Joanna Cassidy wears a Bulova

Robert Zemeckis set Who Framed Roger Rabbit in 1947 Los Angeles, then spent the better part of two years marrying live actors to hand-drawn cartoons frame by frame, a technical grind that makes it easy to forget how many of the people on screen are flesh and blood. Joanna Cassidy is one of them. She plays Dolores, Eddie Valiant's girlfriend, who works the bar and carries herself as the most level-headed adult in a city overrun by toons.

The watch on her wrist reads as a Bulova, and the period fits: Bulova built a civilian model called the Squadron in the late 1940s, a 17-jewel rose-gold-filled dress piece with a small-seconds subdial, exactly right for a story set in 1947. The dial never resolves clearly enough to carry the model past the brand, so a Squadron stays the likeliest read rather than a settled one. There is a small irony in it. Cassidy is better known for another role from a different decade, the replicant Zhora in Blade Runner, and here she is again, the human keeping time among the unreal.