House Crazy Sarah loves this iconic 1945 photo of a sailor in Times Square kissing a woman in a nurse uniform during a moment of passion after learning of the end of the war.
But the true story behind the photo is not one of a couple reuniting in a romantic embrace, rather, it was a knee-jerk reaction of ‘thank god the war is over’ by a tipsy sailor. He literally just grabbed a random woman on the street and kissed her out of jubilation that the war was done.
So maybe this isn’t the best photo example of vintage love in old photographs.
Instead, House Crazy Sarah has scoured the interwebs to find snapshots of real-life couples from days of old in honor of this Valentine’s Day.
To spice things up, House Crazy Sarah has interspersed these sweet photos with some steamy vintage love letters from famous figures.
“I don’t know how to tell you just how much I miss you. I love you till my heart could burst. All I love, all I want, all I need is you—forever. I want to be just where you are and be just what you want me to be.”
-Marilyn Monroe to Joe DiMaggio
“Out of the depths of my happy heart wells a great tide of love and prayer for this priceless treasure that is confined to my life-long keeping. You cannot see its intangible waves as they flow towards you, darling, but in these lines you will hear, as it were, the distant beating of the surf.”
-Mark Twain to his wife Olivia Langdon
“Nothing compares to your hands, nothing like the green-gold of your eyes. My body is filled with you for days and days. You are the mirror of the night. The violent flash of lightning. The dampness of the earth. The hollow of your armpits is my shelter. My fingers touch your blood. All my joy is to feel life spring from your flower-fountain that mine keeps to fill all the paths of my nerves which are yours.”
-Frida Kahlo to Diego Rivera
“I can’t say how every time I ever put my arms around you I felt that I was home”
-Ernest Hemingway to Marlene Dietrich
“Though still in bed, my thoughts go out to you, my Immortal Beloved, Be calm-love me-today-yesterday-what tearful longings for you-you-you-my life-my all-farewell. Oh continue to love me-never misjudge the most faithful heart of your beloved. Ever thine. Ever mine. Ever ours.”
-Beethoven to his mystery “Immortal Beloved”
“Dearest — my body is simply crazy with wanting you — If you don’t come tomorrow — I don’t see how I can wait for you — I wonder if your body wants mine the way mine wants yours — the kisses — the hotness — the wetness — all melting together — the being held so tight that it hurts — the strangle and the struggle.”
-Georgia O’Keeffe to Alfred Stieglitz
“Everyone is furious with me for going back to you, but they don’t understand us. I feel that it is only with you that I can do anything at all. Do remake my ruined life for me, and then our friendship and love will have a different meaning to the world.”
-Oscar Wilde to Lord Alfred Douglas
“Darling – I love these velvet nights. I’ve never been able to decide … whether I love you most in the eternal classic half-lights where it blends with day or in the full religious fan-fare of mid-night or perhaps in the lux of noon.”
-Zelda Fitzgerald to F Scott Fitzgerald
“My love has made me selfish. I cannot exist without you – I am forgetful of everything but seeing you again.”
-John Keats to Fanny Brawne
“I composed a beautiful letter to you in the sleepless nightmare hours of the night, and it has all gone: I just miss you, in a quite simple desperate human way.”
-Vita Sackville-West to Virginia Woolf
“You are not only the solar spectrum with the seven luminous colors, but the sun himself, that illumines, warms, and revivifies! This is what you are, and I am the lowly woman that adores you.”
-Juliette Drouet to Victor Hugo
“We get old and get used to each other. We think alike. We read each other’s minds. We know what the other wants without asking. Sometimes we irritate each a little bit. Maybe sometimes take each other for granted. But once in awhile, like today, I meditate on it and realise how lucky I am to share my life with the greatest woman I ever met. You still fascinate and inspire me. You influence me for the better. You’re the object of my desire, the #1 Earthly reason for me existence. I love you very much.”
-Johnny Cash to June Carter Cash
Happy Valentine’s Day Loves!
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