#Paget and Ernestine

[beanieelizabethbeans]

We are nothing but a game to the Goddesses we are meant to love.

They watch us with their milky eyes and plaster grins, drinking their cocktails mixed of salty tears and bitter blood. In our dreams we see them, sword in hand, sword in heart. They hold our souls on puppet strings, toying with us until we drop dead. They've built their thrones atop our burial grounds, their palaces on our battle fields. Their marble fortresses are stained with our blood. They never have to worry about it fading, every hundred years there's a fresh coat.

One thousand years ago and another four hundred, the first Rite was performed. It was only Apollonia and Amalthea then, sisters of sun and moon.

Princess Elizabeth was the first to play and the first to win. Her goddess became Zorina, of Life.

The Second Princess was the first to lose. There is a story we’ve heard that says her goddess still walks the earth today, solemn, lost, looking for something she never had: freedom.

When Princess Creiddylad won two hundred years after Princess Elizabeth, her goddess was granted power over death, Morgana was her name, all because Creiddylad stained the world red with her Rite. She would do anything, anything to win. And she did. Of course she did. We all are supposed to win.

The Second Princess was the outlier. The Second, The Sixth, The Ninth, and The Tenth.

And now Paget. The Fifteenth.

They are the failures. The numbered mistakes. The ones that were never supposed to happen. They’re the ones whose names you don’t learn in school, whose portraits you will never see in the halls of your church or hear the choir sing songs about them. No one will give their children their names, after their triumphs and successes. No one will pray to the goddesses who stood by their sides as they lived and as they died.

No, the only people who know their names are the princess and her goddess themself. Only us.

Because to us, they’re the warnings. This is what will happen if you lose, the priestesses say. They’re examples of everything that we could become.

Everything that we did become.

It was never supposed to happen like this.

When Amalthea and Apollonia initiated the first Rite, no one was ever supposed to die. But somehow, The Second Princess did.

And then there were more than two options.

It was no longer just win or lose, the Rite became live or die. But to us, they mean the same thing.

And that's why we’re here.

We are the failures, the mistakes. We are the ones whose songs you will never hear and whose names you will never remember.

But we will make sure that you remember theirs.

Because they were more than the just Princess and her Goddess. They were children. They were creators. They were the outliers who saw their world as more than just something they had to fight to stay in. For them, it was beautiful. Wonderful, even. They were lovers, content in each other's arms. They sang and they danced and they drew and they smiled. They laughed like honey.

We never laughed.

But in the end, after the Rite was over and all that was left was blood and tears and screams, when their laughter were just echoes and their smiles just shadows, she still had memories of being happy with her.

That’s more than what any of us could ever say.

And for that, she is not one of us.

[project1939]

Day 28- Film: Belles on Their Toes 

Release date: May 2nd, 1952.

Studio: 20th Century Fox 

Genre: Comedy 

Director: Henry Levin 

Producer: Samuel G. Engel 

Actors: Myrna Loy, Jeanne Crain, Debra Paget, Jeffrey Hunter, Edward Arnold 

Plot Summary: This is sequel to 1950’s Cheaper by the Dozen, about an eccentric family in the 1920s with 12 children. Now that the family patriarch has died, Mrs. Gilbreth must support the entire family herself, but not many people will consider hiring a woman with a PhD in engineering. 

My Rating (out of five stars): *** 

I was really looking forward to seeing this today. Not because I’ve seen the film this is a sequel to, because I haven’t, but because I love Myrna Loy so much. (She was one half of the coolest married couple in Hollywood film history, as Nora Charles in The Thin Man movies. And that’s just one thing!) 

Sadly, this movie didn’t really thrill me that much. It was basically just a bit of family fluff. I’m sure if I had seen the first film, I would have found it more enjoyable. I didn’t dislike it, but I just don’t think it stands up very well on its own. 

The Good: 

Myrna Loy’s character. As the mom of the family, trying to support 12 kids on her own, she was not a “typical” Hollywood mom. Lillian Gilbreth was a talented engineer with a PhD! That would be remarkable in 1952, but the real character was living in the 1920s! She had to put up with serious sexism in the movie, but I’m sure it was way worse in real life. 

The cute random little bits of singing throughout the movie. It’s really not a musical, but there were several times where something akin to an informal musical number happened. 

There was definitely a sweetness to it, but it never really went off the deep end into sticky sentimentality. 

Doctor Bob Grayson, the romance for Jeanne Crain. He wasn’t the greatest actor in the world, but he was exquisite blue-eyed eye candy! 

The Bad: 

The plot was barely a plot. It was more like a series of vignettes with the throughline of- “Will the family find a way to stay together given their financial woes?” 

With 12 children, none of them were really developed much as characters. I only learned the names Frank, Anne, Janey, and Ernestine. The other eight? No idea. 

Please let me say it again- I adore Myrna Loy, but it kind of felt like she just phoned this one in. The usual sparkle I find in her wasn’t often there. Granted, the script didn’t give her a ton to work with. 

Why did they do such an awful job with Myrna Loy’s makeup? I like that they didn’t glam her up into Mildred Pierce, but would it have been so hard to give her some color? The utter lack of makeup was not only unflattering, but it was distracting because her face was just a monolithic beige.