This is Anthology 1

Being the first part of the Disney Princess Anthology

THE ROARING TWENTIES

ELLA: "Once upon a time, four ladies had a chance encounter at a place at exactly midnight. Each one of them was unique, but something from up high binded them in an unknown destiny. So they chose to become artists. When it came to naming the friendship,they came up with various names such as the Rebels, Lady Ella's Friends, the Ladies of Perpetual Indulgence, and the Honeybees. Hoevever these names suited none of the girls, save one: The Princesses. They all loved that name. When people heard of us, they said "THE PRINCESSES? OF WHAT?" and "shouldn't you call yourselves something else more American?" (1924)

Saginelli:That was the problem. At the time, most Americans thought of us as Europeans (which while were were that technically, we felt we belonged in America). Most of what was happening in the Tens was not in the Twenties.

Abbuderi: The time was ripe to challenge the old mores of our elders, the Victorians (that's not to say they were entirely clean). It was the time of sheer recklessnes brought by the likes of the flappers, thugs and lying evangelicals. And we sided with Capone's Men with our drinks.

Saginelli: We were all immature in those days. In fact, our first time together was marked by sheer drunkenness, broken glass, shedded blood, hard knox, and durty sox. Most of the youngbloods might just have been through the ugly ecstasy that we went through.

Ella: In our good old days, we often wore our flappers around social events. It was our way of saying "hello" to eager boys and "fuck you" to the elders of the bygone age. Very clever, heh? Anyway, that's how we found the best artists of the time (some of them would leave the U.S. later on). Some were painters, others were poets. We were the minstrels (or as most would call us, minstrelettes.). Singers, musicians. In fact, music was the factor that attracted Walt Disney.

Bellene: The ideals of the Roaring Twenties stemmed from the sheer rebellion of the old ideals which led the people into the first terrible war. It was their way of escaping the doldrums of being in the trenches back in Europe for so long (it's only been years, but warfare has evolved so much that just months in modern warfare may seem like years in traditional warfare). The elders might have gone berserk at that prospect.

Saginelli: Not everything we did was good (seeing this retrospectively). These times were good for us. We would perform our music in most of the major speakeasies (a place were people drank booze, and booze was illegal to possess. That restriction was soon lifted though). The danger in those places, besides being caught by the cops, was being caught doing an act the bosses didn't approved. The owners were in some gang or another. They had a lot of cash, and guns too. In New York, we would sometimes entertain Capone's Men (The Scarface himself was known to be really terrible). One of those restrictions was that we would not use "masculine" voices. While my voice is known to have been very sweet, I could sometime sound like a ravaging brute. The men there hated that voice, especially on a girl!

Ella: Snowy sounded better that way.

Bellene: I could sometimes impersonate a man's voice. Times were relatively conservative, even in the liberating times.

Abbuderi: The hottest sound at the time was a fast paced version of jazz. We often played some of that. But our sound might have passed as rhythm-n-blues if we have played it in the Fifties. Reguardless, the crowds would cheer loudly. So, I guess, the name Princesses was kinda ironic (at first, but we each had our lighter side that would later manifest itself).

Ella: We made relavively good money, certainly better than any of our friends, but only enough to live in the shadier side of New York.

Abbuderi: There was a theater (or more accurately, a cinematograph) were they played their films every weekend (they were not called 'movies' at the time). It's not like how it is today with large multiplexes. It was a small theater with one screen, and absolutely no sound (actually there was also a pianist providing sound, but it was not like later on with The Jazz Singer and even with that film, the sound was shit and didn't match with the film). It was our only break and peace we could have, a night seeing cartoon shorts, and a pletora of handsome guys and sexy gals in their silent films.

Ella: That guy, Chaplin, was very good to be a tramp.

Saginelli: I liked the cartoons better.

Bellene: And speaking of cartoons, most of them were poorly drawn, and badly concepted. There were some efforts to break out the stereotypes, but for the most part, it was commerce being put forth first. Such efforts included the Alice series, a young girl in the middle of cartoons, literally!

Saginelli: Even in the early years, Walt was a technical genius!

Ella: Walt Disney was a loser with the series. Didn't exacly make enough with it (it was not much, the cartoons were crappy) The live-action-cartoon hybrid series (Alice in Cartoonland!) didn't exactly clicked with me. I was not interested in how they put the little girl in the picture which in my opinion she didn't belong to. That's what initally turned me off from all things Disney (even the Oswald series, which was finallyhis all-cartoon show!).

Bellene: And speaking of the Alice cartoons (which there was a young actress playing Alice), it had somewhat little to do with the Alice in the works of Lewis Carroll.

Ella: He was a pedophile!

Abbuderi: I did not like cartoons of the days. They were always crassy (in my perspective, as (nearly) all animators of the time were men!). I just didn't like their brand of surrealism (it must have been that the cartoons were in black and white).

Saginelli: To leave the subject of Twenties animation, I give you now how we got around the good ol' USA. We bought a Model T from a couple of gentlemen eager to get their hands on their Chevys (too bad for Henry Ford). We then amaturely painted the outside. It made the car look very queer (I mean relatively strange) but at the same time our car literally stood out. Plus it was cheaper than buying a new car (not that it mattered, we could have bought the newer ones on credit. People all over were getting filthy rich quick, which had to end soon...with people going broke quick. More on that later)

Bellene: The president of the time, Calvin Coolidge, did relatively nothing worthwile. In fact I heard later that Calvin was good at keeping his mouth shut. At the time, an inactive president was good for the million gold-hunters and the thousand fat-cats. Elswhere in Europe, everyone was basically recoilling from the "War to End All Wars" (it didn't end all wars, in fact it began an even more terrible war). So we were somewhat disturbed that our elders chose to stay and (retrospectivally) suffer.

Saginelli: Good riddence! I knew that most of the royals were somewhat "dysfunctional".

Ella: Most people were buying in with the Bullshit Market, that is the stock exchange. The trouble was that most people couldn't afford a piece of the major American corporations outright. So they actually had the "balls" (not all buyers were men) to beg the banks for that money. The stock just tended to gain value quick, so the bankers bought in. Remember when I said "Bullshit Market", well it was for a reason. The twenties was therefore a decade of false confidence that came to a crashing end (though I think it should have ended in a better way, most of these corporations going broke!).

Saginelli: Most of the people rebelling had not even heard of the first world war. So, for them it was about having fun, like most of us were having...before the Mouse came along!

Coming soon: How did Walt Disney entered their lives, and where were the others?