Photo: FRED DUFOUR/AFP/Getty Images

For decades, the gem was known as the Krupp Diamond. It was owned by Vera Krupp, the second wife of Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach, the famed German industrialist (and convicted war criminal). Alfried and Vera divorced in 1957, but she kept the spectacular diamond until her death in 1967. It was sold at auction the following year with other items from her estate. The diamond itself is an absolute marvel. Weighing a whopping 33.19 carats, the Asscher-cut diamond is a rare Type IIa diamond, which places it in the same class as stones like the Cullinan I and the Koh-i-Noor (both of which are part of the British crown jewels).

Elizabeth Taylor wears the Krupp Diamond (Photo: Express Newspapers/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Richard Burton purchased the diamond at auction in New York for his wife in May 1968. The piece cost him just over $300,000. In true Burton-Taylor fashion, he presented it to her aboard their yacht, which was docked on the Thames in London. Elizabeth later called the Krupp one of her favorite pieces of jewelry, even though Burton bought her an even bigger diamond in 1969: the pear-shaped Taylor-Burton Diamond, which weighs a staggering 68 carats. Elizabeth sold the Taylor-Burton diamond in 1978 after divorcing Burton for good, but she kept the Krupp diamond for the rest of her life.

Photo: FRED DUFOUR/AFP/Getty Images

After Taylor’s death in 2011, the ring was sold at auction. Renamed the Elizabeth Taylor Diamond, the piece fetched more than $8.8 million. It was sold to E-Land, a South Korean conglomerate that owns and operates numerous retail brands, hotels, shopping malls, restaurants, and theme parks.

The Mike Todd Diamond Tiara

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The Mike Todd Diamond Tiara (Photo: Express/Express/Getty Images)

Elizabeth Taylor may not have been actual royalty, even if she was made a dame by Queen Elizabeth II, but she certainly was Hollywood royalty. It’s no wonder that her film producer husband thought she needed her very own tiara…

Photo: Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images

The husband in question was Mike Todd (that’s hubby #3, for those of you checking your scorecard). Elizabeth would later call him one of the two loves of her life, along with the tempestuous Richard Burton, of course. Todd was wealthy in his own right, and he loved to lavish jewelry on his movie star wife. The tiara was created in the late nineteenth century. Old mine-cut diamonds are set in platinum and gold and shaped into alternating scroll and latticework elements. Todd gave the tiara to Taylor in 1957, the year that they married.

Mike Todd and Elizabeth Taylor in Cannes (Photo: Express Newspapers/Getty Images)

Here’s Taylor herself, writing in Elizabeth Taylor: My Love Affair with Jewelry, describing the gift: “When he gave me this tiara, he said, ‘You’re my queen, and I think you should have a tiara.’ I wore it for the first time when we went to the Academy Awards. It was the most perfect night, because Mike’s film Around the World in 80 Days won for Best Picture. It wasn’t fashionable to wear tiaras then, but I wore it anyway, because he was my king.”

Elizabeth Taylor and Princess Margaret (Photo: Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Sadly, Todd and Taylor weren’t king and queen of Hollywood for long. Todd died tragically in a plane crash barely a year after the two were married. Liz went on to marry five more times, including once to Todd’s best friend, Eddie Fisher, and twice to her Cleopatra co-star, Richard Burton. She kept Todd’s tiara until her death in 2011. (Above, she wears it to meet with Princess Margaret at a royal film premiere in 1969.) The diadem was auctioned that December, along with the vast majority of Taylor’s impressive jewel collection. Also on the auction block were pieces with serious royal pedigrees: a Prince of Wales feather brooch that once belonged to the Duchess of Windsor — and even better, La Peregrina, the famous Spanish royal pearl.

Photo: Stan Meagher/Getty Images

The Mike Todd Diamond Tiara was sold by Christie’s, with a pre-auction estimate of between $60,000 and $80,000. When the hammer fell, a buyer had spent more than four million dollars on Elizabeth Taylor’s tiara. Portions of Taylor’s estate, including the proceeds from the sale of Taylor’s collections (which raised more than $156 million dollars!), went to a cause close to the late actress’s heart: AIDS research.