At times the who kissed whom carnival turned into a circus. Some media outlets and function organizers played the claimant kissing sailors as a sad sideshow. The World War II veterans unwittingly cooperated with those who used their claim for their own benefit. Some kissing sailor candidates finger-pointed and swore at one another. During each undignified ordeal, one sailor’s volume trumped another’s reasoning. Misinformation reigned. While at times entertaining, the endeavor paraded the former sailors as a spectacle. People looked at them and listened to their spiels but did not know whom to believe. The sorry exposition continued. LIFE watched and let it all happen.
The circus employed almost every aspiring kissing sailor. Sometimes what thrust them into the center of the ring had little to do with the attention they sought. In 2006 an alarming incident propelled kissing sailor claimant Carl Muscarello into the news. Two burglars, seventeen and nineteen years old, entered Muscarello’s home in Plantation, Florida, they found with the intent to harm anyone in their way. Muscarello’s wife standing in her kitchen. One of the thugs stabbed her with a screwdriver. Shortly afterward the burglar took a golf club to her thirty-six-year-old son’s head. As the seventeen-year-old accomplice fled, Carl Muscarello, a former New York police officer, came upon the ruckus and proceeded to put a chokehold on the remaining burglar.1 The eighty-year-old Muscarello kept his grasp on the intruder as they crashed into several fixtures and walls, ultimately landing on the back patio. Muscarello explained, “I had him pinned down to the concrete by the pool floor when the police got here.”2 The ensuing headline in the Miami Herald read, “‘Kissing Sailor’ Sinks Invader.” Muscarello made the most of the otherwise troubling occurrence. In a not-so-veiled reference to his part in Eisenstaedt’s photograph of the 1945 V-J Day kiss, Muscarello offered, “I often happen to be at a strange place at a strange time.”3 The story ran in several publications nationwide and appeared for months on the internet. During this time frame Muscarello’s link to the kissing sailor enjoyed far more attention than Mendonsa’s assertion or, for that matter, any other claimant’s story.
Approximately a year after Muscarello’s headline grab, Glenn McDuffie burst onto the kissing sailor scene. Propelled forward by forensic artist Lois Gibson, the “proof” she presented convinced many to believe McDuffie’s claim to be the kissing sailor. Though LIFE continued to communicate its noncommittal mindset through short and snappy prepared statements, McDuffie’s story created feverish activity among other media outlets. Arriving on the scene swinging and swearing, McDuffie put on too good a show to ignore. Cantankerous, sometimes controversial, and more often than not confrontational, this contentious kissing sailor candidate abruptly bumped every other petitioner one step down the kissing sailor claimant pecking order.
In his quest for recognition as the kissing sailor, McDuffie took no prisoners. Of LIFE, McDuffie claimed, “They stole my picture and they didn’t tell nobody about me.”4 To Edith Shain he charged, “You didn’t even know he (Eisenstaedt) took your picture until somebody told you!”5 Of photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt, McDuffie charged, “That man’s been lying about that picture ever since he took it.”6 And of an article of clothing (or rates) hanging from the kissing sailor’s right side, McDuffie stressed, “There ain’t nothing hanging from no pocket.”7 The North Carolinian former sailor never lost his World War II fighting spirit.
Though no television program ever ventured to interview all the sailor claimants together, Glenn McDuffie and George Mendonsa participated on the same radio program in 2007.8 During the Johnny Brandmeier radio program on Chicago’s WLUP 97.9, George experienced McDuffie’s wrath via the arrangements of a less-than-forthcoming Chicago radio programmer. A spokesperson for the station had contacted George to see if he would call in his remembrances of the 1945 V-J Day Times Square kiss during Brandmeier’s show. George accepted the invitation, welcoming the opportunity to reintroduce his version of the occurrence and the reasons he, not McDuffie, is the kissing sailor. The station did not inform Mendonsa that Glenn McDuffie would also take part in the conversation. (McDuffie was also unaware of Mendonsa’s participation.) The ensuing combative dialogue between the two former sailors served the purposes of entertainment more than the dissemination of meaningful information. This may well have been the design and to the liking of the station’s producers. Throughout the exchange, McDuffie fired off several personal attacks at George. The comments included, “You’re a Goddamn liar,” “You’re a son of a bitch,” “You sorry son of a bitch,” and “Ugly bastard.” McDuffie’s most purposeful utterance (repeated numerous times throughout the program) questioned Mendonsa, “Why don’t you take a polygraph?” By the show’s end, neither sailor could be taken seriously. The station used the World War II veterans for audience appeal. Regrettably, ratings trumped respect. Undoubtedly, many listeners were part of the generation that had benefited generously from McDuffie’s and Mendonsa’s sacrifices.
A year later Glenn McDuffie appeared on a television show hosted by Johnny Brandmeier.9 Neither the guest nor the host had mellowed over the passing year. Brandmeier loaded up the show’s docket with telephone calls from George Mendonsa and Edith Shain. Once again McDuffie took shots at everyone. To Mendonsa, he said, “All you done is lied and ripped people off. . . . You don’t have any proof you ugly son of a bitch. . . . You ought to die you lying bastard.” He spoke in a similar demeaning tone to Edith Shain: “How did he [Eisenstaedt] remember about you? You couldn’t see nothing but your leg, hand and arm?” Brandmeier played up all exchanges, repeating McDuffie’s charges, posing as the nurse while McDuffie demonstrated his hold on the nurse, and then leaving the set with his guest to get a drink at a bar. And the circus sideshow played on.
Though McDuffie frustrated Mendonsa, he was not George’s biggest problem. LIFE continued to command that role. They had cemented that function in an earlier brush-off scene. In that particular occurrence, LIFE’s rejection of George lacked decorum. Their message came across as belligerent and belittling. When a television reporter approached LIFE for commentary about George’s claim to be the V-J Day kissing sailor, the mega-publishing firm held nothing back. The Crusaders’ commentator shared with George, “They’re not interested in you. They’re not interested in the photo. They don’t want to talk about it. And whatever you do, leave the photographer alone.” While certainly LIFE continued to be interested in the photo, George, the subject of the magazine’s most popular photograph, had become a nuisance to the multi-million-dollar magazine firm. They wanted no part of him.
The rejection hurt but did not deter George. For more than thirty years he continued his overtures to Time-Life. In fairness to LIFE, they probably couldn’t hear him, unless he screamed really loudly from the street. LIFE barred George from entering the very building that hosts one of history’s most popular photos, the one George helped make famous.
Over the ensuing years, spokesmen at LIFE claimed no interest in all matters involving the kissing sailor’s identity. But that wasn’t true. While LIFE bolted the front door shut to inquiries directing the kissing sailor’s identity, they left the back door ajar. The magazine used this exit to aggressively challenge related kissing sailor matters that concerned them. Their actions reveal an interesting dichotomy.
When confronted with George’s and many other claimants’ questions, the publishing giant replied in a passive-aggressive tone. The responses vacillated between two prefabricated renditions; the helpless, we cannot determine the identity variety; or the more heartwarming version, somehow Eisenstaedt managed to get all the kissing sailors in one picture. However, when one claimant’s story proved provocative enough, then the publishing giant that earlier ventured no opinion on the matter charged forward to thwart the claim. Suddenly, the publication that knew so little could access a stuffed treasure chest of archives, logs, time sheets, and contextual references. LIFE then heaved the barrage of proof to bury the former World War II sailor who dared to suggest that he might be the kissing sailor in Eisenstaedt’s photo. Once they settled the matter before them with counterarguments, the magazine’s spokesperson returned to the safe confines of their tall, glass building, making sure to close the door behind them. Once again, their modus operandi, we just don’t know, returned.
LIFE also unleashed its more assertive side on entities who did not claim to be the kissing sailor, but who did have kissing sailor business to attend to. In at least one instance Time, Inc., forthrightly pursued an artist who wanted to honor World War II’s triumphant end. Seward Johnson approached LIFE to sculpt a statue of Eisenstaedt’s V-J Day, 1945, Times Square. When LIFE refused to grant permission, Johnson used the picture of the same event taken by Lt. Victor Jorgensen.10 Duplicating Jorgensen’s image does not infringe on copyright laws because it is filed in the National Archives and therefore is part of the public domain.
Johnson sculpted a piece that looked very much like Lieutenant Jorgensen’s still frame, Kissing the War Goodbye. Of course, a likeness to Jorgensen’s picture also means that there would be a strong resemblance to Eisenstaedt’s V-J Day, 1945, Times Square photograph—for anyone who cared to make such an observation. Jeff Burak, LIFE’s business development manager, cared—a lot. He stated that Johnson needed the magazine’s permission to create the sculpture because the creation was a “derivative” of Eisenstaedt’s protected photograph.11 Burak argued that, unlike Eisenstaedt’s four photographs, Jorgensen’s singular photograph does not show the nurse’s knees or pointed white-shoed foot. Johnson’s sculpture treats these limbs because he presumed the nurse had both knees and feet. Time, Inc., showed little interest in Johnson’s presumptions. The publishing giant concerned itself solely with guarding the by-then-deceased Eisenstaedt’s famed photo, apparently for the image’s continued dissemination as news.
While Johnson did not enjoy LIFE’s surge of attention, in some ways, George Mendonsa envied him. Unlike Johnson, from 1987 onward, George did not receive a communicative drop from LIFE. However, in August 2007 that drought almost ended. Barbara (Bobbi) Baker Burrows, director of photography at LIFE Books, contacted George Mendonsa by phone. Though she made it clear that her call did not speak for her employer of forty years, according to George, Burrows felt badly about the way LIFE had treated him over the years. She was bothered also by the latest publicity enjoyed by Glenn McDuffie. She conveyed interest in meeting George and learning more about his claims. Within the coming weeks George offered Burrows more than she had bargained for.
George wanted to tell Burrows everything, and often. He had questions, too. Why had LIFE treated him so harshly? Did they look over his proof? What did they think? Why hadn’t LIFE treated him with the respect he deserved? He demanded answers. He didn’t like waiting. He never did. Besides, he thought, thirty years was a long time to figure out who was in that picture. He thought LIFE should know by now. He wanted and needed their recognition. Maybe, George thought, Burrows could get him the credit he deserved. George kept calling her. She stopped answering the phone.
Bobbi Baker Burrows knows a lot about LIFE. She should. She worked there for most of her adult life. During her climb up the media ladder, she never lost her grounded sensibilities, pleasing disposition, and love of the picture. In keeping with her persona, her Time-Life office amounts to a modest cubicle void of any intimidating pretense. Time-Life books form piles on desktops. Classic LIFE pictures hang on the walls. She can tell visitors the story behind all of them, and about the photographers who took them. Of all those photographers, she knows most about Alfred Eisenstaedt.
Burrows worked closely with her friend Eisie. As his boss, assistant, friend, and admirer, she and her husband Russell Burrows (son of famous LIFE photographer Larry Burrows), knew Eisie well. Over the years Bobbi vacationed with the Father of Photojournalism on Martha’s Vineyard. At work and at play, their conversations often focused on photography, including Eisie’s most famous photo.
Bobbie Baker Burrows wanted to find out who kissed whom in her old friend’s most popular photo. And after studying the picture for years, she thought she knew the identity of Eisie’s kissing sailor. But she wanted to be sure.
Her employer was less concerned about recognizing their kissing sailor. If anyone ever doubted LIFE’s resolve to maintain the kissing sailor’s anonymity, Time-Life Books editorial director, Robert Sullivan, removed all uncertainty. In 2007 a front-page USA Today Associated Press article quoted Sullivan, “The recent (claims) are ‘CSI’ type inquiries. We think that’s great but we just can’t know for sure on our end. We can’t be in a position of anointing one or the other without hard proof.” In the same article Sullivan indicated that the identities of the couple in the famous photo will officially remain a mystery.12
In 2009 Bobbi Baker Burrows came closer than any LIFE employee ever had to publicly ending the mystery over the sailor’s identity. In a rare article on Greta Friedman’s claim to the V-J Day nurse in Eisenstaedt’s picture, Frederick magazine writer Guy Fletcher wrote, “Bobbi Baker Burrows, director of photography for Life Books, thinks she knows the identities, but she’s not ready to say, at least not publicly.” He then quoted Burrows: “I want to have it completely and well-thought-out before I issue a public statement.”13 While Burrows thought, Mendonsa continued to wait, and grow older.
Even without LIFE’s valuable participation in determining the sailor’s and nurse’s identities, one might think others’ attention to the kissing sailor’s identity would at least lead to better informed opinions. However, just the opposite seems to be more accurate. According to Marshall Berman, author of On the Town, Eisenstaedt’s V-J Day, 1945, Times Square appeared on the cover of LIFE.14 It did not. Another article claimed the New York Daily News published Lieutenant Jorgensen’s Kissing the War Goodbye on August 15, 1945.15 They did not. Many assume Eisenstaedt took his famous picture just after the official announcement of Japan’s surrender. He did not. In actuality, Eisenstaedt snapped the picture hours before that radio broadcast.16 When President Truman made his announcement just after 7:00 pm, the center of Times Square appeared packed with people. Far too much open space exists in the background of V-J Day, 1945, Times Square and Kissing the War Goodbye for the pictures to have been taken during the evening.
While some sources may unknowingly spread erroneous information about the kissing sailor photo, others profited from the dissemination of mistaken reporting. On Ebay one can purchase copies of V-J Day, 1945, Times Square with the “real kissing sailor’s signature.” Most often Glenn McDuffie or Carl Muscarello pens their name to those pictures. One can buy a valuable “piece of history,” usually for $29.95. One ad on Ebay in 2008 read:
The nurse was identified as Edith Shane [Shain] and the sailor because of his job with the New York City Police Department was kept as secret till the 50th anniversary when Carl and Edith were re-united by Life magazine. A lot of old sailors claim to be the sailor but the proof is the birthmark that shows up in the original photo on his right arm. That birthmark is still there and not on the pretenders. Here is your chance to obtain one of the most beloved images in the 20th century signed by the man himself. Comes with a certificate of authenticity from Carl Muscarello himself.
The seller circled the referenced birthmark on the sailor’s right forearm. While very persuasive to the uninformed consumer, the mark is actually a dark patch of hair. Carl Muscarello has no such patch of hair on his arm. Carl has never made such a claim. Still, the improper information misguides those who seek to be enlightened about such matters or to purchase an actual piece of history. The adage “buyer beware” applies.
Misinformation aside, the autographed photo described above could be considered a bargain. In another advertised opportunity to “own a piece of history,” an 11 × 14 photo of V-J Day, 1945, Times Square, signed by Carl Muscarello and Edith Shain was advertised at $2,799. The ad assured, “Although many men have claimed that they were the sailor in the picture, then-nurse Edith Shain identified Muscarello as the man who kissed her in Times Square to celebrate the victory over Japan, ending WWII.” One wonders where all the money from such a sale goes, considering Muscarello is adamant that he earns no profits from signings.
Robert Hariman, professor of communication at Northwestern University, and John Louis Lucaites, an associate professor of communication and culture at Indiana University, probably would pay nothing for an autographed copy of V-J Day, 1945, Times Square. In their book, No Caption Needed, they present a historical, psychological, and sociological treatment of history’s most recognized images. One of their chapters discusses Eisenstaedt’s V-J Day, 1945, Times Square. Though they offer Eisenstaedt’s most popular photograph much scholarly attention, both authors seem a bit befuddled by all the hoopla surrounding the kissing sailor’s identity. At the same time, they recognize the pursuit to be important. Dr. Hariman writes, “It’s sort of like claiming a lost lottery ticket, except you’re not getting paid in cash but in media attention. It’s one way to measure the significance of a photo; the lengths people will go to identify themselves with it.”17 Dr. John Louis Lucaites adds, “It never ceases to amaze us how entranced the culture is with ‘who’ the ‘real’ kissers are and the incredible lengths to which we go to make the determination.”18 It is incredible.
While Dr. Hariman and Dr. Lucaites have little interest in the kissing sailor’s identity, that doesn’t stop them from characterizing the anonymous couple: “The sailor and nurse probably come from lower—or lower middle-class backgrounds. . . . The sailor is exuberant because he has just been released from the probability of being killed or wounded in battle. The nurse has taken to the streets because she, too, wants to live without fear, separation, pain, and death.”19
For not caring much about the kissers’ identities, Hariman and Lucaites describe V-J Day, 1945, Times Square’s primary participants with incredible accuracy.
Others who did not attempt to determine the kissing sailor’s identity (or ascertain what actually happened in V-J Day, 1945, Times Square) nevertheless expressed outrage about what they perceived to be going on in the photo. Rather than seeing a sailor and nurse celebrating joyously at the end of a long war, some saw an aggressor groping a victimized woman. Still others, like The New Yorker magazine, offered controversial portrayals of V-J Day, 1945, Times Square’s sailor and nurse. In its June 17, 1996, issue The New Yorker substituted for George and Greta a drawing of two homosexual men replicating the V-J Day, 1945, pose. The magazine article referenced Eisenstaedt’s photo as an “eruption of lust.”20 Clearly, the writer did not interview Greta Friedman for her description of the event.
Even as Americans make their way through the early years of the twenty-first century, Eisenstaedt’s iconic 1945 image continues to draw interest. Mel Levey, age twenty in 2005, took part in a Times Square Alliance sixtieth commemoration of the famous kiss. He concluded that the V-J Day, 1945, Times Square image is more famous than the event it commemorates.21 Dr. Robert Hariman agrees: “The basic fact here is that 60 years later you’ve got a carnival going on in Times Square because of a photograph. Not because of the event, not because of V-J Day, but because someone caught it with a photograph.”22
The interest in Eisenstaedt’s picture approaches an almost cultish following, as admirers two and three generations removed from the end of World War II join older Americans and gaze in wonderment at the kissing sailor and nurse. Aaron Rosenberg, a paralegal who first met Edith Shain at a conference on the 1940s, drove the celebrated nurse in a gay pride parade. He said of the experience, “It’s amazing to drive her in the car. It’s like the wave at Dodger Stadium. People are really passionate about that picture.”23 And some of those people were born several decades after the last day of World War II when a sailor struck a pose in Times Square for the ages. Accordingly, the picture adorns pocketbooks, helps sell mints, and continues to be hung in college dorm rooms by girls young enough to be the kissing sailor’s great-granddaughter.
While the growing number of admirers may be a positive development, the circus’ sideshow treatment is not. Consider the New York Times reporting of the Times Square Alliance’s V-J Kiss commemoration in 2005:
A hot, angry mob of photographers stood pressed together yesterday on a platform in Times Square, shouting orders at a tiny old lady. “This way!” hollered one photographer. “One more time!” yelled another. “You got to kiss him on the lips!” “She doesn’t want it!” said another. The woman, Edith Shain, 87, smiled politely but refused to grant the man by her side a kiss on the lips as she says she did 60 years earlier in the Alfred Eisenstaedt photograph that captured the euphoric end of World War II. In that picture, a sailor dips a nurse in an embrace that Mr. Eisenstaedt likened to “sculpture.” But yesterday, each time Carl Muscarello, 78, pulled Ms. Shain in for a kiss, he got her cheek. The photographers moaned. The event organizers pleaded. The sun beat mercilessly down. Then, finally, Ms. Shain relented. A kiss was exchanged between the diminutive woman and the former New York police detective that held all the passion of brushing elbows. It was hardly the spontaneous picture of elation captured in 1945, but the cameras clicked and rolled, their operators satiated.24
Serious doubts about the couple’s true identity added to the mayhem at the Times Square Alliance event. A comedy of errors existed. The Alliance invited George Mendonsa to be on hand at the celebration, but he refused when he learned that Edith Shain accepted their invitation to be the nurse at the occasion. (George continues to maintain that she was a “fake.”) Though Carl Muscarello willingly participated, shortly afterward he no longer partook in V-J Day commemorations with Shain owing to his discomfort with her handling of such events, as well as her rejection of his part in the famous photo.25 Adding to the absurdity, the Time Square Alliance ventures no definitive opinion as to the kissing sailor’s true identity, but extends invitations to claimants giving the impression that the one who accepts the invitation is indeed who they purport to be. Making matters more convoluted still, when a reporter at the 2005 reenactment of the V-J Day, 1945, Times Square kiss asked Edith Shain whether Muscarello is “the one,” she replied, “I can’t say he isn’t. I just can’t say he is. There is no way to tell.”26
There is a way to tell. With the willingness of Time-Life and a team of historians, forensic anthropologists, photographic experts, and cutting edge technology, the means are at hand to recognize the participants in Alfred Eisenstaedt’s beloved photograph. Even time remains an ally. The sailor and dental assistant continue to live among us. They anxiously wait to commemorate with all that day from more than a half-century ago when destiny drew them together for just an instant so that they might express what nearly everyone felt.
But time moves on. Eventually, the real kissing sailor, and the dental assistant he kissed, will be no more. These two national treasures will be lost to a world that never really got to cherish either one of them. Instead, a circus of claimed poses and clever posturing will bask in the limelight of a Leica’s alleged flash. And a disputed mystery will forever overshadow the humble truth.