12 most memorable kisses

By Tanya Bricking
Advertiser Staff Writer

Rhett Butler's (Clark Gable) farewell kiss with Scarlett O'Hara (Vivien Leigh) in 1939's "Gone With the Wind."

Britney Spears, left, and Madonna kiss during the opening performance of the MTV Video Music Awards last week. Associated Press

Their publicists must have loved the Material Girl passing the torch, or her tongue, to each Miss Not So Innocent. How motherly.

In the big picture of most memorable contemporary kisses, the bad girls will receive little lip service. There wasn't much sexually liberating about their smooching. It was a manufactured MTV antic that amounted to passion for publicity's sake.

Sorry, Gap Girl, but your exhibitionism is exhausting.

Here are some kisses we'd rather remember:

Kiss the girls

If same-sex smooching is the chic thing on TV, at least Ellen DeGeneres did it for more than just a fashion statement. Sure it was staged. Her character became TV's first openly gay series star to kiss her lover, in a much-hyped October 1997 episode. But at least it was based in the reality of DeGeneres' real-life sexuality and willingness to make a statement.

Another memorable lesbian lip-lock was in 1992 on "L.A. Law," when Amanda Donohoe's character surprised Michele Greene's, in a first for the network. That was years before "Roseanne," "ER," "Ally McBeal," "Friends" and "Spin City" copied the kisses in a rush for ratings.

Steamy stuff

As long as we're talking firsts, Warren Beatty and Natalie Wood were the first Hollywood actors to French kiss on screen, in "Splendor in the Grass," which came out in 1961, a year after the debut of the Pill. It was one of those early psychological dramas about a girl who suffers an emotional collapse when the boy she loves doesn't see her any more. The kiss planted it in pop culture.

Wave of passion

Splendor on the beach was better in a scene filmed in Hawai'i, where Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr are swept over in a wave of passion in "From Here to Eternity." Back in 1953 it was a racy romp in the sand. Occasionally, you can see couples trying to re-create it at Halona Cove, also known as "From Here To Eternity Beach," by the Blowhole in east O'ahu.

Seemed like eternity

It's doubtful that anyone, except maybe Arnold Schwarzenegger, could re-create the political buzz over a kiss the way Al Gore did. It wasn't a big film moment or anything, but it felt like an eternity watching presidential candidate Gore plant one on his wife, Tipper, at the 2000 Democratic National Convention. The kiss lasted three seconds. It just seemed longer.

Notorious Mr. Grant

If you're looking for love on screen, you really can't go wrong with just about any flick involving Cary Grant. His legendary kiss with Ingrid Bergman in the 1946 Alfred Hitchcock film "Notorious" lasted three minutes. Hitchcock must have seen that he was a good kisser. In 1955's "North by Northwest," there's another good scene where Grant kisses Eva Marie Saint and Hitchcock cuts to a train going into a tunnel. (Note to Madonna: Subtlety works.)

A wonderful life

Call us old-fashioned, but the '40s and '50s really turned out the classics. "It's a Wonderful Life" (1946) replays on cable a million times a year. So even the MTV-obsessed can watch it and see that the kiss shared by James Stewart and Donna Reed really is wonderful.

Kodak moment

Sometimes the best moments are frozen, such as photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt's 1945 shot of the anonymous sailor and nurse famously captured in an embrace in Times Square on the day World War II ended. It captured the elation of a moment in time. Years later, the sailor was identified as George Mendonsa, and several women claimed they were the nurse, but Mendonsa says his kissee was a woman named Greta Friedman.

My dear Scarlett

There's just something about war that brings out passion. Even the fictional kind. Take Rhett Butler's (Clark Gable) farewell kiss with Scarlett O'Hara (Vivien Leigh) in 1939's "Gone With the Wind." It's set against the backdrop of a blazing Atlanta, and the movie poster still gets tacked on college dorm rooms walls today.

Play it again

So maybe we're stuck on old movies, or maybe it's time for filmmakers to try to recapture scenes like the embrace between Ingrid Bergman and Humphrey Bogart in "Casablanca." The 1942 film still tops surveys when viewers are polled about their favorite on-screen kisses.

Courting canines

If there's a top 12 list, though, this really has got to be up there: Disney's 1955 "Lady and the Tramp." Groundbreaking? Hey, it made kissing dogs look romantic. Influential? It made a strand of spaghetti look like a means to an end. And it wasn't trampy at all.

Reach Tanya Bricking at tbricking@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8026.