#william selig

[biokam]

Something Good - Negro Kiss (William Selig, 1898)

[thepastisalreadywritten]

Despite what the song says, a kiss isn’t always just a kiss.

A kiss can be political, because it’s the first of its kind or because it’s between two heads of state.

A kiss can also become iconic when it’s captured on film, even if the kiss itself was invasive and unwanted.

With that in mind, here’s a list of some of the most memorable kisses in history.

Scholars debate whether kissing began as a trend that spread around the globe, or sprung up organically in different regions.

Whatever the case, the earliest known written mentions of it are in Vedic Sanskrit scriptures circa 1500 B.C., according to research by Vaughn Bryant, an anthropology professor at Texas A&M University.

These scriptures, known as the Vedas, were foundational to the religion of Hinduism.

After that, kissing continued to appear in ancient Indian and Hindu literature.

The Mahabharata, a Sanskrit epic compiled by the 4th century A.D., has a line in which someone “set her mouth to my mouth and made a noise that produced pleasure in me.”

The Kama Sutra, an ancient Sanskrit text on eroticism and love, also has a chapter on kissing that identifies different methods of kissing and types of kisses.

Kissing isn’t just a romantic act. It can also be a sign of friendship or betrayal.

In the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, written circa the 1st century, Judas betrays Jesus by identifying him with a kiss so that armed men can take him away and eventually kill him.

Judas’ kiss has since become a popular storytelling allusion.

It may have inspired the “kiss of death” that appears in mafia literature and film (but was probably never an actual mafia practice).

Perhaps the most famous example is in The Godfather Part II, when Al Pacino’s character gives his brother Fredo the kiss of death for betraying him.

The first people to smooch on film were May Irwin and John C. Rice, who appeared in a short film known variously as May Irwin kiss, Kiss, or The Kiss.

In 1896, the two performers went to Thomas Edison’s studio in New Jersey and reenacted their final kiss scene from a play they were putting on in New York City.

On stage, no one thought the kiss was that sensational. But many felt the close-up footage of them kissing was too risqué.

In 1898, black performers Saint Suttle and Gertie Brown starred in a short film titled ''Something Good-Negro Kiss,'' the first film to show Black Americans kissing.

In 2017, film historians rediscovered the footage, which was filmed by a white man named William Selig in Chicago.

“There’s a performance there because they’re dancing with one another, but their kissing has an unmistakable sense of naturalness, pleasure and amusement as well,” Allyson Nadia Field, a professor of cinema and media studies at the University of Chicago who helped identify the film, said in a university press release.

“It is really striking to me, as a historian who works on race and cinema, to think that this kind of artifact could have existed in 1898.”

On the morning of 14 August 1945, patients burst into Greta Zimmer’s Manhattan office claiming the war in Japan was over.

The Austrian immigrant wasn’t sure what to think, so on her lunch break, she went to Times Square in her white dental assistant’s uniform to see what the news ticker said.

The atmosphere there was celebratory. The ticker confirmed that it was indeed V-J Day, and World War II was over.

As Zimmer looked away from the ticker, a Navy sailor named George Mendonsan — who’d started drinking early and mistook Zimmer for a nurse — ran up and aggressively kissed her, leaving his girlfriend behind.

Zimmer struggled to push the stranger off, and they parted ways.

But unbeknownst to both of them, photographers Alfred Eisenstaedt and Victor Jorgensen had each captured the moment, as recounted in The Kissing Sailor: The Mystery Behind The Photo That Ended World War II.

Eisenstaedt’s photo became one of the most iconic WWII images in U.S. history, in part because viewers mistook it for a picture of a Naval officer and nurse celebrating together.

The photo has also stirred controversy, as many people have claimed over the years to be the couple in the image, while others point out that it depicts a nonconsensual moment.

Zimmer said in an interview with the Library of Congress in 2005:

“It wasn’t my choice to be kissed...the guy just came over and kissed or grabbed!”

When William Shatner and Nichelle Nichols kissed on a 1968 episode of Star Trek, it was not technically the first interracial kiss on U.S. television.

But it was the one that seemed to have the most cultural impact.

In the episode, titled “Plato’s Stepchildren,” Captain James Kirk and Officer Nyota Uhura encounter aliens who force them to kiss each other through telekinesis.

In Nichols’ book Beyond Uhura: Star Trek and Other Memories, she recalls that NBC was worried how white Americans would react to the scene, so they asked the actors to film two scenes: one with a kiss and one without a kiss.

However, Nichols and Shatner purposefully messed up all of the kissless takes in order to ensure that NBC aired the kissing scene.

During the Cold War, leaders of communist states often greeted each other with what’s called the “socialist fraternal kiss.”

This could be on the cheek or the mouth, but the most famous example is French photographer Régis Bossu’s 1979 picture of the Soviet Union’s Leonid Brezhnev and East Germany’s Erich Honecker kissing on the mouth.

The kiss occurred when Brezhnev visited East Berlin to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the German Democratic Republic (i.e., East Germany).

When the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, the Soviet artist Dmitri Vrubel recreated the image in a mural on the wall’s east side.

He captioned it: “My God, Help Me to Survive This Deadly Love.”

[theacademy]

Women’s History at the Academy Library: From Suffragettes to Sanger

Although the Academy’s Margaret Herrick Library is dedicated primarily to the study of motion pictures, cinema can serve as a cultural touchstone that encompasses all aspects of life, and our Special Collections holdings include many items documenting political and social movements over the years. 

In honor of Women’s History Month, we present some highlights that illuminate the women’s rights movement in a unique way.

As these release fliers from the William Selig papers demonstrate, some films from the early 1910s reflect the zeitgeist of the time as the movement for women’s suffrage was gaining traction. 

In the 1912 Selig Polyscope Company production When Helen Was Elected, a married couple, Beacher and Helen Summers, are preparing for his campaign for mayor. Trouble arises in the form of Helen’s aunt Frances who, according to the film’s release flier, is a “violent advocate of woman’s rights” who “pulls her husband…around by the nose.” 

Frances convinces Helen to run for mayor herself even though she “knows nothing and cares less about politics.” Helen is elected but, too “worn out” by the campaign, tries to cede her place to her husband. Her efforts to abdicate fail until it’s realized that she is “not yet of legal age.”

Another 1912 film, When Women Rule, advertised as “A Screaming Farce on the coming of Equal Suffrage,” also involves a woman running for political office. “The quiet and peaceful home of John O’Connell has been invaded by the growing spirit of the suffragette, and what was once a happy fireside now finds O’Connell doing the family washing, and Mrs. O’Connell a candidate for Mayor.” 

She wins the race and once she and her followers (dubbed the O’Connellites)  are in office, they “demonstrate, at least to their own satisfaction, that no city Government is complete without them.”

A 1913 Marshall Stedman production, The Suffragette, or The Trials of a Tenderfoot, is another satirical look at the social movement of the day. 

The release flier tells us that our heroine, Samantha Roundtree, is visiting a western town “to lecture on Votes for Women” when some local cowboys decide to have some fun at her expense. They disguise themselves in “wigs and Indian Costumes” and kidnap her. The leader of the pack then sneaks away, slips off his costume, bursts back onto the scene and “empties blank cartridges at the crowd with such effect that he decimates the Indians and rescues Samantha,” who is “more than grateful to her hero” and “clings” to him like a “leach [sic].” Once back in town, “having gotten a man,” she “forgets all about votes for women.” 

These films’ misogynistic humor perhaps echoed some citizens’ reactions to the growing women’s movement.

For an opposing – and more serious – view of women’s suffrage, the Katharine Hepburn papers offer other highlights. Hepburn’s mother, Katharine Houghton Hepburn, was a leader of the suffrage movement in the United States. She also co-founded, along with Margaret Sanger, the American Birth Control League, which would evolve into the organization we know today as Planned Parenthood. 

Two photos illustrate the Hepburn family’s social activism. In the photo above, we see Katharine Houghton Hepburn at a rally in front of the Hartford Times building in Hartford, Connecticut, in the spring of 1912. 

Another photo shows a young Kate Hepburn (pictured, below), circa 1914, dressed in a suffragette costume. 

A final standout is a 1951 letter from Sanger to the actress in which the activist writes, “I’ve always loved the directness & clarity of thinking your mother expressed. I love to think of our work together in Washington.”

The influence of Katharine Houghton Hepburn on her daughter’s life and career is undeniable. Self-assured from the very start, Hepburn demanded – and won – a high salary for her first role, in the 1932 George Cukor film A Bill of Divorcement. She became a famously independent woman in her own right, wearing pants at a time when it was simply not done, and, more importantly, eschewing the Hollywood publicity machine in an effort to protect her privacy – another bold move, especially at the height of the Studio Era, when the studios could make or break a star’s reputation.

These intriguing items from our collection are just a few examples of the library’s holdings related to women’s history. They serve as a reminder of how current events can permeate popular culture, a phenomenon that continues today.

[felixkeepswalking]

The Selig Polyscope Company, which produced Sidney Smith’s Old Doc Yak and The Gumps cartoons, was founded by William Selig in 1896.  Its films were hugely popular for a while, and Selig launched the careers of stars Tom Mix, Harold Lloyd, and Fatty Arbuckle.  In 1913, Selig’s attentions turned to the creation of a Zoo, and the studio stopped producing films in 1918.  Unfortunately, its films weren’t stored properly, and most of them are now lost.

[moviewatchprojectofdoom]

William Nicholas Selig, aka “Colonel” Selig (1864 - 1948), film pioneer, vaudeville producer and then film company founder. Founded Selig Polyscope Company in 1896.

[anunnaturalhistory]

William Selig and Chimpanzee "lighting up for a quiet smoke after rehearsal", c. 1917

Selig was a vaudeville performer and producer of traveling minstrel shows who eventually turned to motion picture production, founding the Selig Polyscope Company in Chicago, one of the first motion picture studios in America, in 1896.  In 1909, he expanded his business from Chicago to Los Angeles, becoming the first film producer to establish West Coast operations.

In 1912, he purchased acreage in east LA to house the huge collection of animals he had amassed for his studio's jungle pictures.  Always the businessman, he decided to convert part of the studio into a public zoo, where the animals could earn money, even when they weren't acting.  The Selig Jungle Zoo opened in 1915, and with over 700 residents, became the largest collection of wild animals in the world.

WWI, the waning popularity of jungle films, and Selig's health problems forced the studio to fold in 1918, but Selig still had hopes for the zoo, planning to turn it into a pre-Disneyland amusement park and resort.  The plans never came to fruition.  For a time he was able to rent space on the lot for wild animal "location" shooting and other projects, but this side of the business soon dwindled into an animal rental service, and in 1923, Selig auctioned off the assets of the studio. Selig continued to work as an independent producer and expedition promoter into the 1930's but ultimately lost the zoo and his remaining assets during the Great Depression.