The Hollywood Museum: Joseff of Hollywood
by CHAD KENNERK
Marilyn Monroe’s Intricate diamonte bracelet from How to Marry a Millionaire (1953). Images courtesy of The Hollywood Museum.
Founded in 1928 by Eugene Joseff, Joseff of Hollywood has been providing jewellery rentals to movie studios since the Golden Age of Hollywood. Joseff often worked in tandem with studio costume designers. When censors opposed the cut of Lana Turner’s gowns in the 1948 The Three Musketeers, Joseff designed a brooch to strategically place on the costume. It made the censors happy and gave a regal air to Plunkett’s costumes. The brooches were among the Joseff lots that came up for auction back in 2017.
Though portions of the collection have come to auction in the past, remarkably, Joseff has maintained over 200,000 pieces in their ‘Studio Collection’. A source once reported that up to 85% of the jewellery seen on the silver screen at the height of movie glamour throughout the 1930’s and 1940’s was provided by Joseff of Hollywood. Today, the company lives on, still owned and operated by the Joseff family. A large part of the rental collection is still intact, and the family continues the work started by Eugene and Joan Joseff, renting jewels to productions, as well as continuing the brand’s retail line.
Located in the historic Max Factor Building, The Hollywood Museum is a 501(c)(3) non-profit with an extensive collection of more than 10,000 treasures showcasing more than 100 years of film founded by philanthropist and history lover, Donelle Dadigan. The Hollywood Museum’s latest exhibit – Joseff of Hollywood Vintage Movie Costume Jewelry – highlights pieces from the Joseff collection vault, sharing them on public view for the first time. Guests are invited to view Marilyn Monroe’s intricate diamonte bracelet from How to Marry a Millionaire and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, the brooch accented with pearls that Billie Burke wore as Glinda in The Wizard of Oz, a necklace worn by Rita Hayworth in Gilda, Clark Gable’s Carnelian and gold watch fob from Gone with the Wind, and much more.
Each piece contains a Hollywood history of its own. A white sapphire and amethyst necklace worn by Deanna Durbin in the 1948 film Up in Central Park was subsequently worn by numerous actresses, including Bette Davis, Elizabeth Taylor, and most recently by India Amarteifio in Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story. The Joseff exhibit is a true glimpse into the glamour of Hollywood’s Golden Era and the iconic brand that helped define it.
In conversation with Donelle Dadigan, Founder/President of The Hollywood Museum, Tina Joseff, President & CEO of Joseff of Hollywood and Kristin Joseff, Managing Director of Joseff of Hollywood.
Film Review (FR): Donelle, let’s start with your journey. How did The Hollywood Museum begin?
Donelle Dadigan: It's a love letter back to the community. Many people have said it started with insanity [laughs.] I think that everyone, no matter where you're from, searches for something that has to do with a wonderful recollection that you have from a film or a television show – starting in your childhood or pivotal moments in your teenage years. One time in the early 90s, when I was travelling for business, I went to Singapore and Malaysia. I had people ask me, “Where are you from?” I’d say, “I'm from Los Angeles”, and everyone would say, “Oh, that's so nice, but where in Los Angeles?” That's when I realised, when I said, “Hollywood”, they all jumped. They all gravitated [toward that] because they all have some idea or recollection or dream about what Hollywood is. I realised that it didn't matter what language you spoke, the one word that everybody understands all around the world is: Hollywood.
I knew I had struck upon something. I wanted to give back to the Hollywood community and create a museum about Los Angeles' number one export, which is the motion picture and television industry. The Hollywood Museum showcases more than 10,000 exhibits. It’s about Hollywood from its humble beginnings until today. 50 years ago you didn't want to come to Hollywood. You wouldn't let your kids come to Hollywood, because it was kind of rough and tumble. I never came here as a child to see what Hollywood was all about. My mom went to the University of Southern California (USC) and it was a big deal in the late 30s, early 40s. They'd have a chaperone and several girls from USC would come together. They take the ‘Red Cars’, which were streetcars, and come to Hollywood. It was a really big deal to be able to come. They'd see a movie, have a hot fudge sundae in C.C. Brown's, and they would stop at the Max Factor building and buy one piece of makeup.
Years later, we were able to breathe life back into the original Max Factor building that my mom and so many people came to hoping to catch a glimpse of movie stars going into those world-famous makeup rooms – the Redheads Only Room where Lucille Ball got her red hair, the Blondes Only Room where Marilyn became a blonde, the Brunettes Only Room with Elizabeth Taylor, and then the Brownettes, which Max Factor thought was pretty much anyone who had medium brown hair, such as Judy Garland. Today, it's where we have the special Joseff of Hollywood exhibits. They’re not only in our lobby, but also in each of the makeup rooms. The pieces of jewellery are coordinated to the colour of the hair of the actresses that wore them.
(FR): Tina, for those that may not know about Eugene Joseff, how did Joseff become Hollywood's premier costume jeweller to the stars?
Tina Joseff: It was the Depression and Joseff was living in Chicago and working all over the East Coast. He was an ad man, but his hobby was making jewellery. Times were tough in Chicago, so he and his brother decided to go to Hollywood – where everybody seemed to be making money. He took a train to Hollywood and walked onto a studio lot carrying this little bag full of costume jewellery that he had made. Of course, he had no money, so he sold the first pieces. Eventually, he built up an inventory and made pieces that he could convert, such as from one stone to another stone, or by adding links or drops to a necklace. He made the pieces more versatile and he got a lot more use out of them. Then he had the idea,‘Let’s rent it. We don’t sell it to them. We rent it.’ That was the beginning.
He amassed hundreds of thousands of pieces of jewellery and those were rented over and over and over again. Most of them were created specifically for a certain movie, but once they were created for that movie, they went into the Studio Collection and they could be rented again and again. That happened a lot, because the costume designers would come to Joseff to use his research library. He had Harper's Bazaar going back into the 1800s, Ladies' Home Journal; all of this research material. They would use his research material to draw their sketches. Or they would say, “I need something like this,” and he would do the sketch. Then Joseff would create the piece and rent it. Costume designers were now really familiar with those pieces, so they would come back again and again. A lot of the same costume designers with the same studios had movies with so much of the same jewellery in them. But of course, the outfits were different, the stars were different.
Donelle Dadigan: Isn't there one film that Lucille Ball appeared in, wearing bracelets, and then Lena Horne wore something similar?
Kristin Joseff: Lena Horne wore two of the bracelets [in Broadway Rhythm]. Lucille Ball had worn one necklace and one bracelet with the tassels in publicity photos for Look Who's Laughing, and then, Nicole Kidman wore them in Being the Ricardos. Costume designer [Susan Lyall], reached out to us with inspiration photos and as we were flipping through them, we said, “Oh, actually, we have that in the studio.”
(FR): Costume designer Walter Plunkett played a role in this story too.
Tina Joseff: Walter Plunkett was one of Joseff's great friends. When he did The Three Musketeers, Joseff designed so many pieces from Walter’s sketches. We actually have some of the sketches where he drew ornaments and brooches and buttons that the stars wore on their costumes. He actually made watercolour sketches so that Joseff would know the colour of the stones and then, of course, Gone with the Wind was a big one, which was also with Walter Plunkett.
Kristin Joseff: The story goes that, on sort of a dare from Walter Plunkett, Eugene Joseff really started working on the period pieces he's so well known for. He was criticising the practice of the time, that costume designers would create gowns and outfits for the leading actors and ladies, but the actresses were largely wearing their own jewellery on film. When you had a period film, the costumes were not necessarily matching up with [the contemporary] jewellery. When he gave Walter Plunkett a hard time about it, as the story goes, Plunkett said, “Well, if you can do better, then try it.” And so he did.
Donelle Dadigan: If these walls could talk. The actresses who ended up wearing Joseff jewellery in their films came into Max Factor and these world-famous makeup rooms are where they got their looks, becoming the movie stars that we recognize them as. So we've come full circle here in the museum. I first met Tina – was it 20 years ago? Inadvertently, we met and I was able to speak with the Joan Joseff, which was just extraordinary. Sometimes it’s not what you know, but who you know. We had talked about doing an exhibit. Years later, it was Kristen who got in touch with me. That's kind of how everything in the Hollywood Museum is; it's through relationships, it's through the studios, production companies, acquaintances, the stars themselves, their heirs, or fans that we come to be involved with different organisations and professionals. That's how an exhibit starts and how we got going with this. When we got started, I had no idea how fabulous this was going to turn out, in all honesty.
Tina Joseff: I know, it's pretty impressive. I say that, and I've been around it for years.
Donelle Dadigan: Many of the stars that are up on the walls with their famous looks have worn Joseff jewellery in their films. All roads lead back to the main source, and that is why I'm so thrilled we're able to connect those stories, and we're doing it here in a building where, like I said, if these walls could talk. It's a perfect location for the Hollywood Museum.
Tina Joseff: It’s a perfect location for our exhibit. We've really never exhibited these pieces anywhere, only in our studio. We’ve had a few — The Academy had an exhibit of pieces, The San Francisco International Airport had an exhibit. But this is one in our own backyard. This is where it all began. This is the perfect location, and it’s showcased here.
(FR): With such a robust and rich collection at Joseff, how did you begin to narrow down what to include in the exhibit?
Tina Joseff: We came for the initial visit and did a walkthrough of the museum. Everywhere we went, we said, “Oh, that's our jewellery. Oh, look, there's someone wearing our jewellery.”
Kristin Joseff: And not just jewellery that we made, but that we know of — “Oh, we have that in the studio. We can bring that to the exhibit.”
Donelle Dadigan: Right, because for many of the costumes that they saw, they thought, “Oh my gosh, this costume is from a film that we provided jewellery for. If we could display these together, wouldn't that be fun?” Talk about six degrees of separation – here in The Hollywood Museum, it's one or two.
Kristin Joseff: Beginning when we were discussing how to put the exhibit together, the conceptualization of putting the jewellery worn by the stars who would have been here to have their hair and makeup done, partly came about because Donelle had costumes on display here at The Hollywood Museum where we would say, “Oh, we actually have the necklace that goes with this dress.” In fact, if you go into the Brunette Room, you can see our necklace on a mannequin with the dress that Elizabeth Taylor wore. For a while, in the beginning, Donelle kept saying, “Well, where do you think that it would be an appropriate place in this museum for your pieces?” We just kept saying, “Well, how much real estate do you want to give us?” I think that's the part that she was alluding to. She was a little bit surprised about the quantity of it. We could strip everything out that we have here and fill all the cases back up with new pieces without reusing anything.
Tina Joseff: The pictures on the wall too. We have so many photographs of stars wearing our jewellery that were either our publicity, or studio publicity, and then the sketches from the costume designers, and autographs from all the different stars that Joseff adorned during the 30s and the 40s.
(FR): Which pieces stand out to you as the most intricate?
Tina Joseff: I would say one of the most impressive pieces to me was the topaz bib necklace, which was worn by Tallulah Bankhead, Ona Munson, and Alice Faye — all in different configurations. It's an elaborate, gold necklace that would go from your neck down to your belly button. That's how large it is, but it was made so that you could remove pieces, and I believe Alice Faye wore it basically as a choker. When Tallulah Bankhead wore it, it was mid-size and sat right above the bosom. Then when Ona Munson wore it, it covered her chest.
(FR): And the most delicate?
Kristin Joseff: Some of the pieces that I find the most fascinating are the ones that have been worn and reused so many times that they've become fragile because they've had so many repairs. We have one here in the portrait gallery that was a piece that went with what we used to call the imperial necklace. If you flip the bracelet over, you can see what we call scars, where it's been repaired by soldering over and over and over. That tells you how many times they were born and how popular they were. We know that it was worn in Marie Antoinette, so it does date back at least to 1938 and then Anna and the King of Siam. I find the history of those pieces to be really fascinating, because you know that you're holding something with a lot of stories.
(FR): Because things were being rented out, there were so many different necks or hands that wore these pieces.
Kristin Joseff: Absolutely and it was always a working studio: no one knew that Hollywood memorabilia would become its own industry.
Donelle Dadigan: The DNA that's on each of these pieces. I mean, think about that, with all these movie stars wearing these.
Kristin Joseff: Some of the tiaras have the original netting with hairs in them. So when Donelle talks about DNA, she means it.
(FR): What pieces in the exhibit will audiences coming to the museum get to see? We've mentioned a few, but what are some of the other highlights?
Kristin Joseff: We've created vignettes for different stars through the makeup rooms. We have whole collections dedicated to Marlene Dietrich, Judy Garland, Bette Davis. In the blonde room, you can see items worn by Marilyn Monroe. We actually have quite a few in there. We can take you to the Redhead Room, where you have pieces worn by Rita Hayworth, Lucille Ball, and Maureen O'Hara. Also in the Portrait Gallery, we take you on a walk through time. We've made a point of bringing in pieces that were worn sort of ‘then and now’, pieces that were worn in films from the 1930s that were re-rented out to Bridgerton or to Netflix's Hollywood, or on HBO’s Westworld.
(FR): Joseff of Hollywood has such a rich cinematic legacy. Why is that so vital to preserve?
Tina Joseff: I would say because it's not just the family history. It's the history of Hollywood, the history of California, the history of moviemaking and the beginnings of television. These are things that we all live with in our lives. Like Donelle said, when you say ‘Hollywood’, everybody wants to know about Hollywood. That's what this collection covers. All movies were different, like Anna and the King of Siam. We created a whole persona around that with the jewellery, because the jewellery was a major part. The wives and every little child in that had jewellery on. We have photographs and the pieces — half of them weren't plated. A lot of them weren't even finished, but they put them on the characters, because these were for background characters. The demand for mass quantities of jewellery was so great that they couldn't turn it out fast enough. If it was for a background character, there's stones missing and others were just incomplete pieces.
Kristin Joseff: One of the things that I don't think gets enough credit is, not only is Hollywood history becoming its own industry, but the movies that we grew up with shaped our perceptions of the cultures they depicted. They shaped our perceptions of what American life was. I grew up watching classic films with my mother, and a lot of our view of the world was shaped by these films, by these depictions that we saw. It's really neat to be a part of that legacy.
(FR): Do each of you have a favourite memory around moviegoing, perhaps a film that has Joseff pieces in it?
Tina Joseff: I remember seeing The Wizard of Oz. At that time, of course, I did not know that we actually had jewellery in The Wizard of Oz. You had a mix of reality and fantasy, and then all of this beautiful scenery. The Emerald City was everything it’s cracked up to be. To me, that was a really iconic film that we actually had jewellery in. It’s pretty amazing.
Kristin Joseff: And you can see Glinda’s brooch in the lobby here at the Joseff of Hollywood exhibit in the Hollywood Museum, right by Miss Gulch’s glasses from the beginning of the film and the museum’s own pair of Ruby Slippers.
Donelle Dadigan: We should talk about the fact that Eugene Joseff not only made this fabulous, fabulous jewellery for the leading film actresses, but also for the men, which we don't think about. Tina, you can touch on that, because that's extraordinary. Rhett Butler, Clark Gable, from Gone with the Wind.
Tina Joseff: Of course, all the women fell in love with Rhett Butler, and we all wanted to be Vivien Leigh – only maybe not with all those little temper tantrums. Of course, Walter Plunkett did all the wonderful costumes. The cigar case that Clark Gable tossed in for the cause was created by Joseff. For years, we just kept thinking that inside that cigar case was a belt buckle, but it wasn't actually a belt buckle. It was actually another piece to replace the piece on top of the cigar case, because he uses a cigar case after he tossed the original one in. All they did was take the central piece off the top and replaced it with this other piece. It was a very prevalent piece in the movie.
Kristin Joseff: With an interchangeable face.
(FR): That gives us some insight into how Joseff is thinking behind the scenes, the practical approach of creating these pieces.
Tina Joseff: That was one of his major business practices; make it convertible, make it easy to change, expand the inventory. One of the ways to do it was to make all these pieces easily changeable.
Kristin Joseff: We have other Gone with the Wind pieces that are not currently on display that might make their way into the museum in the future as well. That actually was a movie that I watched with my mother every summer throughout my entire childhood. Funny story, when Tina's son Jeff and I got married, Jeff wore Clark Gable’s moonstone cufflinks from the film. I almost changed the colours of our wedding so that I could wear Scarlett O'Hara’s amethyst necklace. I ended up settling on a different necklace that Vivien Leigh had worn at some point for a publicity still. As far as other movie memories, one of my favourites is All About Eve. There were two brooches – often they would rent out duplicates to make sure that they could change them out during filming. One of the brooches that Bette Davis wore in her most famous dress, “It's going to be a bumpy night,” can be seen in the Brownette room here. We're not just a part of Hollywood history. We’re still a working studio providing rentals. We've got tens of thousands of pieces available for rent, and we have just updated our online store for the correlating retail line.
DONELLE DADIGAN is the president and founder of The José Iturbi Foundation and The Hollywood Museum. With 10,000 real show business treasures showcasing more than 100 years, from Hollywood’s humble beginnings to today’s blockbusters, The Hollywood Museum is home to the largest entertainment collection on public display. Inspired by her godfather, concert-great classical pianist and conductor, José Iturbi, Donelle co-founded the José Iturbi Foundation dedicated to sharing and popularising the wonders of classical arts and music with audiences around the world, including sponsoring blockbuster concerts at the Hollywood Bowl. For more than 20 years, Dadigan has been involved with numerous community groups and charitable organisations in Hollywood and California. Dadigan is co-chair of the Hollywood Historic Trust and she also sits on the Board of Directors of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, and the Hollywood Police Activities League, among others.
TINA JOSEFF is the president and chief executive officer of Joseff of Hollywood. Tina began working for Joseff in 1972, running wax patterns as part of the casting process that produced both jewellery and aerospace parts at our foundry. She quickly moved up into other positions that included jewellery assembly and inventory management, before taking her position as Joan’s right hand gal. She formally joined the family in 1983 after marrying Eugene and Joan’s only son Jeff Joseff, and soon after gave birth to Jeff Jr., their only child. In the 1990’s as Joan stepped back, Tina took over most day to day operations, becoming president after Joan’s passing in 2010. Tina continues to lead Joseff today, and hopes to soon publish a book with all the recent archive findings that she has worked to preserve.
KRISTIN JOSEFF is the managing director of Joseff of Hollywood. Kristin married Jeff Joseff in 2014 and was asked to join the family business shortly after. Her experience with office and remote employee management helped provide support for Tina as her executive assistant. She has overseen media relations and jewellery sales since 2017. Kristin is the main contact point for most web based communications, including social media, general support and wholesale buyer inquiries.
Visit The Hollywood Museum and the Joseff of Hollywood exhibit.
