The Clock (1945 film)
The Clock (UK title Under the Clock) is a 1945 American romantic drama film starring Judy Garland and Robert Walker and directed by Garland's future husband, Vincente Minnelli. This was Garland's first dramatic role, as well as her first starring vehicle in which she did not sing. Plot A small-town soldier, Joe Allen (Robert Walker), on a 48-hour leave, meets Alice Mayberry (Judy Garland) in crowded Pennsylvania Station when she trips over his foot and breaks the heel off one of her shoes. Although it is Sunday, Joe gets a shoe-repair shop owner to open his store and repair her shoe. Alice asks Joe where he is going, and he says he is on leave but has no definite destination while in New York. He asks to accompany her on her way home atop a double-decker bus, and she points out landmarks along the way, including the Central Park Zoo and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, both of which they stop and visit. When he asks her whether she is busy that evening, she says that she is. However, when he persists, and chases the bus she is riding down the street, she relents, promising to meet him under the clock at the Astor Hotel at 7:00 that evening. Although her roommate chastises Alice for "picking up" a soldier, Alice keeps her date with Joe, arriving late, and the two have dinner. Having missed the last bus home, they accept a ride with a milk man named Al Henry (James Gleason). When Al's truck has a flat tire, he and his passengers visit a lunch room to call for assistance. A drunk strikes Al, blackening his eye, and after the company's road repairman has changed the truck's tire, Alice and Joe spend the night delivering milk to their benefactor's customers. Later, they take Al home, where Al's wife invites them to join them for breakfast. Alice and Joe agree to spend the day together before he must return to his base. However, on the way to her office so she can make arrangements for her absence, they become separated in the crowd while boarding a subway train. They try frantically to find one another, but they don't even know each other's last name. They finally reunite by returning to the place where they first met - the escalator at Penn Station. Having professed their love, Joe asks Alice to marry him before his departure that evening, and she consents. They run a maze of red tape and regulations, which nearly prevent them from doing so. Through their perseverance, they win over bureaucrats upon whom their success or failure depends. Afterwards, Alice is sad, because she thinks that the hurried ceremony was "ugly". Only after they repeat their vows alone in a church pew does Alice feel truly married. They spend their honeymoon night at a hotel and have a final breakfast together. After Alice sees Joe off at Penn Station, as his leave ends and he returns to war, she