The Death of Thomas Ince

It is telling that the best-produced things ever made in Hollywood are its scandals; then again, scandals cannot be slashed by the censor's blue pencil, trashed by meddlesome studio executives, or even have their storylines obfuscated by the work of many hands (from writers to directors to actors) without making them better. Unlike films.

The 'death/murder' of Thomas Ince is not just one of the more delicious examples of Hollywood scandal, but it was also one of the first, and the more myth accrues to it the better it gets. No writer - and certainly no director or actor - could (or would dare to) make up such a thing...

Our story opens in 1924, aboard a yacht, called the Oneida; the yacht is owned by a fabulously wealthy newspaper publisher of some renown named William Randolph Hearst. It's sailing the California coast on this particular weekend is in honour of the 42nd birthday of Thomas Ince, a well-known director of silent films; also onboard are Hearst's lover Marion Davies, actor Charlie Chaplin, newspaper columnist Louella Parsons, author Elinor Glyn and film actresses Aileen Pringle, Jacqueline Logan, Seena Owen, Margaret Livingston and Julanne Johnston. All is going splendidly until...

Hearst sees Ince canoodling with Davies. Shots ring out, Ince slumps to the floor, and Hearst's publicity machine goes into instant overdrive in order to smother the scandal at its source. Chaplin's silence can be bought; there's already more dirt on him than a coffin lid. Parsons received a lifetime contract with Hearst News ensuring she can scribble her drivel for an obscene paycheque for the rest of her life, becoming the most powerful woman in Hollywood in the process. Marion Davies only needs another cocktail, another line of blow, and another wheel barrow full of jewellery to shut her up.

Still, though, the rumours began to spread, and no one seems to know why; it's not like actresses gossip or anything... No, as a plot element that would be too far-fetched.

15 years later, when Orson Welles was planning his masterpiece Citizen Kane, he began asking around about Hearst, and claims that's when Herman J. Mankiewicz told him the story. Thirty years after that and the story resurfaced in Kenneth Anger's hilariously slanderous Hollywood Babylon, and thirty years later again the events of that fateful weekend served as the basis for both a 1996 book entitled Murder at San Simeon by Hearst's granddaughter - a scandal-maker in her own right named Patty Hearst - and finally a movie by Peter Bogdanovich (Welles' favourite ass-kisser) called The Cat's Meow (2001) in which Ince was played by none other than Cary Elwes.

True or not, the story is so much more entertaining than the fact that Ince went into the weekend with severe indigestion, and may have just had a heart attack and died; that is just the sort of banal drivel one has come to expect from Hollywood - only with more explosions, maybe a car chase and, oh yes, plenty of CGI!
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"Mata Hari" by Ofra Haza

Born on this day in 1957, Ofra Haza was Israel's first internationally acclaimed pop music superstar; of Yemenite Jewish ancestry, from the poor Tel Aviv neighborhood of Hatikvah Haza rose, and had already released four popular albums* when, in 1983, she was entered into the Eurovision Song Contest. Although she came second, behind the Luxembourg entry - Corinne Hermes, who sang Si la vie est cadeau - her showing vaulted Haza to fame throughout Europe.

This track - Mata Hari, from Haza's unreleased 1995 album Queen in Exile - was chosen to represent the singer's exceptional skills for obvious reasons; not only is it well sung, but regular readers of this blog will already know of my abiding interest in its subject, making it an all around ideal fit for the Pop Culture Institute.

Ofra Haza's life was made all the more poignant by two events: first, in February 1987**, Haza walked away from a plane crash*** on the Israeli-Jordanian border, a day she always celebrated thereafter as her second birthday; second, in February 2000 Haza died under mysterious circumstances. Conflicting reports say that either she died of AIDS - with which she was infected by her husband Doron Ashkenazi, who died of a crack overdose in April 2001 - or that she died following a massive beating, a rumour that had such validity it was later investigated by Israeli police.

Whatever the cause of her death her family has not been forthcoming with the details, out of respect for her memory...

*1980's Al Ahavot Shelanu (Our Love), 1981's Bo Nedaber (Let's Talk), plus 1982's Pituyim (Temptations) and Li-yeladim (Children's Songs).
**Coincidentally, the 28th anniversary of the so-called The Day the Music Died in which Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J.P. 'The Big Bopper' Richardson died.
***The first of two... The plane in which she was traveling - Flight 316 from London to Israel - was struck by lightning in April 1994 and was forced to make an emergency landing.
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Pop History Moment: Abraham Lincoln Delivered The Gettysburg Address

US President Abraham Lincoln's stirring words (delivered on this day in 1863) serve to remind us of the high-minded ideals upon which the nation he led was founded, ideals which he - along with thousands of his countrymen - fought and died for; yet the Gettysburg Address also echoes with a kind of hollowness, given how much work remains undone... Delivered upon the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, they are brief but moving:

Four score and seven years ago*, our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation: conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war. . . testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated. . . can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war.

We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that this nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate. . . we cannot consecrate. . . we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.

It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us. . . that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion. . . that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain. . . that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. . . and that government of the people. . . by the people. . . for the people. . . shall not perish from this earth.

*On this day in 2007, when I first posted this piece, I'd intended its original title - Seven Score And Four Years Ago - to be a humourous spin on the opening line of the Gettysburg Address, 'Four score and seven years ago...' Then I counted. Sure enough, this day in 2007 was seven score and four years to the day that President Abraham Lincoln first made his most famous oration. Spooky...
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POPnews - November 19th

[Even for mid-century ad copy - which could blow smoke with the best of them, even when not shilling for Big Tobacco - any and all of the enthusiasm for the Ford Edsel is here entirely a product of the copywriter's fevered imagination; then again, having devoured the First Season of Mad Men in its entirety I can almost understand what pressures drove them to lie their faces off like this.]
1095 - The Council of Clermont, called by Pope Urban II to discuss sending the First Crusade to the Holy Land, opened.

1493 - Christopher Columbus became the first European to arrive at an island he named San Juan Bautista (later renamed Puerto Rico), which he'd sighted the day before.

1816 - Warsaw University was established.

1850 - Upon the refusal of the position by Samuel Russell Alfred Lord Tennyson replaced William Wordsworth as England's poet laureate, apparently; it was a position he would hold until his death in October 1892.

1863 - US President Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address at the dedication ceremony of a military cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

1941 - Following a battle between HMAS Sydney and HSK Kormoran, the two ships sank each other off the coast of Western Australia, with the loss of 645 Australians and about 77 German seamen.

1942 - Soviet forces under General Georgy Zhukov launched a series of counterattacks dubbed Operation Uranus during the Battle of Stalingrad, turning the tide of the battle in the USSR's favor.

1943 - The Nazis liquidated Janowska concentration camp in Lemberg (Lviv), western Ukraine, murdering at least 6,000 Jews after a failed uprising and mass escape attempt.

1954 - Sammy Davis, Jr., lost his left eye in an automobile accident in San Bernardino, California; in exchange for his recovery he converted to Judaism.

1955 - National Review began spewing its filth and lies, ably assisted by William F. Buckley, Jr., an old filth and lies spewer from way back.

1959 - The Ford Motor Company announced it was discontinuing its unpopular Edsel.

1961 - Michael Rockefeller, son of New York governor Nelson Rockefeller, disappeared in the jungles of Papua New Guinea.

1967 - TVB, Hong Kong's first wireless commercial television station, was established.

1969 - Soccer player Pelé scored his 1,000th career goal; unable to watch this singular event were Apollo 12 astronauts Pete Conrad and Alan Bean, who on the same day landed at Oceanus Procellarum (aka the 'Ocean of Storms') making them the third and fourth humans to walk on the Moon.

1976 - Jaime Ornelas Camacho took office as the first President of the Regional Government of Madeira in Portugal.

1977 - Egyptian President Anwar Sadat became the first Arab leader to officially visit Israel, when he met President Ephraim Katzir and Prime Minister Menachem Begin before addressing the Knesset in Jerusalem, seeking a permanent peace settlement.

1990 - Pop group Milli Vanilli were stripped of their Grammy Award because the duo did not sing at all on their album Girl You Know It’s True, the vocals having been supplied in their entirety by session musicians.

1994 - The first drawing of the UK's National Lottery was held; initially hosted by Noel Edmonds, he soon handed over hosting duties to Anthea Turner and Gordon Kennedy.

1997 - Bobbi McCaughey gave birth to septuplets in only the second known case where all seven babies were born alive; they would go on to become the first set of septuplets to survive infancy, with all seven still alive and living in Des Moines, Iowa, as of 2010.
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"The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" by Mark Twain

[Mark Twain's story The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County was first published in 1865 - in an issue of the New York Saturday Press bearing today's date - as Jim Smiley and his Jumping Frog; it had been written at the behest of Twain's friend Artemus Ward, and would establish Twain as the era's foremost humourist.]

In compliance with the request of a friend of mine, who wrote me from the East, I called on good-natured, garrulous old Simon Wheeler, and inquired after my friend's friend, Leonidas W. Smiley, as requested to do, and I hereunto append the result. I have a lurking suspicion that Leonidas W. Smiley is a myth; that my friend never knew such a personage; and that he only conjectured that, if I asked old Wheeler about him, it would remind him of his infamous Jim Smiley, and he would go to work and bore me nearly to death with some infernal reminiscence of him as long and tedious as it should be useless to me. If that was the design, it certainly succeeded.

I found Simon Wheeler dozing comfortably by the bar-room stove of the old, dilapidated tavern in the ancient mining camp of Angel's, and I noticed that he was fat and bald-headed, and had an expression of winning gentleness and simplicity upon his tranquil countenance. He roused up and gave me good-day. I told him a friend of mine had commissioned me to make some inquiries about a cherished companion of his boyhood named Leonidas W. Smiley—Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley, a young minister of the Gospel, who he had heard was at one time a resident of Angel's Camp. I added that, if Mr. Wheeler could tell me any thing about this Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley, I would feel under many obligations to him.

Simon Wheeler backed me into a corner and blockaded me there with his chair, and then sat me down and reeled off the monotonous narrative which follows this paragraph. He never smiled, he never frowned, he never changed his voice from the gentle-flowing key to which he tuned the initial sentence, he never betrayed the slightest suspicion of enthusiasm; but all through the interminable narrative there ran a vein of impressive earnestness and sincerity, which showed me plainly that, so far from his imagining that there was any thing ridiculous or funny about his story, he regarded it as a really important matter, and admired its two heroes as men of transcendent genius in finesse. To me, the spectacle of a man drifting serenely along through such a queer yarn without ever smiling, was exquisitely absurd. As I said before, I asked him to tell me what he knew of Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley, and he replied as follows. I let him go on in his own way, and never interrupted him once:

[CONTINUE READING]

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"Steamboat Willie" starring Mickey Mouse

On this day in 1928 the Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks cartoon Steamboat Willie was released; the film itself is a parody of the Buster Keaton film Steamboat Bill Jr.. Notable as the first cartoon to sync pictures and sound, it was also the first of Disney's offerings to feature Mickey Mouse - here pitted against longtime Disney villain Peg-Leg Pete... Opening at New York City's 79th Street Theatre, it played ahead of the independent film Gang War, which is all but forgotten today, except as a footnote in the story of Steamboat Willie.

Since 1998 Steamboat Willie has been on the National Film Registry, putting it under the protection of the Library of Congress.
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The Death of Gia Carangi

With all due respect to Suzy Parker, Lauren Hutton, and even Janice Dickinson, the world's first supermodel was a wild child from Philadelphia with a European look and a dangerous side that would prove as prophetic as it was sexy...

Born in January 1960, Gia Carangi's childhood was marred by her parents' constant squabbling, which drove her to seek solace on the mean streets - and by the early Seventies few streets were meaner than those of North Philly; at the age of 17 she took off for Manhattan, and having worked for such noted fashion photographers as Francesco Scavullo, Arthur Elgort, Richard Avedon, and Chris von Wangenheim in short order she soon found herself the most sought-after fashion model in the world.

Regular readers of the Pop Culture Institute will be all too aware of the corrosive effects of fame on the young, effects which derailed not just the career but eventually as well the life of Gia Carangi...

A regular at famed nightspots Studio 54 and the Mudd Club, Carangi soon tried cocaine and eventually heroin, which would prove her downfall; the double shock of two deaths, one year apart - first of Gia's mentor Wilhelmina Cooper in March 1980 then that of Chris von Wangenheim in March 1981 - hastened Carangi's headlong slide when she chose to take solace in her addiction. Posing for her last Cosmopolitan cover in the winter of 1982, she was caught with drugs on a shoot in Africa in 1983 and her career was over.

The last five years of her life were spent in and out of various rehab and detox environments, punctuated by short-lived relationships with both women and men; Gia Carangi died on this day in 1986, one of the first prominent female figures to die of AIDS. The entire sad story - in which most of her highs were themselves lows - is told in Stephen Fried's book Thing of Beauty; the book was loosely adapted for television, and made into the 1998 TV-movie Gia, starring a then-obscure Angelina Jolie, who won a Golden Globe for her work.
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Pop History Moment: "Calvin and Hobbes" Debuts

On this day in 1985 Universal Press Syndicate debuted the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes, by Bill Watterson. In the same way Calvin baited his tiger trap with tuna and caught himself Hobbes, so did Watterson bait his strip with razor-sharp insight into the human psyche and catch himself a cult following; during its decade-long run each and every tantrum, flight of fancy, and philosophical discourse left the strip's regular readers enraptured. I know I for one hoped it would go on forever...

More than a decade after Watterson called it quits (on the last day of 1995) the entire strip was published in a hard cover collectors' edition, which has yet to find its way into the collection of the Pop Culture Institute*...

*This is a hint, for any of you potential benefactors out there... After all, 'Tis the Season and all that.
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"Reefer Man" by Cab Calloway

In a way it's no shock to learn that famed bandleader Cab Calloway (who died on this day in 1994) was born on Christmas Day, in 1907; not only was he prodigiously gifted, but he was incredibly generous with those gifts all his life. During the darkest years of the Great Depression, Calloway's high-energy song-and-dance-filled recordings and radio broadcasts, film and nightclub appearances livened up many a dark night, and even when he occasionally indulged in a bit of tear-mongering - such as with St. James Infirmary Blues - audiences could be guaranteed that it would be far more entertaining than mere self-pity.

Whether teamed up with Betty Boop - who sashayed her way through his classic Minnie the Moocher in a way he could only dream of - with his band or on his own, seen here taking the time out to campaign on behalf of relaxed marijuana laws with the song Reefer Man.
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Happy Birthday Margaret Atwood

She traced the outlines of her life well enough in Cat's Eye (1988) so that even the most casual observer could recognize her from the shape she'd made there; still, never be fooled by any writer who uses their own facts to fill out their fiction. Often, rather than verisimilitude, it's a very personal form of subterfuge they have in mind...

Born on this day in 1939, Atwood's childhood was peripatetic; she never attended a full year of school until the 8th Grade, when her father gave up his job as a field biologist for a professorship at the University of Toronto (if Cat's Eye is to be believed, anyway). An early reader - both voracious in scope and catholic in taste - Atwood began writing at the age of 16 (what we call around here 'a late bloomer'); she soon made up for her patchy education and laggard start by obtaining her university degree and self-publishing her first book of poems, Double Persephone, both in 1961.

By 1964 she'd won her first Governor-General's Award, for The Circle Game, and just like that she was off; her first novel, 1969's The Edible Woman is notable not just for its distinctly Canadian setting, but for its humour, a quality for which she has not been overpraised but which is nevertheless there, in amongst the eloquence of her phrasing and vivid characterization.

Ever since the outset of the 1970s, then, she has been a prolific writer of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, essays, and investigations into the Canadian identity; simply by outliving her idols she stands as the undisputed Queen of Canadian Literature. Approaching seventy, Atwood shows no signs of relenting, for which I am grateful (despite the groaning of my bookshelves). There are very few writers whose works I snap up the instant they're published, but she is at the top of that short list, a sensation with which the much-lauded author is well familiar I am sure.

In 2008, Atwood hit the zeitgeist jackpot by publishing Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth just as the world's rich decided to make it that little bit harder for the other 95% of us... It's a slim volume - derived from her Massey Lectures - but fairly bulges with the wit, insight, and commonsense we who revere her have come to expect.
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POPnews - November 18th

[By 1450, when this image was made, the Renaissance St. Peter's Basilica which had grown up around the tomb of Saint Peter had itself grown too old-fashioned for the silk- and velvet-dressed, perfumed and bejewelled he-men who lived and worked there; originally intending to preserve the old building, Pope Julius II eventually tore one architectural masterpiece down with an unshakable faith that someday an even greater one would arise...]
326 CE - The Old St. Peter's Basilica was consecrated, during the papal reign of St. Sylvester I.

1302 - When Pope Boniface VIII issued the Papal bull Unam sanctam - 'The One Holy' - it wasn't the first bull issued by a Pope (and Lord knows it wouldn't be the last) but it was one of the strongest statements to date about Papal infallibility, and is probably responsible for that holier-than-Thou attitude of theirs the rest of us must contend with to this day.

1307 - According to legend, William Tell shot an apple off his son's head.

1477 - When William Caxton produced Dictes, or Sayengis of the Philosophres (written by the King's brother-in-law Earl Rivers, whose sister Elizabeth married Edward IV), it would be the first book printed on a printing press in England.

1626 - The extensively remodeled St. Peter's Basilica was re-consecrated by Pope Urban VIII.

1803 - At Battle of Vertières, the last major battle of the Haitian Revolution, Jean-Jacques Dessalines defeated French troops under Vicomte de Rochambeau - leading to the establishment of the first black republic in the Western Hemisphere, the Republic of Haiti, where the day is still celebrated.

1863 - Denmark's King Christian IX signed that country's November Constitution, which (in part) declared Schleswig to be part of Denmark; this was seen by the German Confederation as a violation of the London Protocol and would eventually lead to the German-Danish War of 1864.

1865 - Mark Twain's story The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County was first published, in the New York Saturday Press.

1905 - Denmark's Prince Carl became King Haakon VII of Norway following the 1905 dissolution of the union between the two countries.

1916 - The First Battle of the Somme ended when British Expeditionary Force commander Douglas Haig called off the battle - which had started on July 1st.

1928 - The animated short Steamboat Willie, the first fully-synchronized sound cartoon, was released; directed by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks, it featured the second appearances of cartoon stars Mickey and Minnie Mouse. This date is also considered by the Disney Corporation to be Mickey's birthday.

1929 - The Grand Banks earthquake - a submarine seismic event recorded at 7.2 on the Richter scale and centred on the Grand Banks in the Atlantic Ocean off the south coast of Newfoundland - broke 12 underwater transatlantic telegraph cables and triggered a tsunami that destroyed many south coast communities in the Burin Peninsula area.

1947 - A fire at Ballantyne's Department Store fire in Christchurch killed 41, making it the worst such catastrophe in New Zealand history.

1978 - At the Jonestown incident in Guyana, Jim Jones led his Peoples Temple cult in a mass murder-suicide that claimed 918 lives in all, 909 of them at Jonestown itself, including over 270 children; the event had been precipitated by the fact-finding mission of Congressman Leo Ryan (D.-Calif.) and his subsequent murder (along with four journalists) at the hands of Jonestown thugs, also on this day.

1985 - Bill Watterson's legendary comic strip Calvin and Hobbes debuted.

1987 - During a fire in London, 31 people died at the city's busiest Tube station, King's Cross St Pancras.

1991 - Following the 87-day siege of Vukovar, that Croatian city capitulated to the besieging Yugoslav People's Army and allied Serb paramilitary forces.

2000 - Welsh beauty Catherine Zeta-Jones married Hollywood royalty Michael Douglas at New York City's famed Plaza Hotel.

2003 - The UK's Local Government Act 2003 received Royal Assent, repealing the Thatcher government's controversial anti-gay amendment Section 28 in England and Wales; Scotland had already repealed it in June 2000 with the passage of its Ethical Standards in Public Life etc. (Scotland) Act 2000. First passed in May 1988 and championed by, among many others, Michael Howard, Section 28 remains one of the most loathsome pieces of legislation ever produced by the Mother of All Parliaments.
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Bonus Video: "Sundown" by Gordon Lightfoot

In 2007, when I first blogged about the life and career of Gordon Lightfoot, there was nary a clip to be found on YouTube that showed him to any advantage... What a difference a year or two makes, eh!

Now the Net seems to be overflowing with goodies such as this one: a live performance of Sundown from 1974, the year of its release. The title track from Lightfoot's 10th album went Number One in the US, and remains a staple of the so-called AM Gold radio format, famed for its sunny Seventies sound.
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Pop History Moment: The Death of Catherine the Great

Many myths surround the life and death of Catherine II of Russia - whom we know best as Catherine the Great; born of misogyny and the willingness of the public to believe any old falsehood no matter how logic-defying it might be, simply because it's about a powerful person, these half-truths, falsehoods, and outright damn lies form most of the core of the public knowledge about the enlightened despot who brought the Renaissance to Russia.

Born in May 1729, the daughter of a Prussian general and Prince, her birth name was Sophie; it changed after her engagement to the Tsar of Russia's heir, the future Peter III, when she converted to the Russian church.

Her new husband was among the weakest Tsars ever, unable to even consummate their marriage for a dozen years; in lieu of a functioning husband, in the style of her day and class she took a series of lovers including Sergei Saltykov, Charles Hanbury Williams, and Stanislaw Poniatowski.

Becoming Tsarina in January 1762, she didn't have to wait long for her husband to make the necessary misstep; in July of that year the Leib Guard revolted, deposed her husband, and proclaimed her Empress in her own right. 3 days later her husband was dead, and in short order the only other credible claimants to the throne (Ivan VI and Princess Tarakanova) had perished as well. Whether or not she had any foreknowledge of any of these killings is a matter for speculation. What is known, though, is that over the next 34 years of political turmoil, scientific and philosophical progress, and a general flowering of the arts, Catherine the Great earned her honorific, even though in later years she tended towards intolerance, especially toward serfs.

She died on this day in 1796, following a stroke she'd had in the bath, and not as a result of being crushed beneath a horse with which she was having sex, which was a French myth oft-repeated about any number of powerful women who'd both preceded and followed her.

Catherine the Great was renowned in her lifetime for her support of the arts, and the arts, in return, have been very good to her; she's been portrayed on the silver screen by such legendary beauties as Elisabeth Bergner, Marlene Dietrich, Julia Ormond, and Catherine Zeta-Jones.
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Gordon Lightfoot: Canadian Troubadour

Born on this day in 1938 in Orillia, Ontario, he began his musical career singing in the church choir; he was also in his high school's barbershop quartet. An accomplished athlete as well as a musician, Gordon Lightfoot set out to see the world when he moved to California in 1958, and did he ever; stints in Europe and the UK, Australia, and New York City spread evidence of his talent wherever he went...

Though a radio and concert favourite in Canada throughout the 1960s, it wasn't until 1970 that he broke through into the ranks of superstar; the song that did it was If You Could Read My Mind, and it made the already popular folkie one of that decade's signature performers.

He followed it with a string of successful albums, each studded with hit songs: Summer Side of Life (1971), Don Quixote (1972), Old Dan's Records (1972), Sundown (1974), Cold on the Shoulder (1975), Gord's Gold (1975) - a compilation containing nine rerecorded versions of his most popular songs - Summertime Dream (1976), and Endless Wire (1978). Songs such as Sundown and The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, ensured his status as Canada's troubadour, as much as his quiet, self-effacing manner.

Proof of the love Canadians feel for their native son came in January 2002, when Lightfoot fell ill, and was admitted to hospital with a bleeding abdomen; during his three months there (two of them in a coma) good wishes continued to pour in from around the country. It was even the top story on the news several times. Fortunately for all of us - not to mention him - he recovered, and in 2005 his Better Late Than Never Tour sold out venues across the country.
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"Looking Good, Feeling Gorgeous" by RuPaul

One final RuPaul video, to complete today's hat trick, and one as colourful and stylish as our birthday baby at that! It's a fanvid, done to a remix of the song, so the lip-synch doesn't always match, but I liked it anyway; besides, what's more drag than a lazy lip-synch?

Looking Good, Feeling Gorgeous was released in 2004, and was the second single from the album Red Hot; the video costars male model Rusty Joiner as a surgeon who's more cut* than any of his patients.

*You know... Fit, buff, single-digit BMI, humpy-like...
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Walking The Plank: Calico Jack

John Rackham was an English pirate, and likely the first equal opportunity employer in his field as well, as he was known to employ two female pirates - Anne Bonny and Mary Read - in his crew!

Despite being known for wearing a highly unique and somewhat suspicious wardrobe made of calico - thus the moniker - he was known to have had an affair with Anne Bonny, at one point even eloping with her; unless, of course, she was a top. After all, it was she who discovered Mary Read on board (disguised as a man) and their own romance must have made for quite a cuddly - not to mention innovative - little threesome all those sultry nights they spent together adrift in the Caribbean, drunk on rum.

When the crew was captured in October 1720, most of the men were too drunk to fight; it was Read and Bonny who valiantly fought to keep Captain Barnet's crew at bay, to no avail. Bonny's last words to her lover after he'd been imprisoned were: 'I am sorry to see you here Jack, but if you had fought like a man, you need not be hanged like a dog.' Oh, snap!

While Calico Jack and most of his crew were executed in Jamaica on this day in 1720, Bonny and Read pleaded their bellies and were reprieved; Read died in prison the following year, possibly in childbirth, and history does not record whatever became of Anne Bonny...
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In Memoriam: Queen Astrid of the Belgians

Born on this day in 1905, the granddaughter of Sweden's King Oscar II and Denmark's King Frederick VIII, it was clear that little Princess Astrid would live her life at the crossroads of European royalty; the older she got, the more likely it seemed in fact, for when she was just 13 days shy of 21 she married the future Leopold III of the Belgians.

Her three children would also grow up to be sovereigns: Joséphine-Charlotte became Grand Duchess of Luxembourg, and two subsequent sons became, in their turn, Baudouin I and Albert II of the Belgians. There's no telling what her fourth child would have become, though, because in August 1935, near Küssnacht am Rigi in Switzerland, her husband lost control of the car he was driving; it plunged into a ravine, killing the pregnant Astrid.

She was subsequently interred at the Church of Our Lady near the Royal Castle of Laeken, official home of the Belgian Royal Family, in Laeken, a suburb of Brussels. With all due respect to the present Queen, Paola, her mother-in-law remains, to this day, the most beloved of Belgian queens.
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"Don't Go Breaking My Heart" by Elton John and RuPaul

RuPaul's birthday fab-tacular continues with this little ditty of Elton John's reworked for a much taller girl; from 1993, it's Don't Go Breaking My Heart, taken from Sir Elton's album Duets.

Say what you will about RuPaul, she's no Kiki Dee...
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Happy Birthday Lorne Michaels

The creator of Saturday Night Live may be a lot of things (many of them not so nice, some of them downright Evil) but around here he's something of a cross between a genius and a god. And I'm not just saying that to kiss up. (Okay, I am, but only a little. Although... There is a lot more where that came from. And not just a little a lot, either, but a lot a lot.)

Born on this day in 1944 in Toronto (which is apparently a town in Ontario, or something, whatever) he moved to Los Angeles in 1968 to write for such variety shows as Laugh-In and The Beautiful Phyllis Diller Show; in 1975 New York City beckoned, and in time it would be very kind to him, giving him what has more or less become his life's work.

Saturday Night Live debuted in October 1975 and, despite a few rocky years in the early 1980s - when he wasn't around and the show lost its way - it's been a cross between a factory and a university, discovering comedic talent, nurturing it, then foisting it upon the world to flourish (or fail) on its own merits.

As if that wasn't enough, he also produced The Kids in the Hall, simply the finest sketch comedy show ever made in Canada...
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In Memoriam: Rock Hudson

It's a long way from Winnetka, Illinois, to Hollywood - in fact, it's almost as great a distance as it is from Roy Scherer to Rock Hudson (only one of whom was born on this day in 1925); while many have taken journeys as long or longer than the former, few have travelled as far, done so much, and come to the greatness that the latter did...

From B-movie stud and (frankly) awful actor, Hudson rode the ludicrous name given to him by his agent, Henry Willson, to an enduring career and popularity that he never should have had as a bad actor with a stupid name. Clearly, though, something about him clicked with the public, and kept clicking for more than 30 years.

What it comes down to is his basic decency: he was never a diva on set, soft-spoken onscreen and off, casually masculine in a way that comforted rather than frightened; he worked hard at his acting, and it's possible in his earlier movies to actually see him improving from film to film. Of course, he took a lot of crap from studio bosses to keep his big secret, but even the voracious celebrity press of the 1950s stayed away from Hudson because behind closed doors Hudson was both private and well-behaved.

Early death doesn't always equate to longevity in the public's memory, unless the death is sensational, which his was. Yet even then, when Hudson died of AIDS in October 1985 it was with the same qualities he'd held dear in his life: dignity, gentleness, and good nature.
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