The photograph snapped in Times Square the day the Japanese surrendered in World War II would quickly become one of the most famous pictures in American history: A sailor celebrating the war’s end by stealing an exuberant kiss from a pretty woman, bending over with one arm wrapped around her waist and another hooked behind her neck.
The romantic gesture.
“Yeah, that was my girlfriend,” Glenn McDuffie later joked to the guys at Frency’s Barber Shop.
“She was standing out there in the middle of the street, she heard me, I turned around and did like this,” he recalled, bending over at the waist in a 2011 interview. “And I went over there and kissed her.”
Actually, he had never met the woman before the day he stepped out of a subway entrance and heard the war was over. And the photographer didn’t even bother asking his name. And so this iconic sailor in the photo became anonymous.
“Yeah, that was my girlfriend,” Glenn McDuffie later joked to the guys at Frency’s Barber Shop.
“She was standing out there in the middle of the street, she heard me, I turned around and did like this,” he recalled, bending over at the waist in a 2011 interview. “And I went over there and kissed her.”
Actually, he had never met the woman before the day he stepped out of a subway entrance and heard the war was over. And the photographer didn’t even bother asking his name. And so this iconic sailor in the photo became anonymous.
So for more than six decades, McDuffie’s name was lost to history. And when he died in Dallas on March 9, 2014 the old sailor might have passed into obscurity if he hadn't obstinately decided to prove his place for posterity by contacting a police sketch artist.
“I had him come to my house and I had him kissing a pillow,” said Lois Gibson, showing off photographs hanging in her office at Houston police headquarters. “I had him in the same position as the kissing sailor. And I took almost a hundred pictures.”
Gibson, renowned for drawing strikingly precise likenesses of faces using nothing more than clues provided by traumatized witnesses or decomposed corpses, didn't believe she could prove McDuffie’s claim.
“I thought it was impossible,” she recalled. “I would've been thrilled to have the guy live here that was the guy in that famous kissing picture. So when I laid him on top of the other one and I saw it lined up, I started crying.”
After comparing the original photograph with her staged recreation, she had no doubt the retired sailor living in Houston was telling the truth.
“Every strand of muscle, every bone, the ears – the most complicated thing on your head – the ear was exact,” she said. “Everything. It’s him. I’m positive.”
McDuffie became famous after 60 years of obscurity.
After the news broke, McDuffie became famous all over again as the story spread around the world. Suddenly, he was invited to fly first class to naval balls. Sports teams gave him free seats in fancy suites, projecting his picture on stadium screens for cheering crowds.
And he ended up smooching with a lot of women.
“Everywhere he went, women would want to kiss him on the cheek and get their picture taken,” Gibson remembered. “And he was making $200 an hour signing the picture for $10 a picture. He was rolling in money and kissing women.”
With his place in history secured, McDuffie died at 86.
After the news broke, McDuffie became famous all over again as the story spread around the world. Suddenly, he was invited to fly first class to naval balls. Sports teams gave him free seats in fancy suites, projecting his picture on stadium screens for cheering crowds.
And he ended up smooching with a lot of women.
“Everywhere he went, women would want to kiss him on the cheek and get their picture taken,” Gibson remembered. “And he was making $200 an hour signing the picture for $10 a picture. He was rolling in money and kissing women.”
With his place in history secured, McDuffie died at 86.
But that picture of a young sailor stealing a kiss in Times Square will live forever.
Rest in peace dear sailor. You'll always be remembered for that kiss.
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