Edited by Lena Tabori
Short of on-the-job training, movies may be the most popular source of education we have on the art and science of kissing.
Tabori, a book packager and the daughter of actress Viveca Lindfors, has collected stills of enlightening moments of cinematic smackery, from a James Stewart peck on Carole Lombard's forehead in Made for Each Other to a watch-those-tongues Clark Gable-Lana Turner smooch in Honky Tonk.
The kisses are chaste by today's norms and coming mostly from pre-1948 films, they seem too historic. It would be nice to see, say, William Hurt and Kathleen Turner devouring each other in Body Heat or Red-ford and Streisand in The Way We Were.
Tabori does include relevant bits of dialogue, such as this sweetly ironic exchange between Marilyn Monroe and Tony Curtis (as a man in search of his virility) in Some Like It Hot—Joe: "They told me I was kaput, finished, all washed up. And here you are making a chump out of all those experts. Where did you learn to kiss like that?" Sugar: "I used to sell kisses for the milk fund."
For the pure osculaphile, however, it's hard to top Gable's line to Vivien Leigh in Gone with the Wind: "Never mind about loving me. Scarlett, kiss me. Kiss me." (Citadel/Turner, $22.50)
Your Reaction
