#the clock

Carlo Farneti (1892–1961), “L’Horloge” (The Clock)

from ‘Les Fleur du Mal’ by Charles Baudelaire

hand coloured pochoir lithograph, c. 1935

"Why do flowers have to be for anything? Isn't it enough that they have colour and form, and that they make you feel good?"

I think you can find out just as much about somebody in a minute as you can by knowing them a whole lifetime.

CRACK COMICS (vol. 1) #8 (December, 1940). Cover is believed to be by Gill Fox.

Movie of the Day: The Clock

Judy Garland shines in this movie; it was her first dramatic role, and her first starring vehicle in which she did not sing. She stars here as a New York City woman who meets a soldier (Robert Walker) on 48-hour leave. The two fall in love and spend the entire two days together. That description really sells this movie short; it's one of the great romantic dramas.

Judy had asked MGM to let her star in a straight dramatic role, and if anything, her performance here shows she should have had more of them. Producer Arthur Freed found the script for her and assigned Fred Zinnemann to direct, but Garland requested a change in director after about a month due to a lack of professional chemistry between the two and disappointing dailies. She requested Vincente Minnelli, who had directed her previous film, Meet Me in St. Louis, and with whom she had become romantically involved during production. They rekindled their romance here, and by the end of filming they were engaged.

For Walker, things weren't so happy. Just before filming began, he discovered his wife, the actress Jennifer Jones, was having an affair with David O. Selznick and wanted a divorce. He drank heavily throughout the production; Garland would often find him in a bar and nurse him back to sobriety so he could appear before cameras the next morning.

The film had a limited release on March 30, 1945 before opening to a wider release in May. The film made a respectable profit, but nothing like the success of Meet Me in St. Louis. As a result, Garland didn't do a dramatic, non-singing role until Judgment at Nuremberg in 1961.