in conclusion, housemates

[kindkit]

It seems today is going to be the day when I post enough to make up for the almost two weeks since I last posted.

So. This photo of Cary Grant lighting Randolph Scott's cigarette with his own (on the beach, in the twilight) may be the most romantic image I have ever seen.

Comments

[halotolerant]

Wow. Wow. Yeah, I would love to know precisely what the studio thought they were saying there, on the assumption that 'they are having all teh gay sexxxin' was not the plan...

After all, we all know what sharing cigarettes means *g*

It is a gorgeous photo. I think I'm going to save it to file and when I've got access to a printer make a copy for the wall. Beautiful.

[kindkit]

we all know what sharing cigarettes means

And so did the photographer, because I don't think I've ever seen such a blatant example, visually, of "deflected kiss." The whole composition and style of the image says "they are kissing."

Have you ever seen the 1942 movie Now, Voyager? One of its main motifs is cigarette-as-kiss, specifically to express forbidden love (it's het, but the man is married and can't get a divorce), so I'm sure that symbolism was already around in the 1930s.

[halotolerant]

Not seen that movie, no (I've heard of the title, I thought it was about people in a capsule near Mars who died of starvation? That is probably not this film?)

Partially there's the cigarette-as-kiss understood motif, and partly there's the fact that being that close and sticking things in someone else's mouth is sort of inescapably erotic... *g*

[kindkit]

Definitely a sympathetic photographer. I don't know if you've seen other photos from this publicity set (they're easy to google) but they're all noticeably intimate and couple-y. And the studio would have to be clueless to release them to the public. (And yet it worked--people still deny that Grant and Scott were lovers, and even cite the photos as evidence on the grounds that if they were lovers, they'd have had to hide it better.)

[mcicioni]

Incredible photo. YES to comparison with "Now Voyager" and to all those 30s, 40s and 50s films with Freudian cigarettes (may I add the scene in the Jack Lemmon/ Walter Matthau version of The Front Page when Lemmon is typing furiously, and orders "Cigarette me", and Matthau lights a cigarette, sticks it in Lemmon's mouth, and then tenderly lays his hands on L's shoulders)?

[kindkit]

I've never seen The Front Page--I'm not a big Walter Matthau fan--but I might have to watch it just for that scene.