The Real Life Queen Who Worked at Macy's

In the 2001 film The Princess Diaries, high schooler Mia Thermopolis worked part-time at Rocks Around The Clock, a rock-climbing gym before learning she was a princess and future queen of Genovia. But in real life, there was once a princess who had a relatively similar tale. On September 18, 1923, Princess Anne Antoinette Francois Charlotte of Bourbon-Parma was born in Paris, France. Like most European royalty she was relatively closely related to many reining or former monarchs, but more directly she was the second child of Prince Rene of Bourbon-Parma and princess Margrethe of Demark. She spent her early years with her parents and three brothers in France, but with tensions rapidly escalating between France and Germany and war imminent, the then 16 year old princess and her family headed for Spain in 1939 and, not long after, left Europe altogether, bound for America. The family settled in New York where Anne attended school until she was 18 and then went on to attend Parson’s School of Design where she managed to complete the three years of course work in just two years. At the same time, in order to pay for her schooling, she took a job as a sales assistant at the Herald Square Macy’s department story in New York (which, by the way, is still there), as well as later working at Bloomingdale’s and at her mother’s hat shop on the side... Host: Simon Whistler Editor: Daven Hiskey Producer: Samuel Avila