Golden Ball Earring

03-003   THE GOLDEN BALL EARRINGS

ORIGINAL MATERIAL: Fashion jewelry, Glass Stones

REPLICA MATERIAL: Fashion Jewelry, Swarovski Crystals

In the movie ‘To Catch A Thief’, the director Alfred Hitchcock added a scene where he wanted to see Grace Kelly dressed to the hilt.  The added scenes were a full dress ball, the type used by the ultra rich in France, to play ‘dress-up’.  All those ‘balls’ had themes, and this was ‘Golden Ball’, where the men and women had to have a major amount of ‘gold’ in their dress.  Grace was to have the most, and stand out.  Hitchcock had her dressed entirely in gold from head to toe.  Her hair was gold (an obvious wig, which was acceptable to the dress code of the ‘balls’), jewelry, and right down to her shoes....all in gold.  Her jewelry needed to sparkle a lot for the cameras, and to add to her face as being the center of attention at all times, simple ‘diamonds were not acceptable.  A slight color was needed, and Hitchcock insisted on the stones matching the blue-green of her eyes.  The staff tried to paint the stones but the ‘sparkle’ went away.  So special glass stones were created to fit the jewels, and match her eye color.

Some of the scenes we shot numerous times to get the effect Hitchcock wanted.  The entrance scenes, where the color and sparkle of her necklace needed to set off the series of scenes to follow was shot more than six times, as the lighting was changed and re-arranged many times, concentrating on Grace’s Jewels.

In most of Grace’s films she wore her own jewelry, and rarely used studio pieces.  This set was rented by Paramount Studios from a local Los Angeles ‘Studio Supply’ house and they were responsible for correcting the stone colors.

Grace loved the way the jewelry looked and insisted the studio buy the set for her and she could keep it.  Alfred Hitchcock agreed and presented all the jewelry worn by Grace in the movie to her at the cast ‘Wrap Party’, which was held when the last filming was completed.  Grace worn this set of  jewelry when she became Princess of Monaco.

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