Hollywood · The Archive · · 2 min read
Hollywood Nights: Virginia Mayo, Mickey Rooney, Anthony Hopkins and Friends
Signed portraits and gala snapshots from Nate Waxman’s archive — Virginia Mayo, Mickey Rooney, Anthony Hopkins, June Haver, Joan Leslie and more.
Every jeweler in Los Angeles has a Hollywood story. Nate Waxman has a shoebox full of them — real photographs, some signed, most never published.
“To Nate”
The black-and-white portrait is unmistakably Virginia Mayo, the star of The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) and White Heat (1949): the wave of blonde hair, the half-smile, a spray of roses. Across the bottom corner, in blue ink, she has written a few warm lines to Nate and signed her name. In another photograph the two of them sit side by side on a floral sofa, a Swoboda brooch at her neckline.
Black tie
The evening pictures are the most fun. Nate in a tuxedo with Anthony Hopkins and Margaret O’Brien at a dinner table. Nate at a restaurant between Margaret and Mickey Rooney. Nate with Margaret, June Haver and Joan Leslie — two of the bright young stars of 1940s musicals — Margaret in a gold Swoboda statement piece. Nate with Carol Baker, Margaret and a singer friend, everyone dressed for a long night.
None of these photographs were taken to sell jewelry. They were taken because people who liked each other were in the same room. But look at the necklines and lapels and you will see the house style everywhere: genuine stones, gold, presence.
The real look, then and now
Swoboda was built on a simple observation that Hollywood understood before anyone: on camera and across a ballroom, genuine gemstones in gold read as precious — without the vault, the insurance or the bodyguard. It is the reason the brand found its way onto so many evening dresses, and the reason it photographs so well on a phone today.
Find your own evening piece among the statement pieces and precious gems.
Photographs from the private collection of Nate Waxman. Appearance in the archive does not imply endorsement.
