Clock Work

One of the pleasures I get out of watching old movies on Turner Classic Movies (TCM) is that I get to see what the world looked like to my parents when they were young adults and adults in the 30s, 40s, and 50s, before their life together raising a family and my own memory of what things looked like.

Aside for the obvious scenery, cars, clothes and other things that create dated settings, the dialog does as well.  Consider 'The Glass Key,' A Dashiel Hammet story starring Brian Dunlevy, Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake, made into a 1942 movie.  Brian Dunlevy's younger sister, Bonita Granville, fully dressed in the fashion of a 1940s office working women, hat, gloves and a woman's suit, (Lois Lane look) is miffed and starts to spit out how she's not just a kid, she's: "free, white and..." and before she can get to what is the '21' part of the in-vogue saying, Alan Ladd interrupts her and says '18.'  Now she's really mad. It's like someone dumped cold water on her.  Her adulthood has been pinched off.  And why wouldn't it?  Her nickname is 'Snip.'

There's another dated reference when the local bad boy, gambling honcho, Nick Varna, played by Joseph Calleia, complete with oily look and thin mustache--an early version of a Tony Soprano--is sarcastically referred to by Brian Donlevy's character, Paul Madvig as a "pop-eyed spaghetti-bender."  That tells you all you need to know.

But for me the best part is when Ladd's character, Ed Beaumont, an assistant to the Donlevy's political boss, a crooked politician with scruples, confronts his boss putting on the Ritz in his office.  Donlevy is nearly completely dressed in bib and tucker when Ladd spots his boss's socks as he has his feet feet up on the desk.  The socks are dark but have an obvious white blaze down the center.  Donlevy detects a forthcoming criticism and Ladd obliges: "The clock, it ticks too loud."

Only because I once encountered the reference of 'clock' in 'Angels and Toast' did I know what the hell Ladd was talking about.  Clock refers to an ornamental pattern worked into the side of a sock or stocking.  Imagine, getting fancy dressed and going daring with a pair of socks whose 'clock' was considered too loud?  Donlevy follows Ladd's comment and discards the pair of socks for another.

In 'Angels and Toast' by Dawn Powell, published in 1940, the salesmen Jay and Lou are taking a train from Chicago to New York when Jay kicks his shoes off in the compartment before heading to the club car and exposes his stockinged feet revealing "crimson clocks in the gray hose that matched the herring-bone stripe in his blue suit. 'Paid four fifty for these socks,'" he tells Lou.

Four-fifty for socks in 1940! These guys are really dressed up riding a train.  But it is 1940 and things haven't yet become what they have with North Face, T-shirts and baseball caps.

And one wonders.  Does the term to 'sock' someone have anything to do with to 'clock' someone?  In either case, someone is hit.  Hmmm.

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