On screen chemistry explained

Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy have the best screen chemistry ever, according to top scientists.

11:27 27 April 2004

Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy have the best screen chemistry ever, according to top scientists.

The Royal Society of Chemistry tested the silver-screen couple using a special formula - instead of in the lab or box-office and Oscar success.

The nation's top chemists said that - like any chemical reaction - film chemistry needed two contrasting ingredients which combine to make something with "all the right stuff".

John Emsley, author of the report "Vanity, Vitality and Viagra", said sexual chemistry was a big part of screen pairings like Hepburn and Tracy.

"For most people the word chemistry has a different meaning when they talk about sexual chemistry, but to fulfil one you need the other. That's the way the body works. Perfumes, for example, act as human sexual attractants, but essentially they are chemicals," he explained.

In almost all good pairs one person possessed qualities the other lacked, a spokesman for the Royal Society of Chemists noted

"Like anything to do with chemistry, it is all about mixing up a cocktail of ingredients to get the right result.

"With men and women it can be the chemical attraction of love, with pheromones and other hormones being released and the two obviously attracted to each other, which translates well to the audience. Tracy and Hepburn, Bogart and Bacall, Taylor and Burton, are all good examples."

Screen chemistry might need opposites to attract - but this has not stopped the Royal Society including several single sex parings in its list.

"People assume on-screen chemistry is just two good actors doing their job, but it isn't, as several examples have shown," said the spokesman.

"Just look at Madonna and anyone she has acted with. It is about ingredients, characteristics and personality traits. It can be a physical thing like that of two lovers or a humour-based friendship, such as Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau where you just know that they are great mates in real life, too," he added.

'Best Chemistry' top ten

1- Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn - Adam's Rib; Guess Who's Coming to Dinner
2 - Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton - Cleopatra; Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
3 - Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall - The Big Sleep, Key Largo
4 - Mel Gibson and Danny Glover - Lethal Weapon films
5 - Robert Redford and Paul Newman - Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid; The Sting
6 - Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau - The Odd Couple; Hold the Front Page
7 - Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers - Flying Down to Rio; Top Hat
8 - Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman - Casablanca
9 - Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy - Sons of the Desert; Babes in Toyland
10 - Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland - Captain Blood; The Adventures of Robin Hood