The Bride of Frankenstein’s Necklace

Imagine finding an antique jewelry set you love and discovering that it was worn in one of history’s most iconic films: Bride of Frankenstein (1935). And imagine doing the detective work of that discovery yourself! That’s what happened to Tara Rech, vintage collector, costumer, and friend of Frock Flicks. Now that jewelry set is going to be auctioned off, and we’re excited to tell you the story of a beautiful piece of Hollywood (and frock flick) history in this interview.

 

Frock Flicks: So tell me about wandering into a shop and spotting a beautiful necklace…

Tara: This was about 12 years ago, October of 2013, and I went into the store Tail of the Yak in Berkeley.

Frock Flicks: Tell us about the store, which is unfortunately now closed.

Tara: It was a very interesting store. They had lots of objects d’art, and they also carried vintage jewelry along with some contemporary pieces, but always very interestingly curated. I’d been going there for years and bought a number of things, like a lover’s eye necklace from the 18th century.

Frock Flicks: You’re a long-time costumer and vintage collector, right? 

Tara: Yes. I’ve been doing performance and costume stuff for a long, long time. Collecting vintage in earnest started maybe 25 years ago, though it is only more recently that I’ve been interested in jewelry.

So I walked into Tail of the Yak, and I saw a necklace in its own case, a whole set actually, with earrings and a couple of pins. 

And my initial sense when I saw it, this is kind of an interesting thing in retrospect, is that there was something just mildly creepy about it, which intrigued me because I kind of like things that have a little edge and aren’t super conventional. 

The jewelry was hand-cut marcasite, with a lot of reverse painted-on glass portraits.

Frock Flicks: What is “reverse painted-on glass”?

Tara: It’s a type of artwork where they paint on the backside of the glass starting with the highlights and then working backwards. So it’s very difficult, and it’s something they did in the 18th century and beyond. Having a piece of jewelry that had reverse painted portraits on glass would not be unusual in the 18th century. Hand-cut marcasite also started to become popular in this period, in France and England in particular, I think. 

The portraits looked like a family. It looked like parents with their adult children and clearly recognizable faces. 

When I saw it, I thought, there’s something about this … It was really beautiful, but it was expensive. I took a picture of it. I was intrigued by it. 

Then, a few weeks later, some friends of mine who are big horror film fanatics invited me over to see the movie Bride of Frankenstein. It was Halloween, and I’d never seen the movie. There’s this opening sequence with Elsa Lanchester, who plays the Bride in the film but also plays Mary Shelley, the author who wrote Frankenstein. She comes on in the beginning of the film as Mary Shelley, and it’s a 1935 film, and she’s in a costume style that I know you love too, which is the 1930s version of the 18th century. It’s like a bad version of it, but it’s so charming, so bad it’s good. Right?

Frock Flicks: There’s something about the ‘20s and ‘30s take on the 18th century that I find incredibly lovely. 

Tara: Yes! So she’s sitting there in her 1935 version of Regency, and she’s sewing, and she’s there with Lord Byron and Percy Shelley. And I said, “Oh my god, that’s the necklace. I just saw that necklace.” I told my friends and they said, “No way!” They actually didn’t believe it. So I said, “I just saw that exact necklace in a shop. Really!”

Frock Flicks: Could you see the actual portrait faces on screen or could you just see that there were faces? 

Tara: No, I just saw the shape of the necklace. It was in black and white. I didn’t see a closeup, but I was like, whoa. That’s the necklace.

When I went home that night, I looked it up, and I found some movie stills online. I compared them with the photo I had taken of the necklace, and I thought, that’s the necklace. I mean, it’s a very distinctive handmade necklace. How could it be a copy? And I got super excited… 

Then I went back to the shop, and I bargained them down a little bit on the price, got it on a nine-month payment plan. And then I told them about the necklace in the film.

Frock Flicks: They didn’t know already? 

Tara: Nobody knew, it was completely undiscovered. I showed them the picture, and they got really excited. I said, “Look at this. It’s undeniable.”

Frock Flicks: Did they say anything about where they got the necklace?

Tara: That was my next question. I know you have to have provenance to make a claim like this. You have to make the link. So I asked them, “Where did this necklace come from?” They were very cagey about it, even though I had a relationship with them, I’d been buying stuff for years. They said something like, “We got it from this antique dealer from Arizona, blah, blah, blah.” And I said, ”Oh, what’s her name?” But they weren’t giving me any clear information. It was frustrating.

I started trying to do some research to find this person in Arizona, and it was a complete dead end. There was just nothing I could find. They didn’t give me a name or anything. So I thought, well, I’ll go in through the movie stills. I did some research and found the film was made by Universal Pictures, and then I found the Margaret Herrick Library in Los Angeles, which is associated with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Academy Awards. They have all the archival records of the Academy and from Universal Pictures. They have art objects as well as movie stills, et cetera. It’s a pretty big archive. I reached this woman on the phone, and I explained to her what I was trying to figure out, and she said, “Yes, we have access to those original movie stills. I’ll go take a look.” She got really excited too. Nobody had ever made this link, didn’t even know this necklace existed somewhere in the present day. She also tells me, “Oh, I have this friend who’s the biographer for James Whale [director of Bride of Frankenstein], maybe he has information about whether the necklace was owned by Elsa.” Then, she checks with the biographer, but she doesn’t find anything. 

Then I figured out that Elsa Lanchester has an autobiography. It’s called Elsa Lanchester, Herself. I ordered it. It’s out of print, so I had to search around. I’m waiting for the book to arrive, and then the copy of the movie photo still certified by the Margaret Herrick Library shows up in my mailbox, and it’s very clear that it’s the necklace. It’s a very clear print. I’m comparing it, and I’m like, wow, that’s clearly the necklace. 

That was super exciting, but still, I needed to figure out where the hell this necklace came from that I’m buying! The other interesting thing is that the same person at the Margaret Herrick Library found the original list of props and costumes from the film, which is only two pages long.

Frock Flicks: Wow. That’s not very long!

Tara: Right? The entire budget was so unbelievably low. Remember this was 1935 and the first movie of its kind. But there was nothing on the prop list about jewelry. 

“Included is … a three-page production estimate for The Return of Frankenstein (working title of the film) that does not list the necklace among the costumes and props used in the film, indicating Lanchester supplied the necklace from her own personal collection specifically to complement her wardrobe for the production, adding an intimate and deeply personal connection between the actress and the film” (Auction Catalog).

I thought, maybe the necklace belonged to Elsa? I don’t know, I was almost ready to give up. 

I was about to make the last payment to the shop. Finally, I think, “Maybe the shop is afraid that I’m going to go directly to the dealer, try to buy more things, and that’s why they’re not giving me the information.” So I go in there and I say, “Just so you know, if you give me the information of the person that sold this to you, I will not buy anything directly from her.” And then, finally, they gave me her name and number … so they were totally holding out on me! 

I contact this woman, and she gets on the phone, and she says, “[New York accent] Hello, this is Betty Goldfield.” How marvelous. It turns out that Betty Goldfield was the person who liquidated Elsa’s estate upon her death. Elsa Lanchester and her husband Charles Laughton were this famous Hollywood couple in the ‘30s. Both of them passed away in the Motion Picture and Television Fund Country House, which is a retirement home for film industry people. So Laughton had died previously, and Betty Goldfield had liquidated his estate, and then when Elsa died [in 1986], she liquidated Elsa’s estate. 

Betty told me that she had decided to purchase the necklace for herself. She had no idea that it was used in the movie, but she could confirm it belonged to the estate because she liquidated the estate.

I said to her, “Betty, did you know that it was used in the movie?” She said, “No, I had no idea.” I asked, “Would you please put everything you just said to me in a letter and send it to me?” She said, “Of course.”

So I’m waiting, because this is the provenance I need. A few weeks later, in the mail comes a letter on her letterhead stating that the necklace came from Elsa Lanchester’s estate, that Betty is the person who sold all of the items from the estate, and the necklace came from the estate and was in the collection from Elsa Lanchester.

“This letter will confirm that I was the representative that sold the entire estate of personal property belonging to Elsa Lanchester and Charles Laughton. At the time of the sale, I was hired by the Motion Picture and Television Fund to conduct a public sale at their Hollywood Hills residence … The set belonged to Elsa Lanchester and was purchased by me, Betty Goldfield, after the sale, and I offered it for sale over 20 years later” (Letter from Betty Goldfield to Tara, 2014).

Frock Flicks: Tell me about the jewelry case and the fire damage.

Tara: The necklace is in an original leather case that appears to have gone through a fire. It’s the original case, it has little custom carved-out spaces that hold all the pieces. The case has a charred exterior, and when I saw it I started having all sorts of questions in my mind about it. I thought that I had read somewhere that there was some kind of a fire in her family background, but I couldn’t find anything specific. Interesting note, in the film, the opening Mary Shelley sequence is followed by a fire scene. The jewelry set has been around since the 18th century, so it could have gone through a fire somewhere else. And Elsa is English, so the European origin makes sense. 

Interestingly, she didn’t come from wealth, she grew up in an area of London that’s working class, and her parents were notably socialist. They really were not into having much and lived really frugally, even though I think her mother came from a higher class background but eschewed the whole thing in the interest of her ideology. Elsa’s life was quite fascinating. She grew up doing theater. She was a big performer, doing those vaudeville type of songs. That was her specialty. She was always a performer, and she was a dancer with various companies. I mean, her autobiography is fascinating. She was really very much in that whole artistic, bohemian scene of the 1920s, ‘30s, and ‘40s. So who knows, was this necklace significant in her family? Was it something she acquired later? I don’t know. I even went so far as to approach the historical society that preserved her parents’ apartment, in which they lived their whole lives. I contacted the head of the society and said, “Can you tell me, was there ever a fire in her family home?” They said no.

Frock Flicks: What about Elsa’s Los Angeles home?

Tara: No. There was a fire in Pacific Palisades, but it was after she and Laughton sold the house. The fire damage is a mystery. I tried to trace it in different ways, and I didn’t find anything about it.

So she must have pulled it from her private collection, and then it went back into her collection after wearing it on the film.

Frock Flicks: I wonder if she thought, “Oh, I have the perfect necklace to wear for this costume,” or how exactly she came to acquire it?

Tara: I know. Probably not a family heirloom, but who knows? We’ll never know. 

So I’m like, got it. I got all the provenance. I did it, whew! 

Now interestingly, my neighbor across the street is a big vintage collector. He sold one of the iconic blue and white Dorothy dresses [from The Wizard of Oz] at auction. He told me, “Oh yeah, I went to the Elsa Lanchester sale.” He had bought a couple of things from Elsa’s estate. He knows about auctions. I told him, “I’d like to know what this necklace is really worth, and maybe I want to sell it at auction, what should I do?” He gave me a lot of helpful advice about the auction process and how to go about attracting interest in consigning the piece. He told me that the best auction house at the time to list this necklace was likely Profiles in History. They’re the auction house that sold his Dorothy dress.

So I followed his advice. I had three auction houses that were competing for it. I went through that whole process, and then I decided not to sell it. It was just too interesting, too unique, and I would never own anything like this again. I wanted to enjoy owning it for a while. The story was really fun to share. All of my friends were excited about it too.

Some months later, I thought, “Well, I have this necklace. Now I need to embody Elsa.” This is something I love to do, to replicate paintings, characters from films, and actual people from history. As you know, I used to perform with you in a historical singing group called Bella Donna. We performed annually at a San Francisco Bay Area historical ball called the Vampire Ball, and we always had a group costume theme. That year, our theme was “Vamps of the Silver Screen.” For the theme, I decided to have a replica made of the Bride film dress by designer Theresa LaQuey, who specializes in vintage couture, and she did a beautiful job replicating that 1935 version of a Regency dress. 

Note: Bride of Frankenstein’s costumes were designed by Vera West (The Man Who Laughs, Dracula, Great Expectations, Diamond Jim, Destry Rides Again, The House of the Seven Gables, Phantom of the Opera, Magnificent Doll). According to Lanchester’s autobiography, “Mary Shelly’s dress was the most fairy-like creation that I have ever seen before or since in a film. It had a low neck, tiny puffed sleeves, and a bodice that continued in a long line to the floor and onto a train about seven feet long. The entire white net dress was embroidered with iridescent sequins–butterflies, stars and moons. It took seventeen Mexican ladies twelve weeks to make it. The dress traveled around the country and appeared in the foyers of all the big openings of Bride of Frankenstein.”

That was the one time that I wore the necklace, and then I kept it for 12 years. I have worn the earrings another time.

Frock Flicks: Yes, with the 18th-century dress I [Kendra] made for you for Venice carnivale!

Tara: Yes! I love that dress. Fast-forward to now, and I started considering a move to Paris. A friend of mine suggested maybe I should sell the necklace to help with a potential move. I thought about it, and I approached the former auction house, but they had closed. However, the same guy who I was talking to 12 years ago moved over to Heritage Auctions, which is even bigger. They have a wider client base, and he’s in charge of the Hollywood vintage memorabilia section. When I reconnected with this man, Brian Chanes, he remembered me. He agreed to give my sale all the same positioning and such that we had discussed before. He was super excited because he has deep enthusiasm for this kind of vintage stuff. 

The auction is expected to be a big event. It really is the biggest vintage horror film of all time. In fact, some have credited the film genre of horror as deriving from this film.

Whoever gets it, I just hope it’s somebody who truly appreciates what this piece means for the history of film. It is truly special. Back when I was first thinking about selling it, I found out that the Academy was opening a museum in LA. I thought that they might be interested in exhibiting it at some point. That’s another possibility: it could end up in a museum.

The part about the necklace seeming to me to be mildly creepy I think is so interesting in retrospect. I had this weird feeling when I went back and bought the necklace that it wanted to be found, especially by someone like me who would appreciate it for all the things it represents: a great piece of 18th-century antique jewelry, owned by a special actress, worn in a unique vintage horror film, and previously undiscovered.

 

Want to know more about the auction? Check out Heritage Auction’s catalog with more details.