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SPEAKER_01Hello and welcome to Stuff About Things, an art history podcast. My name is Lindsay. I am your host, hello, and I am here with a mini sode, which I categorize as any episode under 30 minutes. This mini sode relates to episode 37. While this mini sode is inspired by that episode, it's also very different to anything I've ever done before on the podcast, which is fun. Yes, that's right. I said fun. That shows you just how low the bar is set in my life for fun at the moment. Almost as low as a diamond sinking slowly into the ocean. In episode 37, I talked all about the Hope Diamond, a 45.52 carat blue diamond with quite the history. In that hour plus episode, there was one thing that I didn't talk about, which is the relationship between the Hope Diamond and the fictional diamond known as the Heart of the Ocean, which had a starring role in the 1997 cinematic sensation Titanic. Despite what some people claim, the Heart of the Ocean and the Hope Diamond are not identical, though the resemblance is very strong. Because of that, when you read about the Hope Diamond, particularly in more popular media rather than academic media, you will inevitably encounter mentions of the Heart of the Ocean, which has arguably infiltrated pop culture to an even greater extent than the Hope Diamond. There's only so many times that you can see that connection referenced before you dig a little deeper. And by you, I mean me. I wanted to know more about the relationship between these two famous gems. In the process of doing that, I discovered another gem that I decided to throw into the mix. That brings us here to the part where I tell you stuff about a trifecta of Titanic gemstones and the diamond chains that may or may not bind them. The Hope Diamond, the Heart of the Ocean, and the Love of the Sea. I do want to say that while I like the movie Titanic, I saw it in the theaters when I was seven, which was probably way too young to see that movie, but I distinctly remember going. And I was also so excited when for my eighth birthday I got the movie as a present, back when it took the form of a two-tape VHS. Those of you born after the year 2003 might have to look that reference up. While I like the movie Titanic, I would never put it on par with my other 90s favorites, Jurassic Park and, of course, The Mummy, my favorite movie of all time. I say all of that not to rag on the movie, but because I'm about to come across as a rabid fangirl. I am not. I do, however, love digging into the behind-the-scenes stuff of movies. I would just as soon watch the behind-the-scenes footage and listen to commentary than see the actual movies themselves. That is where this level of enthusiasm is coming from. For those of you who haven't seen Titanic and don't want to spoil it, too bad. That ship has sailed and, spoiler alert, sunk. You've had 25 years to watch it, so it's your own dang fault if this spoils it for you. I am assuming that there's a fair few people out there who probably have not seen the movie in a couple of decades because that's how old we are now. Yikes. What you need to remember slash know is this. In Titanic, there is a major McGuffin in the movie, which is a fun, fancy film word for plot device, which is to say something that exists specifically to push the plot forward and frame the narrative without actually being all that important. In Titanic, that plot device is a huge heart-shaped blue diamond known as the heart of the ocean, which is set into a necklace with even more diamonds. In case you haven't figured this out yet from context clues, that diamond and its necklace look an awful lot like the Hope Diamond and its necklace, which is why we're here. While I probably wouldn't need to, I am going to give about a three-minute plot summary of the movie, with an emphasis on the role that the diamond plays in it. Just so that we're all on the same boat. Pun intended. Yes, there's going to be a lot of ship puns. You think I'm gonna let that opportunity go? No, sir. As a movie, Titanic functions as a narrative within a narrative. We start in the movie's present day, aka the 90s, following a famous treasure hunter played by Bill Paxton, R.I.P. to my dude Bill Paxton. Bill Paxton, or rather his character, but we're gonna say Bill Paxton. Bill Paxton is exploring the wreck of the Titanic in the hopes of finding a famed diamond that is assumed to have gone down with the ship. That diamond is known as, say it with me, the heart of the ocean. At the beginning of the movie, Bill Paxton and his team recover a safe from the ship and they're like, Yeah, baby, we got it. The diamond's definitely gonna be in here. But it's not. He instead finds a remarkably, dare I say, impossibly, well-preserved graphite drawing, which shows a young woman on a lounge wearing absolutely nothing but this necklace. That drawing has a date on it, April 14th, 1912, the very day the Titanic sank. Bill Paxton shares this amazing discovery on national television, which is seen by an elderly woman named Rose, played by the wonderful Gloria Stewart. Rose gets Bill on the blower and is like, hey, I'm the woman in the drawing, and I can totally help you find it. And Bill Paxton is like, Yeah, right, crackpot. But Rose is 101 years old, which is exactly how old this nude woman would be, give or take, if she survived the ship's sinking. The 101-year-old Rose comes aboard Bill Paxton's ship, and they scoot out to the wreck of the Titanic. On the way, she tells the crew about her experiences on the ship. The rest of the movie after this point is a series of flashbacks to Rose's journey on the Titanic. This brings us back to 1912, where the younger Rose, Kate Winslit, is engaged to a man named Cal, played by the incomparable Billy Zane. Rose is not happy in this relationship, and at one point she literally considers jumping ship to escape whatever life awaits her in America with this guy. She is saved from doing so by a guy named Jack, aka babyfaced Leonardo DiCaprio. Cal finds out what happened, and instead of handling it like a normal person and loving fiance, he decides instead to give Rose a gift, one that he's been saving for just before their wedding. A necklace featuring a massive blue diamond. As all large diamonds do, this diamond has a name, La Queue de la Mer, the Heart of the Ocean. Helpfully, for our purposes, Cal then gives a mini history about the diamond, explaining that it once belonged to none other than Louis XVI. Uh, that's right, folks. In the movie, the heart of the ocean is a recut version of the French Blue. Those of you who listened to the Hope Diamond episode will know all about that. Technically, we already know this, because earlier in the movie, Bill Paxton gives a little bit of a longer history of this diamond that absolutely confirms that Cal is in fact referring to the French Blue. He then states outright, and I quote, Today it would be worth more than the Hope Diamond. Bram brrr. That is the part of the movie that I care about, but in case you're curious, the remaining two hours of the film after this point follow Rose and Jack as they fall in love, leading to the famous scene in which he draws her in the nude wearing only the diamond, before all kinds of hijinks ensue as the ship sinks. Jack dies, sorry, but Rose survives. Cut to 80 years later, old Rose is standing on the edge of a ship, and she pulls out the heart of the ocean from her pocket. She had it the whole time, folks. And the audience is like, huh? It's actually a pretty great reveal. She then throws it into the sea with a little ah that always makes me feel uncomfortable. This is obviously symbolic on many different levels, the two most prominent being that one, she's giving the ocean back its heart, and two, she has let go of this baggage that she has carried for so long. And woof, what a burden it must have been, considering that that night, or shortly thereafter, she dies. I know that's harsh, but she is 101, and she does die the way that her lover Jack once hoped she would, as an old woman warm in her bed. The End. There is, however, an alternate ending to the movie. You can find the whole thing on YouTube. Now nothing actually changes that much, it's just that Bill Paxton's character gets to hold the necklace before the lady chucks it into the water. And then they all laugh and dance together, and it's very, very weird. Despite being central to the film's narrative, the heart of the ocean really doesn't do all that much in the movie. As I said, it's really just a plot device. But boy oh boy, did that necklace become wildly famous in the late 90s? I even owned a small version of the necklace, which, I kid you not, I wore for school pictures one year. And if you think a mini heart of the ocean is bad, you should see my bangs. And my bright turquoise chenille sweater. Awful. Who allowed that to happen? Mom, you're supposed to love me. That is all to say that the heart of the ocean became something that people could buy and wear. There are a few reasons why I find the success of this concept of the necklace so crazy. The first is that the movie doesn't portray this necklace as a good thing. In both re-watching the movie and reading the movie's script, it is clear as day that Rose freaking hated this necklace. She even calls it a cold stone and describes it as a quote unquote heart of ice. There is no positivity around this necklace. In fact, the whole idea is that we shouldn't covet things. It's not about, you know, the $300 million diamond that you own, but rather the friends and potentially lovers that you make along your journey. Helpfully that journey is not on the Titanic, in which case I've got some bad news for you. It is therefore a wee bit ironic that post-movie, lots of people, including myself, wanted that freaking necklace. That brings me to my second point. The heart of the ocean is not a real thing. It is a fake concept designed by and for this movie. And it's not even like they used an actual blue diamond necklace as a prop. James Cameron instead had the London-based jeweler Asprian Gerard design two prop necklaces to use throughout filming, both of which were made using cubic zirconia, which mimics the look of a diamond, if not sparklier, at an absolute fraction of the cost. In fact, each of these prop necklaces probably cost in the realm of about $8,000 to $10,000 to make, which isn't insignificant, but compared to the real thing, that's basically free. Despite this, before the movie was set to come out, there was a company called the J. Peterman Company that specialized in producing replicas of movie props that people like you and me could then go buy, or rather order from like a catalog. Right as Titanic was set to come out, Petermans approached 20th Century Fox, who made this movie, to get the exclusive rights to reproduce the Heart of the Ocean. Petermans even bought one of those two prop necklaces once filming was done. So they had it on hand as they designed this Fox-approved knockoff of a fictional necklace. To become the owner of one of these necklaces would cost you about 200 bucks. But you didn't just get the necklace. You also got a certificate from 20th Century Fox that stated the necklace you purchased is an authentic replica of the heart of the ocean, which is at once brilliant and ridiculous, because you can't really be an authentic replica of something if it's completely fictional. But the marketing that the J. Peterman company uses suggested otherwise. How do I know? I found it. In full, that advertisement reads, and the grammar's a little off here, but I'm reading it as is, Heart of the Ocean trademark necklace. Exact replica of astonishing heart-shaped pendant necklace worn by Rose DeWitt Bicatur, as portrayed by Kate Winslet, and lost at sea in the movie Titanic. Length, 18 inches, comprised of 84 brilliant faux diamonds linked together in precious platinum-like rhodium plate settings. Fairly enormous heart-shaped blue faux 75 carat diamond solitaire, encircled by a single row of faux diamonds, is detachable, enabling necklace to be worn alone, sans large solitaire, when mood so dictates. Heart of the Ocean necklace, number 62A10322. Note, authorized replica with a certificate from 20th Century Fox. Hinged presentation box. Price $198. The original necklace, $3 plus million dollars. Deferred billing. No payment till June 1st, 1998, if you order now. Speaking of authenticity, the same jewelers who designed the prop necklaces used in the movie figured out pretty damn quickly that this Titanic movie was going to be a big deal. And so while filming was happening, the company made a quote-unquote real replica of this once again fictional necklace. That replica cost not $200, but rather more like $200,000. And it wasn't even made from a real blue diamond. It was instead a large sapphire. This sapphire diamond necklace is the one that Celine Dion wore to the 1998 Oscars, where she performed the absolute banger of a ballad that is My Heart Will Go On. That necklace later sold at auction for over $2 million. I have tried in vain to find any interview with James Cameron in which he discusses the Heart of the Ocean, either the prop version or the inspiration behind it. Do you know how many interviews I watched? So many interviews. I did, however, find a few interviews with Titanic costume designer Deborah Scott, in which she briefly talks about the story of the Heart of the Ocean. In those interviews, Deborah Scott confirms that James Cameron is the person who designed the Heart of the Ocean, and that he used historical reference points to do so, including the Hope Diamond. This all goes to show how the Hope Diamond has sunk into pop culture, inspiring doppelgangers that have somehow become even bigger pop icons than the original. Case in point, it was not the Hope Diamond that Britney Spears references in her masterpiece of a music video that is 2000's Oops, I Did It Again. I was originally planning to put in a 15-second-ish clip of that, but apparently that's not allowed. So instead, I did my own dramatic reading over a karaoke background. Enjoy. All aboard. Brittany, before you go, there's something I want you to have. Oh, it's beautiful. But wait a minute, isn't this? Yeah, yes it is. But I thought the old lady dropped it into the ocean in the end. Well, baby, I went down and got it for you. Aw, you shouldn't have. The Hope Diamonds got some competition, though the connection here is admittedly, at least to me, a bit more tenuous. The necklace that I am talking about features not a massive diamond, but a small-ish sapphire, one that is now referred to as the quote, love of the sea. I say now referred to because this name appears to have been floated to the surface only after the Titanic movie took off. To be fair, I may be being cynical on this one, but I tend to be more suspicious than most about these things. I was also a little bit suspicious that the only sources I can find on this necklace are entirely online sources, which tend to be less reliable. In other words, take all of this with a grain of sea salt. The sapphire, now known as the love of the sea, is cut in a baguette surrounded by round stones that look like diamonds. It is totally unfair to compare this necklace to the Hope Diamond or the Heart of the Ocean. Compared to those, it is positively puny. But there is a certain Edwardian Art Nouveau-esque elegance about the necklace. I'm not a total hater. It's very pretty. But is it the inspiration for the heart of the ocean? Hmm, that one I don't know about. This necklace has been featured in a couple of Titanic-related exhibitions in recent years, and there's been a similar handful of articles written about it and how it served as the inspiration for the film. Now, as far as I can tell, those claims all started in the 2010s, more than a decade after the film's release in 1997. Convenient. If it were actually inspiration for that movie, you'd expect it to have come up sooner. All that cynicism aside, I do have to admit that the story here is a pretty good one. That story goes a little something like this. On April 10th, 1912, 19-year-old Kate Florence Phillips boarded the Titanic along with her much older lover, a 38-year-old man by the name of Henry Samuel Morley. In addition to being much older than Kate, Henry also had the unfortunate characteristic of being married, specifically to someone who was not Kate. He also had a 12-year-old daughter. But the wife and daughter were not on the ship, because Kate and Henry were running away together. Morley owned a confectionery business, a candy shop, somewhere around Birmingham, England, which is how he met Kate, who was an employee at the shop. Not what I'd call a sweet love story, but hey, there was candy. Kate and Henry were leaving England to start a New life in California, and they were going in relative style as second class passengers. Now, at some point in their journey, Henry presented Kate with that sapphire necklace. But sadly, it turns out that the necklace was one of the last things that Henry Morley gave to Kate, who was wearing the necklace when she boarded a lifeboat as the ship sank. Unfortunately, Henry Morley was one of the approximately 1,500 people who lost their lives in the sinking of the ship. But the sapphire necklace was not the only thing that Kate procured on her ill-fated journey. Almost nine months to the day after the Titanic sank, Kate gave birth to a daughter named Ellen. Given the timeline of things, that makes Ellen the youngest survivor of the ship's sinking. She may have even been conceived on the day the ship sank. So uh maybe they also inspired some other scenes in the movie Titanic. I won't say which, out of respect for the dead.
SPEAKER_00I'm referencing the car scene.
SPEAKER_01Contrary to what a few Facebook and message board comments have suggested with impressive confidence, Kate's necklace was not salvaged from the wreck during a series of excavations in the early 1990s. That's not true. At that point, the necklace was in the possession of Kate and Morley's daughter, Ellen, who sold the necklace to a Titanic artifacts dealer around that time for approximately 450 pounds. According to Kate's great-granddaughter, Beverly Farmer, the necklace was then sold to a private buyer for over 20,000 pounds. Woof. In a rather cool turn of events, the BBC temporarily reunited Beverly with her great-grandmother's Love of the Sea Sapphire necklace. They actually got together Beverly with the descendant of Morley's marriage on the other side of the ocean, and they are both pictured together, with Beverly wearing Kate's Love of the Sea Sapphire, while the Morley descendant wears a replica of the heart of the ocean. Now, this is where this theory that Kate's sapphire necklace inspired the heart of the ocean really hits the iceberg. When you see these two necklaces together, all it really does is drive home the old adage that comparison is the thief of joy. Because the sapphire is teeny teeny tiny compared to the heart of the ocean. Like teeny tiny. While theirs was a tragic love story, I don't see much overlap between the story of Kate Florence Phillips and Henry Morley with that of Jack and Rose in the movie. I see even less of an overlap between Kate's small sapphire necklace and the fictional 56 karat blue diamond known as the Heart of the Ocean. Even if Kate's necklace did inspire Mr. James Cameron as he was writing the movie, and that's a big if, I think it's telling that the director chose to cast the Hope Diamond, or you know, a very strong look-alike of it, as the movie's main gemstone, rather than the comparatively tiny emerald-cut sapphire. Typical Hollywood. While I've poo-pooed the assertion that this necklace inspired the movie Titanic, that doesn't mean it's not a good story or that that story isn't worth telling. I think it's safe to say that people like me, and probably you, dear listener, not to assume anything about your financial situation, but whatever, we are not blue diamond buying people. However, we all undoubtedly have things, literal objects in our lives that we care about deeply and that have so many stories tied up in them. As the 101-year-old Rose says of Bill Paxton's covetous obsession with the heart of the ocean, obsessing over things and money and wealth doesn't make for a good life. In some cases, it might even hurt. The Hope Diamond is real life evidence of that fact, considering just how many of the people who owned it ended up in not so great circumstances. And not because of a curse. As Evelyn Walsh McLean once said, she previously owned the Hope Diamond, it's not the diamond that's the issue. It is instead unearned wealth in undisciplined hands. That's not to say that I believe in chucking massive diamonds into the ocean. I'm not a 101-year-old woman with no fudgicles left to give. I'm more than happy to take any unwanted diamonds you might have off of your hands. But until then, I guess I'll just have to stick to cubic zirconia. That is all I have for you today on the trifecta of Titanic jewels that are the Hope Diamond, the Heart of the Ocean, and the Love of the Sea. For the sake of time, I'm going to cut things off here. You will find a list of all sources used for the episode, as well as related images on stuffaboutthingspodcast.com. I will be back in a few weeks with another episode. I'm not sure if it'll be a mini sode or a regular, time will tell. But if you enjoyed the podcast and want to show it some love, please consider leaving a rating or a review on iTunes or wherever you listen. Even better, recommend it to a friend or a family member who might enjoy it too. The more, the merrier. Thanks to the usual suspects, akahooksounds.com and freemusicarchive.org, where I get the royalty free music featured in the podcast. The first song you hear is a version of Box Brandenburg Concerto number four by Kevin McLeod, where the second, jauntier tune is called Success Dreams. That is it for me. Don't forget to look at something beautiful today. And um yeah, that's all I got for you. A la próxima Michi. Mom, you're supposed to love me. Ciao!