Editing Melody Ranch (section)

===Casting===
''Melody Ranch'' marks the first romantic leading lady role for dancer [[Ann Miller]]. In one love scene Miller and Autry kiss. Negative advance publicity, however, led Republic Pictures to cut the kiss from the final print.<ref name="magers-176">Magers 2007, p. 176.</ref> Autry later recalled, 
{{Blockquote|Actually we kissed there at the telephone. There was a lot of (advance) publicity over that. The public relations department at republic put out a story I was going to be kissing Ann Miller in a picture. So they were flooded with a lot of letters from the kids saying 'Don't let Gene Autry kiss Ann Miller in the picture—that's sissy!' So finally at the last minute (Republic) said, 'You're taking a chance on it—why raise a controversy with the kids?' so they cut it all out.<ref name="magers-176"/>}} Miller would later claim incorrectly that she received Gene's first screen kiss, a distinction that belongs to [[Barbara Pepper]] and [[Ann Rutherford]].<ref name="magers-176"/>