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Famed Times Square kiss mystery deepens

By David Freedlander | amNewYork Staff Writer

August 15, 2007

Glenn McDuffie holds a portrait of himself as a young man, left, and a copy of Alfred Eisenstaedt's iconic Life magazine shot of a sailor embracing a nurse in a white uniform, right, at his Houston home Tuesday, July 31, 2007. (AP Photo/Pat Sullivan / August 13, 2007)

Edith Shain, long thought to be the woman in the famous V-J day photograph of a nurse and a sailor kissing to celebrate the end of World War II, reasserted Tuesday that it was in fact her in the picture.

Monday, Glenn McDuffie, an 80-year-old Houston retiree, cast doubts on the true identity of the woman, telling amNewYork, "I know the woman I kissed, and she ain't it."

Nonsense, she insisted. "This latest man, no way. I ask all of the men who claim it was them what was going on around us, what they said to me, and this one didn't know."

Dozens of men through the decades have claimed to have been the sailor who wrapped the young nurse in his arms when news of the end of the war came through on the ticker at 1 Times Square. Earlier this month, a forensic analyst with the Houston Police Department conclusively named McDuffie as the amorous seaman.

The identity of the woman, however, has not been questioned since 1980, when Life Magazine photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt singled out Shain.

Reached Tuesday at her home in Santa Monica, Shain said she doubted McDuffie's claim that he's the sailor.

"There is no way of knowing who it actually was," she said. "A lot of men over the years have claimed to be the sailor and there is now way to negate them -- I bet they all kissed a lot of women that day."

Whoever locked lips that day was no matter to the estimated 300 people who showed up at Times Square yesterday to re-enact the iconic photograph. Veterans from World War II and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were on hand along with couples from around the country for the annual Times Square Kiss-In.

"I was here when it happened," said Abner Greenberg, 83, of Manhattan, who remembered kissing more girls that day 62 years ago than he ever had in his life. "People were hugging each other, men, women, it didn't matter. I'd never seen anything like it."

An estimated 2 million people, said to be the largest crowd ever assembled in human history, rushed to the square to celebrate the end of the war.

"It was one of the iconic moments of Times Square as this kind of iconic public place of the kind we don't have in cities any more," said James Traub, author of "The Devil's Playground: A Century of Pleasure and Profit in Times Square."

"It had this kind of public importance as a great democratic gathering place."

Shain remembers the feeling that day as "electric."

"You could just feel people's love pouring out," she said.

When the sailor grabbed her, "There was no way I could object. He had been out there fighting for me."