Guess the 1st lesbian kiss on-screen? 💋

Can you guess the FIRST on-screen lesbian kiss??? 💋

🏳️‍🌈 Maybe 2014 when same-sex marriage was legalised in the UK?
🏳️‍🌈 Or 2015 when it was legalised in the US?
🏳️‍🌈 Perhaps 1968 after the Hays Code fell out of use?

Oh you just knew Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich had to be involved somehow! Curious to learn more about Queen Christina's fascinating story? 👑

#QueerHistory #QueenChristina #GretaGarbo #LoveIsLove

[kathleenlajeunesse]

Fun fact that kiss was almost cut out of the film. Marlene Dietrich devised a scheme to keep it in by having her character take a flower from the girl and give it to Gary Cooper. The powers that wanted it cut were forced to leave it in for the sake of continuity

[valerymarier]

Additional fun fact: The first ever moving image (using an invention that was a precursor to film) of a kiss was also between two women shot by Eadweard Muybridge in 1882.

[jennifers]

I can’t get enough of a 1930’s lady in a tuxedo… 🤩🤵‍♀️🤵🏻‍♀️

[cickap.p.]

The way that girl in the first film hid her face after the kiss is so precious 😍

[florbalsamo]

There's also the 1931 german film Mädchen in Uniform, which is considered the first film in history with a lesbian plot, and it features a lesbian kiss.

[sebeckley]

And the stars were Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo who both had affairs with women, were famous for being androgynous and claimed not to know each other despite having been in the same German film back in the late 1920s.

[santagonewrong]

This may have been the first that was aired, but the first ever filmed kiss in history was actually between two nude women. It's from the 1880s and was one of the first recordings ever made.

It was officially intended as an anatomical reference recording how human bodies move while kissing. It was nude in order to show their musculature more clearly. The guy who filmed it chose two women to *reduce* the obscenity (as he saw it). There was a cultural idea that women didn't really have sexual desire of their own, and so without any male involvement, there couldn't be any impropriety.

Sadly, he didn't even care enough about the identities of his actors/models to record their names, so we don't really know who either of them were.

[spaceaxolotl]

And historians will say they were very good friends

[marlenezarah]

I was named after Marlene Dietrich (the actress who fist kissed a woman on screen) and I was born on national coming out day.
I was litterally born to be queer! 😅

[MariaEduarda-ucgt]

dietrich & garbo always at the scene of the crime 😭

[failedlabexperimentnumber]

There is something about lesbians kissing in a black and white movie that feels powerful, i can’t explain it.

[RachaelTheRed]

Of course Marlene Dietrich was involved. 😏 What an icon!

[TC-]

Pre Hays code movies are pretty wild. More people should realize that a lot of our social conservativism was manufactured through things like the Hays code.

[michaeldevlin]

I figured it would be ages ago. People seem to have always been less bothered by 2 women kissing.

[figmo]

I knew this one! American cinema was much more progressive (and closer to reality mores-wise) before the Hayes Code went into effect.

[chrysanthemum]

Why am I not surprised that one of the first movie showcasing a lesbian kiss is about Queen Christina? 😅

[PhoebeFayRuthLouise]

I was so excited to already know this answer! Good job educating everyone, Jessica! You rule!

[fakehistoryhunter]

What about the 2 women in drag kissing in ‘The danger girl’ (1916) or the women kissing passionately during prison scene in ‘Manslaughter’ (1922)?

[ember-brandt]

THERE WAS AN EVEN EARLIER ONE - a lesbian kiss in the silent film *Manslaughter (1922)!!*

[WonderfulAkari]

Women weren't considered sexual beings so two women kissing was just very good friends territory.