Deborah Kerr - 'Movie Star' ( continuation )

---- Erhard Ulbrich (dkfrs) retired

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" The two romantic leads in this standard but well-acted political drama renew a famous pairing Yul Brynner with Deborah Kerr, who is Lady Diana Ashmore, caught at the wrong side of the Hungarian-Austrian border in 1956, and Yul Brynner is Major Surov, a russian commander who works at the border crossing. With the outbreak of the 1956 rebellion, the Budapest airport is shut down and diana, along with other international travellers, are forced to reach Vienna by bus. Along for the ride is one of the Hungarian dissenters hunted by the police, Paul (Jason Robards, Jr. in his screen debut). Diana and Paul are in love and she is determined to protect his secret. Major Surov suspects a rebel is hidden on the bus, but he does not know which passenger is the guilty one. As interaction continues at the border, Diana is attracted to the Major and his complex character, even against her will. Their developing relationship and strong personalities carry the story from start to finish. "

---- THE JOURNEY

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The Men In My Arms

by DEBORAH KERR

My kisses with Cary Grant in An Affair To Remember were mathemattically precise.
The kiss that changed my career - with Burt Lancaster in From Here To Eternity.
Love On The Dole, with Clifford Evans, was really love among the garbage cans.
With Wndy Hiller in Major Barbara. No kisses in this, only slaps.
In the arms of Stewart Granger in King Solomon's Mines. Tsetse flies interfered with our kisses.
Making Perfect Strangers - literally gave me ants in the pants.
For The Hucksters with Clark Gable, my first Hollywood film, they had dobts over my kissing. I showed 'em! My nickname at the studio was 'the Duchess.'
Romance with Greg Peck in Beloved Infidel turned out to be a gritty business.

Movie kisses aren't as romantic or as spontaneous as you would think! In fact the most romantic-looking kisses are those planned, plotted and rehearsed. They may look sizzling on the screen, but they are just a headache to the artists and directors. And I'm afraid I must debunk the old theory that the tenderest love scenes are played by couples who really feel that way about each other, or imagine they do for the moment. They'd smell up the screen if they did. To get effective kisses on screen, they need to be worked out like a pattern to create the theatrical illusion of emotion. You have to time every move to a fraction of a second, the way a choreographer plots a dance number. Believe me, movie kisses are so technical that they are like a mathematical problem.

Take the two chief kissing scenes Cary Grant and I did for An Affair To Remember. Both took place on a trans-Atlantic liner. We met and fell in love during the crossing, though each of us until that moment had been involved romantically with someone else. That gave the kisses basic conflict, since we were nice people and didn't really want to fall in love. But the first light, tender bussing was supposed to happen "spontaneously," while we were dancing cheek to cheek. Sounds simple? Well, we had to diagram every move and memorise it.

This was as premeditated as the kiss that changed my career - that wave-splashed beach love scene I did with Burt Lancaster in From Here To Eternity. Before that scene I was considered the junior Mrs. Miniver type - you know, so ladylike it bored everyone, including me. But that picture and that love scene completely changed my career. We took so long working out the pattern of that kiss that the camera crew made bets we'd never get the scene finished that day. We not only had to time our every move, but to time the waves carefully to make sure we'd be hit just as we kissed most passionately.

Speaking of beach kisses, Greg Peck and I agreed we had the grittiest kisses of our careers for a scene in Fox's Beloved Infidel. It was even worse for Greg than for me, because after a quarrel scene he had to comfort me, and he was in dry clothes. I was in a wet bathing suit. Aside from such interruptions as helicopters flying overhead and some quarrelling seagulls ruining the take, every time we got to the actual kiss, the wind blew sand right into our parted mouths. We swallowed as much sand for that scene as Burt and I swallowed water for the Eternity kiss.

I don't know why, but all I can remember are the uncomfortable kisses I've done on the screen. Like the one in Perfect Strangers. During my metamorphosis from the drab, sniffling wife of Robert Donat to the chic and glamourous girl, a naval architect played by Roland Culver, fellin love with me. We did our kissing scenes on location in Scotland. I was sitting on the ground, and all was well until the actual take. He was kissing me tenderly when I got a burning sensation on my thighs. It wasn't passion. I was actually sitting on an ants' nest! I was too embarrassed to explain I literally had ants in my pants!

My first Hollywood movie kiss was with Clark Gable for The Hucksters. Both on and off the screen, i was supposed to be this very reserved girl, and the scene on the terrace was to have double impact because I had to do most of the kissing. Everyone at MGM were certain that "the Duchess" (I found out they called me that behind my back) wouldn't know what to do. I showed them,though!

Then, there was King Solomon"s Mines. stewart Granger and I had this kissing scene where I slipped down the bank, needless to say,into the strong arm of the great white hunter, and naturally smooched. While I was passionately kissing my old friend, I was, at his whispered request the second beforew the take, slapping a tsetse fly off his back. Not that I prefer pictures without love scenes. I never had a kiss in my first picture, Major Barbara. Robert Newton slapped me eighteen times in that. It should have been titled "She Who Gets Slapped."

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