The Time of Your Life *** (1948, James Cagney, William Bendix, Wayne Morris, Jeanne Cagney, Broderick Crawford, Ward Bond, James Barton) – Classic Movie Review 11,734

James Cagney, Jeanne Cagney and Wayne Morris in The Time of Your Life.

Director H C Potter’s 1948 American comedy drama film The Time of Your Life stars James Cagney, William Bendix, Wayne Morris, Jeanne Cagney, Broderick Crawford, Ward Bond, and James Barton.

American playwright William Saroyan’s 1939 Broadway Pulitzer-prize play about the oddballs in a San Francisco bar is captured on film with its sentimentality and theatricality intact and an array of good performances.

Cagney is enjoyable as unemployed customer Joe, a loafer with money and a good heart, who buys champagne for the saloon owner Nick (William Bendix)’s customers in return for them listening to his philosophising.

Cagney’s sister Jeanne plays Kitty Duval, a burlesque actress/ street girl who finds love with Cagney’s best buddy Tom (Wayne Morris). Other customers: Broderick Crawford is a bewildered cop, Ward Bond is longshoreman McCarthy, James Barton is an old cowboy calling himself Kit Carson and Paul Draper’s a resting player, tap dancing comedian Harry.

The film is shot mostly on one set as it takes place in Nick’s Pacific Street Saloon, Restaurant and Entertainment Palace in San Francisco, where a sign in the window announces Come in and be yourself, signed Nick (William Bendix).

Also in the cast are Jimmy Lydon as young man in love Dudley Raoul Bostwick, Gale Page as woman of quality Mary L, Richard Erdman as pinball machine maniac Willie, Pedro de Cordoba as Arab Philosopher, Reginald Beane as pianist Wesley, John ‘Skins’ Miller as A Tippler, Tom Powers as stool pigeon Freddie Blick, Natalie Shaefer as Society Lady, Howard Freeman as Society Gentleman, Renie Riano as blind date Lorene Smith, Nanette Parks as girl in love Elsie Mandelspiegel, Grazia Narciso as Nick’s Mother, Claire Carleton as ‘Killer’, Gladys Blake as Side-kick, Lanny Rees as Newsboy, and Marlene Aames as Nick’s Daughter.

Cagney produces with his brother William, who bought the screen rights after admiring the play.

Nathaniel Curtis adapts Saroyan’s 1939 five-act play, the first drama to win both the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award. It was produced by the Theatre Guild and premiered on Broadway at the Booth Theatre on 25 October 1939. It was co-directed by Eddie Dowling, who also starred as Joe, and William Saroyan. Nick’s saloon is based on the café operated by Izzy Gomez in San Francisco that Saroyan frequented.

Cinematography is by James Wong Howe.

Despite all its many merits, the film failed at the box office, costing $2 million and taking $1.5 million.

The film was shot using Saroyan’s original ending but preview audiences reacted unfavourably and a new action-packed climax was substituted. The Cagneys had asked Saroyan to write a different ending but he priced himself out of the market.

The Production Code Administration forced the producers to change Freddie Blick (Tom Powers) from a police detective into an informer and blackmailer.

There is also a 1958 live TV version of the play in the anthology series Playhouse 90, starring Jackie Gleason, with James Barton reprising his role as Kit Carson from the Cagney film.

Armenian-American writer William Saroyan (August 31, 1908 – May 18, 1981) won the Academy Award for Best Story for the film The Human Comedy in 1943. When The Time of Your Life won a Pulitzer Prize, Saroyan refused it thinking commerce should not judge the arts but he did accept the New York Drama Critics’ Circle award.

 © Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 11,734

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