The Clock - Symbol at end - Agree?

The candles were being extinguished because the wedding was over. I suppose it could symbolize his death in combat, but that's probably up to each viewer's imagination.

As for being "with child" (haven't heard that term in many moons), it's also ambiguous whether or not she was a virgin on her wedding night, but...given the type of character Judy was playing, and the fact that it was 1945 and (despite the war and its loosening of moral standards) most girls in their early twenties still kept their virginity until marriage...she probably was.

It's possible she got pregnant after her first sexual experience. Stuff happens. It happened to one of my wife's high school friends, and changed her whole life. Maybe kids just liked Robert Walker because he was more relaxed after he and Judy...well...I think you folks know what I mean...

When they saw the ships in the river (which also means they were not in Central Park), he mentioned a convoy ("that's why I'm here"), and that he was leaving for Europe...probably England, as he himself said to Judy...and not the Pacific, as someone else has said in another post. So the palm trees don't mean he's going to the Pacific at all.

However, if he's leaving from New York, it makes NO sense for him to get on another train. So he's not sailing past Lady Liberty. Why he's even in New York at all, and by himself, is a little unclear. Maybe he was coming back (via a connection in NYC) from his hometown in Indiana. And he had a three-day pass. So he decided to lay over (no pun intended) in the Apple.

But at one point, he DID ask about a train to Aberdeen, MD...which is near D.C. There's a military base there, as well. So his outfit isn't in New York or New Jersey. He may be sailing out of Baltimore...or even Norfolk, VA...a major port of embarkation during WWII.

A lot of it doesn't make sense. It isn't supposed to. It's Hollywood. It's wartime. Everything was rushed and frantic and people jumped into hasty marriages because they didn't know what would happen next, or even how much time they had left to live.

A lot of those unions lasted, which gave us the Baby Boomers. And a lot of them didn't, which was why the U.S. divorce rate soared in 1946. It has never even come close...before or since.

I first saw this movie at thirteen, on afternoon TV. Too young to understand what it was really about...wartime loneliness and urgency. People really did behave like this in the Forties. Audiences probably ate it up, and used a lot of hankies.

In 1945, everyone hoped that "buying it" (being killed) would happen to the other guy...or somebody else's husband. Nobody thought their marriage would end in tragedy. I know my mother and her kid sister didn't. My aunt's new husband was sent to Europe as a replacement. He ended up in the Battle of the Bulge. They never found enough of him to bury.



Every time you make a typo...the errorists win...