[My Life in Focus] VI. "One Million Dollars for a Piece of Glass"

The following is an excerpt from Gianni Bozzacchi's autobiography, "My Life in Focus: A Photographer's Journey with Elizabeth Taylor and the Hollywood Jet Set," which I co-wrote.

An Introduction to the Life and Work of Gianni Bozzachi

I. Living "La Dolce Vita"

II. Welcome to the Jungle

III. Introverted in America

IV. Shooting a Cult Classic

V. Two Movies, One Photographer

VI. "One Million Dollars for a Piece of Glass"

We were docked in Monte Carlo when Harriet Annenberg Ames put her famous diamond up for public auction in New York, the pear-shaped 69-carat diamond that she’d acquired from Harry Winston. Jewelers’ representatives arrived from around the world, including one of Jackie Onassis’ assistants and Richard’s own auction agent, Al Yugler, who followed the bidding firsthand and kept in touch with Richard by radio.

From a starting price of $200,000, bidding rose rapidly. Richard was a little tipsy, and got irritated at the way the price seemed to spiral crazily out of control. When it got to one million dollars, he decided to pull out, convinced it would just keep rising – to one and a half million, two million, three. When Richard then discovered the diamond had gone to Cartier owner Robert Kenmore for $1,050,000, he was furious. He couldn’t believe Kenmore would outbid him, given all the free publicity that Elizabeth gave Cartier. He promptly called Kenmore from the yacht to negotiate for the diamond directly, and ended up buying it for $1,100,000 dollars, on condition that the diamond be known as the “Taylor-Burton Cartier Diamond.” This was the world’s first million-dollar diamond. Others may have previously changed hands for seven-figure sums, but this was the first to do so at a public auction and it made instant worldwide news.

Now, with the initial excitement over, all that was left to do was deliver the thing. However, given the huge publicity that the auction had generated, Cartier feared someone might attempt to steal it in transit. Kenmore had two copies made and sent them separately: three people with three different diamonds, two fakes and only one for real. I got to the yacht shortly before they arrived: three identical Cartier boxes carried by three identical, bull-shaped Cartier delivery men.

Richard was drunk, and Elizabeth no less so. Richard opened two of the boxes and just started laughing uncontrollably. “One million dollars for a piece of glass,” he kept saying, while standing by one of the portholes juggling the two “diamonds” in his hands. Suddenly he slipped, and one of the diamonds flew out of the porthole, landed on the deck outside and rolled into the sea.

Claudye moved just in time to catch Elizabeth before she fainted.

Everyone went crazy. Gastone, the bodyguard/driver, slapped on a diving mask and threw himself into the pitch-black sea, in the middle of the night. Elizabeth, Claudye and Richard just kept staring at the two remaining diamonds, wondering whether either was the real one. But Richard and Elizabeth were too drunk and stunned to make any sense of the thing. They asked what I thought, which was laughable. It was the first time in my life I’d even seen a diamond close up. What would I know? Panic seemed to make them sober up. They made a string of telephone calls and eventually, with dawn breaking, decided to wake Pierre Arpels of Van Cleef & Arpels and get him to come on board and evaluate the situation. As the goddess of good luck would have it, what Richard had tossed into the sea was finally confirmed as merely a piece of glass. Not a $1,100,000 diamond.

(Elizabeth, Richard, and the Taylor-Burton Cartier Diamond. Docked in Monte Carlo, 1969. Copyright Gianni Bozzacchi.)

The following day, Elizabeth wore the jewel to Princess Grace Kelly’s 40th Birthday Party. As you can see from the photo I took just before they left, Richard was now being a lot more careful with that diamond. In the end, I got a cut of its value too, given that I sold that photo worldwide.

Come back on Monday for Part VII and hear Gianni talk about Brigitte Bardot “in viva voce.”