All That Heaven Allows (1955)

May/December Kiss

Director Douglas Sirk's May/December romantic melodrama was a soap-opera tale set in a small New England town where an attractive widow fell in love with her younger gardener, although their relationship was perceived as fortune-hunting on his part by her friends and family:

• free-spirited gardener Ron Kirby (Rock Hudson)
• older, more-uptight, well-to-do, fortyish Cary Scott (Jane Wyman)

Ron told her that he had fixed up the farmhouse to "make the place livable" for the two of them, away from the town's malicious gossipers. He boldly declared his intentions to marry her: "I'm asking you to marry me. I love you, Cary"; although she had doubts that it was "impossible."

He proved his steadfast love with "This is the only thing that matters" - a kiss.

The Big Combo (1955)

Avoiding the Hays Code Censors Kiss

Director Joseph H. Lewis' thriller-film noir contained a notorious kissing scene of a female who was masochistically drawn to an organized crime boss:

• sadistic and arrogant mobster hood-kingpin Mr. Brown (Richard Conte)
• weak-willed, abused, and unwilling society blonde girlfriend Susan Lowell (Jean Wallace)

The first kiss was on the ear, then the cheek and neck, and then traveling behind her body and out of sight, as the camera dollied in for a stunning erotic close-up - leaving the rest up to the audience's imagination.

East of Eden (1955)

Conflicted Kiss

Director Elia Kazan's drama, based upon John Steinbeck's novel set in California's Salinas Valley in the early 20th century, featured the first major role of 'generation gap' rebel James Dean - only one of three films he made in his short career. The story was a basic updating of the Biblical Cain and Abel relationship.

In the Ferris wheel-carnival scene, vulnerable, troubled and insecure Cal Trask (James Dean) struggled to express his longing for his sensible but rival (and favored) twin brother Aron's (Richard Davalos) girlfriend Abra (Julie Harris).

She confessed her conflicted-in-love feelings for him - but after a kiss pulled back and turned away:

"Oh, I love Aron, I do, really I do."

Guys and Dolls (1955)

Intimate, Sin-Fighting, Salvation Kisses

This Samuel Goldwyn production by director Joseph L. Mankiewicz was developed from a 1933 short story by Damon Runyon about a NY sharpster and a missionary girl. It was the big screen version of the long-running 1950 Broadway stage musical.

In the musical comedy, slick, high-rolling big-city gambler Sky Masterson (a slightly miscast Marlon Brando) made a $1,000 bet that he could romance/seduce and date an unlikely "doll" - virginal Salvation Army-like, Save-A-Soul Mission Sgt./Sister Sarah Brown (Jean Simmons).

Then, after meeting her at the Mission, Sky proposed a trade (a "business transaction") to help her out - he would give Sarah his marker (a written IOU pledge or guarantee) that he could recruit a dozen genuine sinners into her Broadway-branch Mission two days later for her Thursday-midnight prayer meeting, if she agreed to have dinner with him the next night (Wednesday) in his favorite restaurant (El Café Cabana which happened to be in Havana).

They both shared in the singing of "I'll Know" (about the right partner coming along). Afterwards, he grabbed and kissed her, and after a short delay, she slapped him hard across the face. He responded:

"Well, that makes it necessary for me to drop back again. Matthew 5:39. Oh, don't bother looking it up, it's the bit about the other cheek."

Sarah declined Sky's persistent offer that he would pick her up at noon the next day. But then the next day, Sarah reversed herself and changed her mind, and she gladly accepted Sky's offer for a date. She promised her regional director General Cartwright (Kathryn Givney) that she guaranteed that there would be at least 12 genuine sinners in her mission the following evening.

After flying from New York to Havana, Cuba for their date, at Racardo's outdoor cafe, Sky ordered several milk drinks for her (potently spiked with Bacardi rum - ordered by Sky as "Dulce de Leche") to loosen up the prim, prudish, and proper Sarah.

After several drinks, an aroused Sister Sarah came closer and closer to his lips before an intimate kiss -- telling the "full time sinner" that she wanted to be with him as a "full-time job"; he asked: "A one-woman mission for the personal salvation of me?" - she promised him that he wouldn't be fighting sin alone anymore because she was on a mission to faithfully be with him:

"I'm gonna be with you...Day and night, night and day....Whatever you do, wherever you go...I wanna be with you...anytime, anywhere..."

Following a brawl in the restaurant ended, Sarah sobered up next to a pool of water near a church bell that was ringing in a courtyard. She openly revealed her feelings of happiness and love for him as she sang: "If I Were a Bell": ("Ask me how to describe This whole beautiful thing Well, if I were a bell I'd go ding-dong-ding-dong...").

Sarah with Sky: "If I Were a Bell"

She fell into his arms for embraces and a kiss as the song ended; feeling guilty for having enticed her to accept a date motivated by a crude wager, Sky admitted his deception (and partially revealed he was also in love with her); she thought he was "mixed-up," and responded that she wouldn't have met him otherwise:

"Why not? You're a gambler. And darling, you are also a chump."

Once they returned to New York by plane at dawn, they took a taxi to Times Square and walked to the front of her Save-A-Soul Mission, where Sky and Sarah sang a duet together "A Woman in Love" about their newfound, reciprocal love:

"Your eyes are the eyes Of a woman in love And, oh, how they give you away...Your eyes are the eyes Of a man who's in love."

Kiss Me Deadly (1955)

A Deadly Kiss - With a Bullet

Director Robert Aldrich's classic film noir thriller was adapted from Mickey Spillane's novel, and set during the dark Cold War era.

Nearing the film's apocalyptic ending set in a beach house, an avaricious and determined Lily/Gabrielle (Gaby Rodgers) had just shot and killed deceiving mastermind-scientist Dr. Soberin (Albert Dekker) after she threatened him with possessing the "Whatsit" box all for herself: "I'll take it all if - you don't mind." As he fell dead, he warned: "Listen to me, as if I were Cerberus barking with all his heads at the gates of Hell, I will tell you where to take it. But don't, don't open the box."

She then greeted hard-boiled PI detective Mike Hammer (Ralph Meeker), bursting into the room, with a wide smile and her gun:

"Hello, Mike...Come in. Come in."

Seductively, she commanded sexual favors from him:

"Kiss me, Mike. I want you to kiss me. Kiss me. The liar's kiss that says 'I love you.' It means something else. You're good at giving such kisses. Kiss me."

With the femme fatale's destructive sexuality and promise of the kiss of death (although she never physically kissed Hammer), she fired point-blank into the midsection of the misogynistic hero before he reached her, and he fell to the floor - wounded.

Lady and the Tramp (1955)

Shared Spaghetti Kiss

In the film's most memorable and romantically-sweet sequence, the mongrel Tramp introduced refined cocker-spaniel Lady to his Wednesday meal location at Tony's - an Italian restaurant, where he was known as "Butch." At the back door entrance, the two were serenaded for an outdoor candlelit meal by a waiter singing the love song ''Belle Notte" ("For this is the night It's a beautiful night And we call it Bella Notte, Look at the skies They have stars in their eyes On this lovely bella notte Side by side With your loved one You'll find enchantment here The night will weave its magic spell When the one you love is near").

They shared a romantic meal of "two spaghetti speciale. Heavy on the meats-a ball"; they each started chewing or slurping on opposite ends of a spaghetti strand and were startled to unexpectedly meet in the middle - where they kissed. Lady blushed charmingly, as he nudged a meatball toward her with his nose as a symbol of his affection.

The iconic 'Bella Notte' spaghetti-eating scene has been copied (lampooned actually) many times, including these two film examples:

Hot Shots! Part Deux (1993)

Heroic Navy commando Topper Harley (Charlie Sheen) was with espionage agent Ramada Rodham Hayman (Valeria Golino) while dining on spaghetti together. She urged: "Kiss me. Kiss me like you've never kissed me before" - words from Casablanca (1942)

Kids in America (2005)

Holden Donovan (Gregory Smith) and Charlotte Pratt (Stephanie Sherrin) re-enacted classic kissing moments from film favorites, including the spaghetti kiss scene from Lady and the Tramp (1955)

Love is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955)

Cigarette Kiss and Goodbye Kiss

Han Suyin's autobiographical novel was turned into this romantic drama about an inter-racial/cross-cultural relationship, filmed on location in Hong Kong. Two lovers were in a clandestine relationship there during China's Communist revolution:

• unhappily-married American newsman/correspondent Mark Elliott (William Holden)
• beautiful Eurasian doctor Ms. Han Suyin (Jennifer Jones), widow of a Chinese general

They joined their two cigarettes together as a symbol (he lighted hers - it was both a sublimation of their passion and a symbol of the sexual consummation of their secretive love affair as the Oscar-winning title tune swelled in the background. She told him: "There is nothing stronger in the world than gentleness."

Also, he reluctantly bid her farewell from a hilltop (where they often went to share kisses) in a melodramatic scene. He told her that he didn't have a present for her:

"I have to go now and I don't want you to be sad...And I don't want you to come down the path with me. I want to look back and see you here."

She promised that she would be there for him at their familiar meeting place ("I will be here when you come back to me. I promise") as they kissed and the theme music swelled. However, the film ended sadly and tragically, as she returned to the hillside without him, and remembered his words to her (in voice-over):

"I often think that healing is man's salvation, and I envy your ability to help. You deal with suffering, but you can do something about it. I can only stand and watch. We have not missed, you and I. We have not missed that many-splendored thing."

Picnic (1955)

Drifter's Enticing Kiss

Daniel Taradash's adaptation of William Inge's Pulitzer Prize-winning play brought forth director Joshua Logan's Technicolored rural romantic drama, set during Labor Day in a small Kansas town.

Outdoorsy, uninhibited and virile drifter Hal Carter (William Holden) told pretty Kansas girl Madge Owens (Kim Novak) before kissing her and proposing:

"Listen, baby. You're the only real thing I ever wanted. Ever! You're mine. I've gotta claim what's mine or I'll be nothin' as long as I live...You love me, you know it, you love me, you love me."

He then rushed away to jump onto a passing train.

Madge would make a romantically-inclined decision to board a bus to Tulsa and leave her boring and repressive Kansas town to join him, as the film concluded.