In honor of Valentine’s Day, here are 1. 25 photographs of kisses on stage over the past century, and 2. videos of five of Broadway’s most romantic love songs,
Click on any photograph to see it enlarged and read the caption.
Annie Scott as Rosemary Pillkington kisses Robert Morse as J. Pierrepont Finch, as Rudy Vallee as the boss looks on shocked in How to Succeed in Business without really Trying 1961
Adina Verson and Katrina Lenk In “Indecent,” 2017. Paula Vogel’s play tells the story of the hundred-year-old Yiddish play that featured the first Lesbian kiss on Broadway. The actors playing the troupe keep on referring to the kiss as “the rain scene.” When we finally see the rain scene, it’s not so much the kiss as the rain that overwhelms us.
Nathan Lane and Faith Prince kissing in a scene from the 1992 Broadway revival of the musical “Guys And Dolls”.
Ben Whishaw and Hugh Dancy kiss in The Pride, 2010
Barbra Streisand as Fanny Brice and Sydney Chaplin as Nick Arnstein in Funny Girl 1964
Ivan Hernandez and Bobby Steggert in Yank, 2010.
Elizabeth Taylor and John Cullum, Private Lives 1983
Donald Cook and Tallulah Bankhead in Private Lives 1948
Louis Gossett as Willie Nurse and Cicely Tyson as Myrna Jessup in Carry Me Back to Morningside Heights 1968
Mary Martin as Venus and Kenny Baker as Rodney Hatch in One Touch of Venus. 1943
Trixie Friganza as Mrs. Waxtapper and George Beban as Pierre Souchet in The American Idea 1908
Gail Kane as Helena and George Nash as John Madison in The Miracle Man 1914
Margaret Barker as Laura Hudson and Alexander Kirkland as Dr. Ferguson in Men in White. 1933
Dorothy Mathews as Natalya Ivanovna and Hume Cronyn as Andrei Prozorov in The Three Sisters 1943
Robert Keith as Charles Dickens and Diana Barrymore as Caroline Bronson in Romantic Mr. Dickens, 1940
Diana Barrymore as Caroline Bronson and Robert Keith as Charles Dickens in Romantic Mr. Dickens, 1940
Paul Ford as Harry Lambert, Maureen O’Sullivan as Edith Lambert and Orson Bean as Charlie in Never Too Late, 1962
Stubby Kaye as Pooch Kearney, Alice Faye as Professor Kenyon, and John Payne as Bill Johnson in Good News 1974
Lovers, 1975. (Actors unidentified.)
Francesca da Rimini. Act V, Scene I, 1887
Mary Nash as Marcelle and Henry Hull as Henry Potter in The Man Who Came Back 1916
Jessica Hecht and Dominic Fumusa in Stage Kiss, 2014
Has there ever before been such a touching love scene between poultry? In The Year of the Rooster, by Eric Dufault, a young rooster named Odysseus Rex, played by Bobby Moreno like an angry punk with a knife, is introduced to Lucky Lady (Megan Tusing), a hen genetically engineered by McDonald’s to be twice her normal weight, and so virtually unable to stand. At first they don’t get along. He’s all…well…cocky. She behaves in a way that explains where the phrase “hen-pecked” comes from. But swiftly she is able to reach inside his chest and remove the anger he says is there, shaped like an anvil. They kiss, like the French (like birds!), cheek to cheek, and snuggle.
Neil Patrick Harris kisses the Tony trophy
