Liz Taylor & La Peregrina

It's all too easy to file Liz Taylor with Alexis Carrington and Zsa Zsa Gabor: 1980 cheese-bombs with jewel fixations. But let's not forget that before La Liz started hawking perfume and sharing limos with Michael Jackson, she was, well, a classic beauty.

Is it really her fault that she went off the rails with 50-pound diamonds and four-foot bouffants in later years? If you were constantly pelted with jewels by a flotilla of husbands, might you not also turn to colossal gaudiness and flagrant excess? We must forgive Liz, if for no other reason than this: She owned La Peregrina, one of the largest drop pearls in the world, with five hundred years of intrigue and history under its belt. At 55 carats, it must've come from an oyster the size of a Big Mac. Hoarded by generations of the Spanish royal family, La Peregrina appears in many of their portraits. Mary I and Queen Margarita are just a few of those who coveted and briefly possessed it, until Richard Burton purchased it in 1969.

This is the Pink Panther's pipe dream. The kind of jewel that Sherlock Holmes would brave warrens of opium dens to recover. It has inspired the kind of gem mania that puts the lusts of ordinary mortals to shame. I'm not saying Liz wore it with class or humility...

But is class and humility what is called for when you wear a necklace like La Peregrina? I don't think so.  Hollywood, for better or worse, constitutes our royalty...so who better to wear the jewels of Queen Margarita?