Mr. Parrish and Mrs. Cameron

[Walter Baldwin and Dorothy Adams in The Jackpot (dir. Walter Lang, 1950). Click for a larger view.]

It’s just a brief scene with bit players: a customer looking to buy a watch, a salesclerk trying to find something he’ll like. But there must have been someone in a 1950 audience who appreciated the pairing of Walter Baldwin and Dorothy Adams in this scene. They appeared as next-door neighbors in The Best Years of Our Lives (dir. William Wyler, 1946). Baldwin played Homer Parrish’s father, “Mr. Parrish”; Adams played Wilma Cameron’s mother, “Mrs. Cameron.” That was back when lifelong neighbors might address one another by surname.

[Homer: Harold Russell. Wilma: Cathy O’Donnell.]