I have always said that the Tucson Gem show is not only about gems but about people. This show is no exception. While I was working the AGTA booth I was approached by Nancy and Peter Strong. They said, "Excuse me. Is this the same Imperial Pearl that my Aunt Ann used to work at?" Ann Bilgore left New Haven in 1938 to work over the next 30 Years for Imperial Pearl Syndicate. (as it was known at the time ). Lester began to tell me how his aunt loved her job and as spokesperson for IPS, lived a glamorous life promoting pearls across the country. They told me that they had scrap books documenting some of aunt Ann's pearl adventures .
According to the information Ann was born in New Haven, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Harris Bilgore, second generation in a family furniture store. Ann worked as travel agent before her move to Imperial.
At Imperial she became company spokesperson and resident pearl expert where she traveled around the country promoting pearls. She stated she would need an adding machine to count up all the radio and television programs on which she has appeared.
One of her most interesting assignments was promoting interest in a 30 pound gown made of 100,000 pearls and valued at $100,000. This is not exactly as easy as one would think.
|
Carries Cool $100,000 In Valise New York—(INS) — Attention thieves, coast to coast—you will be disconsolately interested to lean that a lovely blonde with a small valise, into whom you may have bumped from time to time the last six months, was carrying a cool $100,000 in loot.
Sony, too late now She is home, perfectly safe except for an occasional martini her admiring friends keep forcing upon her But for a half-year, Miss Ann Bilgore was doubtless the most innocent, fashionable foil for big-time crooks in history. n her inconspicuously smart suitcase was a gown fittingly held together with 100,000 cultured pearls valued at one buck each. "I guess you'd say," Miss Bilgore admitted today, "that I was sort of holding the bag. But it was insured for $100,000 and there was also a $100,000 life insurance policy on me "Anytime I got nervous I'd think what fun my nephew Peter (her beneficiary) would have with all that money That put me in good spirits light their he's such a darling!" Her macabre sense-of-humor notwithstanding, Miss Bilgoie was not carrying her loot for laughs She was carrying it to all the large cities of the U. S for the Imperial Pearl Syndicate, her employers, who figured Anne's big blue eyes were better protection for their fabulous property than Piketon's big black guns. The gown, the worlds most expensive, expensive as even the Paris couture would admit, was placed in Ann's dainty hands last spring and she as asked to tour the land with it, her specific assignment being to get it on .is many radio, TV and personal appearance shows as possible. "Everywhere I went," she says, "I had to line up a celebrity or a local glamour girl to wear it. It was easy lining them up, but it wasn't so simple holding them up after they put it on—the dress weighs 30 pounds. "It's made to be worn by a slight, size 12 girl see. But it requires the strength of three size 40's to carry it" Gloria De Haven donned the dress, for instance, and slipped immediately forward She had to be photographed and interviewed in prostrate position. Claire Luce, the actress, wore the gown to a businessman’s luncheon, a cancer research benefit, but insisted on taking the skirt off for a lunch . It is quite uncomfortable - sitting on—say—20,000 pearls, in Miss Luce's case. Most other celeb's managed the weight for a half-hour ("after the first three minutes you just feel Numb.") says Ann, then headed for bed. But Grandmother Gloria Swanson, showing the strength of 10, Wore the dress for three hours without Batting an eye or buckling a Shoulder. A publicity-happy radio-actress in New Orleans tied the same feat, Capsized after an hour and spent the next three days "baking out" her muscles in a hot bath, her newspaper photos propped on the water faucets.
|
