Kisses

A KISS IS STILL A KISS

By TOM SOTER
from NOSTALGIA, 1991

KISSES. Edited by Lena Tabori.

If, as someone once noted, a girl never kissed a man she didn't intend to marry, then we wouldn't have Kisses, an elegant new picture book for lovers of lovers. Primarily utilizing dialogue and photographs from films of the '30s and '40s – the greatest era of the romantic screen clench – Kisses is for those whowant their romance preserved forever, like some precious sweet. They will not be disappointed: here are Scarlett and Rhett, Nick and Nora, Romeo and Juliet, even Tarzan and Jane. Here, too, are passions and promises, deceits and desires, commitment and compassion. Here is Garbo intoxicating her suitors, Mickey Rooney twirling around Judy Garland, and Elizabeth Taylor melting the will of Richard
Burton ("I will never be free of you," he says in a line from Cleopatra). Here is life, as filtered through the cinema.

Kisses is – dare I say it? – a labor of love. Compiled by Lena Tabori (the daughter of Viveca Lindfors, Ronald Reagan's on-screen lover in Night Unto Night), the volume is divided into three sections ("Innocence," "Passion," "Commitment") and a coda ("Forever") that range from the refreshingly familiar
(Gone With the Wind, Casablanca) to the delightfully obscure (Baby Take a Bow, Bombshell). The quotes offer comedy ("When did you first start having heart trouble?" "From the first moment I met you."), drama ("Forget you? Not while I live...not if I die."), and high©flown romance ("This face that haunts me, drugs me...these hands that were designed for a thousand pleasures...these lips...were they meant to speak of love or grocery lists?"), while the photos offer magic: Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron, about to kiss at the completion of a dance in An American in Paris; Chaplin and Paulette Goodard walking into the sunset of Modern Times; Henry Fonda and Katherine Hepburn "sucking face" in On Golden Pond. Yes, a kiss is still a kiss – and these Kisses are forever. Sigh.