Onthis Day...

June 12

• In 1963, “the wildest, most super-colossal premier” was held in New York, marking the opening of “Cleopatra,” which director Joseph Mankiewicz described as “the toughest three pictures I ever made.” Two years’ work had resulted in 96 hours of film printed on 120 miles of celluloid at an estimated cost of $40 million (a superenormous amount at that time). Elizabeth Taylor`s fee was $1,500,000 plus a percentage of the gross, yet “the most publicized picture of all time” didn’t use her on promotional material. The famous ad of her reclining seductively under the admiring gaze of Richard Burton used her face, but the body belonged to model Lois Bennett, who was paid the princely sum of $35. Elizabeth Taylor`s well-known contributions to Israeli causes led newsmen to dub her “the first Jewish queen of Egypt.”

• In 1667, the first human blood transfusion was administered to a young French boy by Jean Baptiste Denys, court doctor to King Louis XIV. Deny, whose experiment was based on work done on dogs three years earlier, by the Englishman Lowers, gave the child nine ounces of blood taken direct from the carotid artery of a lamb. The patient took on “a clear and smiling countenance” and recovered. Unfortunately, Denys`s third such patient died, much to the disappointment of Parisian high-society ladies, who believed that if they changed their blood they`d be miraculously rejuvenated.