It's Take A Walk on the Wild Side Day -

Pluck your eyebrows, go in the backroom and become everybody's darling -



This song provided Lou Reed his biggest hit, and it was his only Top 40 in the US. (The day is always sadder without Lou with us.)


April 12, 1936 -
Another romantic comedy from Frank Capra, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, starring Gary Cooper and Jean Arthur, went into general release in the US on this date.



Harry Cohn had a dictum in that he would only allow his directors to print only one of their takes, thereby saving the studio a great deal of money. Frank Capra found a loophole in getting round this. At the end of each take, instead of shouting "Cut" he would shout "Do it again", and the actors would launch immediately into an unbroken repetition of the scene.


April 12, 1936 -
The Ernst Lubitsch produced confection, Desire, starring Marlene Dietrich and Gary Cooper (teamed together again after Morocco) premiered on this date.



John Gilbert was initially cast as Carlos Margoli. Promised to be his comeback role after a string of flops, he filmed a few Technicolor costume tests with Marlene Dietrich (whom he was dating at the time). He had a heart attack in his dressing room only days before shooting started and was immediately replaced by John Halliday. A few days after his abrupt replacement, Gilbert died of alcohol-induced heart failure.


April 12, 1944 -
Another Noel Coward wartime drama, directed by David Lean (his first color film), This Happy Breed, starring, Robert Newton, Celia Johnson, Stanley Holloway, and John Mills, premiered in the US on this date.



The voice of the uncredited opening narrator is that of Laurence Olivier.


April 12, 1974 –
Elton John song Bennie and the Jets (Penny on the desk) hit No. #1 in the US on this date.



Elton wrote the music to this song as an homage to glam rock, a style defined by outrageous costumes that was popular in the early '70s, especially in the UK. Artists like David Bowie and Gary Glitter got into the act, but for Elton, it was an extension of his personality - he really was gay and liked to wear feminine clothes on stage. He became known for his wild appearance and collection of gaudy sunglasses.

One year later, April 12, 1975 –
Elton John hit No. #1 again with hit song, Philadelphia Freedom, on this date.



Bernie Taupin wrote the lyrics to most of Elton John's songs, but Elton would occasionally suggest titles. Elton requested a song with the title Philadelphia Freedom in honor of his friend, the tennis player Billie Jean King. At the time, there was a professional tennis league in America called World Team Tennis, and in 1974 King coached a team called the Philadelphia Freedoms, becoming one of the first women ever to coach men. Taupin had no obligation to write lyrics about King, and he didn't - the song was inspired by the Philadelphia Soul sound of groups like The O'Jays and Melvin & The Blue Notes, and also the American bicentennial; in 1976 the US celebrated 200 years of independence.


April 12, 1996 -
Henry Selick take on the Roald Dahl's James and the Giant Peach starring Paul Terry, Joanna Lumley, Miriam Margolyes, Simon Callow, Richard Dreyfuss, Susan Sarandon, Jane Leeves, and David Thewlis, premiered in the US on this date.



The puppet used for the captain in the icy water, or the head at least, is the same head that was used for Jack in The Nightmare Before Christmas.


Word of the Day


Today in History:
April 12, 65 -
Seneca the Younger (not to be confused with his father Seneca the Elder or his grandfather Seneca the Dead), Roman philosopher and humorist was accused of being involved in the Pisonian conspiracy, a plot to kill Nero (old school Evil Bastard). Nero escaped the assassination attempt and Seneca went home to commit ritual suicide. Committing ritualistic suicide at work had become unfashionably and very messy. His wife, Pompeia Paulina, intended to commit suicide after but was forbidden to do so by Nero. She attempted suicide by cutting her wrists, but the wounds were bound up, and she did not make a second attempt. Unfortunately for Seneca, who also chose to cut his wrists, his diet caused the blood to flow slowly, thus causing pain instead of a quick death.

He took poison given to him by a friend, but it didn't work. He dictated to a scribe, and then jumped into a hot pool. He did not try to drown, but instead, it appears, tried to make the blood flow faster. Seneca finally died from suffocation from the steam rising from the pool.

This was not the easy way out.


April 12, 1857 -
Like the veil held to her hat by a ribbon, her will flutters in every breeze; she is always drawn by some desire, restrained by some rule of conduct.

... She had bought herself a blotter, a writing case, a pen and some envelopes, although she had no one to write to; she would dust off her whatnot, look at herself in the mirror, pick up a book, then begin to daydream between the lines and let it fall to her lap. She longed to travel, or to go back and live in the convent. She wanted both to die and to live in Paris.



Gustave Flaubert's first novel, Madame Bovary was published in book form, on this date.


April 12, 1861 -
The first shots of the American Civil War (aka the War of Northern Aggression) rang out at an attack on Fort Sumter, South Carolina, on this date. Abner Doubleday (of baseball fame or not) aimed the cannon that fired the first return shot in answer to the Confederate bombardment. No one died in the actual battle, but one Union soldier died and another was mortally wounded when firing a cannon showing their surrender.



Accounts, such as in the famous diary of Mary Chesnut, describe Charleston residents along what is now known as The Battery, sitting on balconies and drinking salutes to the start of the hostilities. Four years, two days and 618,000 dead later, Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by southerner John Wilkes Booth while watching Our American Cousin at the Ford Theatre. He died the following day.

Moral: avoid attending the theatre.


April 12, 1867 -
In the history of bizarre accidents, William Bullock’s story is always cited as an example. Bullock was an American inventor whose 1863 invention of the rotary printing press helped revolutionize the printing industry due to its efficiency and ability to print 10,000 units per hour.

In April 1867, while he was trying to install a new printer in one of his presses, in a frustrated attempt to make adjustments to the machine, he kicked a driving belt onto a pulley.

What followed next tops scenes from even the most gruesome movies like Hostel or Saw. His foot got caught in the merciless contraption, was crushed beyond repair and developed a severe gangrene infection within four days. Bullock died during an operation to amputate his foot.

Bizarre Indeed.


April 12, 1934 -
... Already he felt her absence from these skies: on the beach he could only remember the sun-torn flesh of her shoulder; at Tarmes he crushed out her footprints as he crossed the garden; and now the orchestra launching into the Nice Carnival Song, an echo of last year's vanished gaieties, started the little dance that went on all about her. In a hundred hours she had come to possess all the world's dark magic; the blinding belladonna, the caffein converting physical into nervous energy, the mandragora that imposes harmony....

Charles Scribner and Sons published 's the fourth and final completed novel of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender Is the Night, on this date. The book was completed in the fall of 1933 and serialized in four installments in Scribner's Magazine before its publication.



Over the next several years, Fitzgerald would struggle to finish what would be his fifth and last novel (The Last Tycoon.) He died from a massive heart attack six years later in 1940, almost completely forgotten and he considered himself a failure. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked Tender Is the Night 28th on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th Century.

But what the hell do you care, you don't read anyway.


April 12, 1945 -
Franklin D. Roosevelt, the only president ever elected to four terms of office, died of a cerebral hemorrhage in Warm Springs, GA, on this date, after meeting with his long time mistress and his wife's social secretary, Lucy Page Mercer Rutherfurd. (That really pissed Eleanor off.)



The following day, Vice President Harry S. Truman assumes the post and is told for the first time about the Manhattan Project.

Roosevelt really liked to keep secrets.


April 12, 1947 -
It's David Letterman's birthday.



In 1995, 25 years ago, Drew Barrymore celebrated his birthday by climbing atop the Late Night desk and flashes her bosomy protuberances at the man.



(Dave, just please shave the beard.)


April 12, 1954 -
The very fat and sweaty Bill Haley and His Comets recorded Rock Around the Clock in New York City on this date.



Initially it was not a big hit on American Bandstand, but the recording would go on to help launch the rock and roll revolution a year later.


April 12, 1961 -
Yuri Gagarin became the first human to travel into space in Vostok 3KA-2 (Vostok 1), on this date. During his flight, Gagarin famously whistled the tune The Motherland Hears, The Motherland Knows The first two lines of the song are: "The Motherland hears, the Motherland knows/Where her son flies in the sky". This patriotic song was written by Dmitri Shostakovich in 1951 (opus 86), with words by Yevgeniy Dolmatovsky. It was obviously not a big hit on American Bandstand at the time - although it did have a good beat, you could hardly dance to it.



There were speculations in the media that from orbit Gagarin made the comment, "I don't see any God up here." There are, however, no such words in the full verbatim record of Gagarin's conversations with the Earth during the spaceflight. In a 2006 interview a close friend of Gagarin, colonel Valentin Petrov, stated that Gagarin never said such words, and that the phrase he uttered was, "I don't see any Goddamn toilet up here and I have to go."


April 12, 1966 -
While on his way to a business meeting, Jan Berry, one half of the rock and roll duo Jan and Dean, crashed his Corvette into a parked truck on Whittier Drive, near the intersection of Sunset Boulevard, in Beverly Hills, receiving severe head injuries and falling into a month long coma.



Strangely, the automobile accident was just a short distance from Dead Man's Curve in Los Angeles, California, two years after the song had become a hit.


April 12, 1975 -
I have walked into the palaces of kings and queens and into the houses of presidents. And much more. But I could not walk into a hotel in America and get a cup of coffee, and that made me mad.



U.S. born, Josephine Baker, French revue artist, spy, Croix de guerre recipient and Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur, died in Paris, France on this date.


April 12, 1981 -
The first space shuttle, The Columbia was launched on this date. The Columbia was the first reusable manned spacecraft.



It was a major step forward for NASA and was eventually used to help build the International Space Station.


April 12, 1988 -
U.S. patent 4,736,866 was granted to Harvard University for a genetically-modified mouse on this date, engineered to be particularly susceptible to carcinogens.

The cancer-prone Harvard Oncomouse is the world's first patented creature, and perhaps also the most screwed.


April 12, 1989 -
1960s counterculture icon Abbie Hoffman swallowed 150 Phenobarbital barbiturate pills on this date.

What an overachiever - 100 pills would have been quite sufficient.


April 12, 1992 -
EuroDisney opens to the public, attracting a meager 50,000 visitors. Expectations had been about ten times as many. This underwhelming response by the European public will continue for more than a year.



Finally, after 18 months of retooling, the resort is ultimately rechristened Disneyland Paris.



And so it goes.