Jan. 31, 1946: Vegreville kissing expert fails to impress hometown women
Vegreville’s self-titled “kissing expert” was exposed by the town’s women and men as nothing special with no such talent that they knew of.
Earl R. Graham’s claim to be a lip-locking adviser caused a stir as far away as New York City, but a Journal reporter’s visit to the town, 102 kilometres east of Edmonton, found he caused no female hearts to flutter there.
The so-called “kiss king” was away in Vermilion that day, but friends and neighbours said they were unaware of his talent, if in fact he had it.
The slightly built 44-yearold cook, who worked in a little café on main street, made headlines three weeks earlier after writing to the Edmonton Chamber of Commerce about knowing of 23 different ways to kiss that he claimed he’d shared with 2,000 couples, improving their marriages.
The chamber had attracted a list of such unusual occupations after being approached by a Hollywood film company looking for northern Albertans with unusual occupations that might be used as subject matter for a short movie.
Besides the kiss king, the chamber heard from a man claiming he could catch flies, tie light thread around their necks and hang advertising slogans from it before letting the flies loose.
There was also a man in Yellowknife who claimed to walk on his hands to save shoe leather; an Edmontonian who had collected 20,000 gag cartoons in 50 scrap books over 12 years; another who made curling equipment in his basement that was used by 144 clubs across Canada; and someone who had collected thousands of old shoes, no two alike.
Since coming forward, the kiss king’s story had been picked up by an American radio show, and a New York theatre invited him to come and explain his techniques in person. That prompted people to send him 2,300 letters from as far away as the southern United States, Graham said, mostly from married couples who’d lost their pucker power.
The married father of three had said the “holds” are everything to a successful kiss, prompting his amused wife, a patient in a Calgary hospital, to write him asking: “How has it happened you have never used those holds on me?”