Annabella's Record Kiss Duration Over Three Minutes

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLV, Issue 21181, 31 October 1938, Page 14

Annabella's Record Kiss Duration Over Three Minutes

you condense a kiss into 30 seconds? Osculate on order? I wonder.

A recent poll reveals that 20 per cent, of the movie-goers see films for their emotional interest.

Evidently, the emotional moment is the climax of a movie. So let us attempt to analyse the art of kissing. Annabella—France’s gift to the films—kissed William Powell three minutes thirty seconds, the smack recorded on 400 feet of film for “The Baroness and the Butler.” The public saw thirty seconds of it.

There seems to be a time-watch on screen kisses. Sigrid Gurie was kissed for 41 minutes (s.t., screen time) by Gary Cooper. That was “Marco Polo’s” main adventure.

To Gene Raymond came the privilege, never before granted to a man, to give a girl her first real and “reel” kiss. When the 17-year-old girl felt his lips pressing hers, that was Olympe Bradna’s first kiss from a man other than her father or an uncle. That memorable moment happened in “Stolen Heaven.” ... It may have seemed like heaven, but it wasn’t stolen, with thirty technicians and members of the camera crew looking on and grinning.

A maid requires a moon, of course. The universal expression of emotion, the kiss, is nationally expressed. Foreigners are slow in approach, they kiss deliberately, then slowly pull away. American men “grab,” bruise the lips of the recipient. George Raft delivers the American kiss, Claudette Colbert the delicate French one. So far, no player has been found to contribute the “international kiss.” According to Luigi Luraschi, foreign

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consultant of Paramount, it would consume five seconds, t .ring two seconds short of the average American effort, but three seconds longer than the fleeting Chinese contact. “Most Europeans,” he remarked on a studio set, “consider love a serious occupation and rale out levity. Carole Lomard’s kiss of a mock seriousness, a gay nonchalance, is not so well regarded, though her other screen antics are popular. “Sticklers for form, they approve the Scandinavian kiss, deliberate and long, expressing a cont’oiled ardor, the exponents of which in Hollwood are Garbo and Henie. Colbert expresses the subtle but definitely amatory French technique, Maureen O’Sullivaj the capricious, brief Irish tantal scr.”

He selects Colbert as the “longest kisser” in Hollywood and Fred MacMurray as the briefest. * Director Mitchell Leisen concurs that Mac Murray is lacking in technique, being too shy. Surprisingly, he excludes Robert Taylor from his list of the ten best. These are: Garbo, Dietrich, Lombard, Colbert, Gable, Gary Cooper, Jean Arthur, Ray Millard, Mae West and Olympe Bradna. “Kissing,” he commented, “is an angle of acting too much neglected on the screen. It takes study, training, and should be performed without embarrassment.”

The kisses may be vicarious thrills for you, but to the make-up department they mean added labour.

The cosmeticians moan when Garbo, Pons, Mae West and Colbert are slated by the script for kissing scenes. Meaning that the entire make-up of these “heavy kissers” must be repaired be-j tween each “take.”

The “lightweights,” Loretta Young, Olympe Bradna and Alice Faye, are a joy. When they embrace their opponents, the make-up department are assured a recess.

Their first screen kiss leaves an ineradicable memory on players. “Yes, I fell in love just a little with the man,” Claudette Colbert admits. “I was so flustered. He was David Newell.” “I’ve forgotten the title of the picture,” Carole Lombard confesses, “but Warner Baxter gave me my first camera kiss and I’ve never had a bigger thrill on a movie set.”

Much to-do was made, some three years ago, when Gladys Swarthout, received her first kiss for the camera, under the watchful eye of her husband, Frank Chapman. John Boles was the lucky man.

“I could feel my heart pounding, during rehearsals,” she says. “At first, I was terribly embarrassed. Then it suddenly struck me as a lot of fun.” These experts si. -uld know what it takes to put over emotion on the screen. Asked to name the love scenes that they consider most memorable several stars replied: Irene Dunne: Valentino and Agnes Ayres when they embraced in the tent for “The Sheik.”

Bing Crcsby: The kiss that Charlie Farrell gave to Janet GaynOx when he returned, blind, after the war, in “Seventh Heaven.”

Fred Mac Murray: A scene from “Flesh and the Devil,” between Garbo and John I rilbert.

George Raft: Gilbert and Renee Adoree in “The Big Parade,” the kiss and parting scene after she chased him frantically down the road. Dorothy Lamour: The embrace of Henry W Lcoxon and Claudette Colbert, the curtain close of “Cleopatra.”

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Joan Bennett: John Barrymore and Diana Wynyard in “Reunion in Vienna.”

John Barrymore: The balcony scene between Nvma Shearer and Leslie Howard ’n “Romeo and Juliet.”

Olympe Bradna: The love scene between Gary Cooper and Helen Hayes in “A Farewell To Arms. ’ Claudette Colbert and Carole Lombard voted for the same scene. Franciska Gaal: The seem between Charles Boy -r and Mlle. Darrieux before he shoots her in “Mayerling.” Those comments indicate some interesting points. First, the fact that the stars of to-day chose for the most part not scenes in talkies, but memorable moments of the silent screen Was love then, though artificial, expressed more poignantly? Do even whispered endearments spoil that delicious surrender of the lips? Secondly, that the movies’ most romantic lovers are dead. Thirdly, that the stars usually choose as impressionable in their minds love scenes entirely opposite from the type that each performs!