The flashback scenes take place in 1946.
Embossed above the bar in the opening scene, reads "... get out of these wet clothes & into a dry martini." The famous quote, which has multiple subtle variations, has Hollywood origins that are murky, at best. One edition of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations attributed the quote to Alexander Woollcott, but a later edition and other sources attribute it to Robert Benchley, who says it to Ginger Rogers in The Major and the Minor (1942). According to writer and director Billy Wilder, however, during shooting, Benchley told him he got it from his friend, Charles Butterworth. The martini quote is spoken by Butterworth in Every Day's a Holiday (1937) five years earlier. As 'Holiday' starred and was written by Mae West, and given her risqué personality and persona, West is a likely candidate for its origin.