Le bar aux illusions

In this adaptation of William Saroyan's award-winning play The Time of Your Life, James Cagney plays a gentle barfly named Joe who settles in Nick's (William Bendix) Bar with various colorful characters like an imaginative old cowboy or a tap dancing comic who can't get laughs. His sister Jeanne plays Kitty Duval, a woman who claims to once have been in burlesque. She and her brother have some of the most touching scenes in the movie. The pace takes a while to get used to but if you're in the mood for something optimistically offbeat, The Time of Your Life should be up your alley! By the way, future "Gilligan's Island" cast member Natalie Schafer plays a society woman who "slums" by going to Nick's Bar with her husband. Pretty amusing cameo.

Some find this film "schmaltzy" and simple. Saroyan fans will find it aptly relects the beauty found in the human condition. The way Joe relates to the various characters, causing them to easily open the hearts and souls seems contrived today and perhaps seemed that way even in the late 40's, but I suspect Saroyan was not particularly interested in "realism". Like all of his work, this movie is a study of the hopes, dreams, and loves of the "little guy" and his struggle to maintain them against the harsh light of human reality.

Cagney positvely glows throughout the performance and Bendix has never been better cast. Paul Draper as the tap-danciing comedian is absolutley brilliant in an extremley quirky roll. ( Interestlingly someone commented that they were suprised that this movie wasn't blacklisted, Draper ( according tot he IMDB bio) was "was an international star in the 1930's and 1940's" who's "career effectively succumbed to the anti- Communist hysteria that existed in the U.S. after World War II, when he was blacklisted out of the entertainment industry as a Communist sympathizer." It says a lot about James Cagney that this is the first film his production company choose to produce. If you can set aside your cynicism and view these characters in a slightly metaphorical light, Saraoyan's writing will leave your heart with a soft warm glow, and the joy of watching character actors working in a simple setting with no action and lots of dialogue may lead you to suspect that the entire cast was having The Time of Their Lives.

James Cagney had an affinity for nostalgic type stories and if The Time of Your Life is a contemporary piece for 1939 when it made its Broadway debut, it has a nostalgic feel to it.

No real plot here, just a whole group of character studies about the various habitués of Nick's Place on the San Francisco Embarcadero in the Thirties. The observer here is Joe, a man who just whiles a way the hours observing humankind in the bar with no visible means of support. He must be a retired civil servant on a pension like me. Maybe that's why I like the film so much.

Two members of the original Broadway cast did the film version, Reginald Beane the black piano player and William Bendix as Nick, owner and proprietor of the place. By that time Bendix was a big star with The Life of Riley on radio and he must have cost Cagney a bundle. But Bill Bendix is always worth it.

The villain of the piece is Tom Powers who either played thugs or policemen in film. As Blick, he's a bottom feeding scuzzball who either informs on people or blackmails them depending on how he can make some dirty money. In this case he focuses on a young woman with a shady past played by the star's sister Jeanne Cagney. It's probably her best film role.

Someone else remarked in a review that he thought it was timely that The Time of Your Life came out in 1948 as the McCarthy era was getting underway. True enough, but I believe that author William Saroyan had a specific political target in mind in 1939 in Congressman Martin Dies who headed the House Un-American Activities Committee when it was created in the late Thirties. Dies was that kind of a bullying interrogator that Blick is in the play.

Paul Draper who was the dancer/comedian in the cast was in fact blacklisted shortly after this came out. On Broadway his part was played by Gene Kelly. I guess getting Kelly from MGM would have blown Cagney's whole budget in 1948.

The Time of Your Life has always struck me as kind of an anti-The Iceman Cometh another play set in a tavern. But that one is by Eugene O'Neill and no one ever accused O'Neill of being optimistic. O'Neill's characters in his play are as pessimistic a lot as Saroyan's are optimistic. The two works really ought to be seen back to back.

The tavern as a setting for theater has a tradition that goes from Falstaff to Cheers. The Time of Your Life is an honorable addition to the tradition.

A dramatic comedy adapted by Nathaniel Curtis from a William Saroyan play. Noted by critics, but slow in getting the respect of movie goers and some Saroyan fans. Joe(James Cagney)holds court at Nick's(William Bendix) little neighborhood saloon. Joe manipulates all who share time and space near him. Action gravitates around Joe. No visual signs of support, but all the while Joe is the positive influence in so many lives. Talk about a potluck of characters:Wayne Morse, Broderick Crawford, Ward Bond, Jimmy Lydon and Jeanne Cagney. James Barton is hilarious as the affable old cowboy. And the man playing the piano is Reginald Beane in his one and only movie. Respectable black and white glimpse of life in the neighborhood.

In 1941 Richard Rogers and Lawrence (Larry) Hart did the score of a brilliant musical called PAL JOEY. One highlight was a striptease dance and song done by Elaine Stritch towards the end of the second act, where she is a reporter talking about interviewing Gypsy Rose Lee. Gypsy (if you recall the movie with Natalie Wood) was always self-taught, and well read. The song spoofed this having her show off her knowledge (it begins with her mentioning reading Schopenhauer, not the easiest thing in the world). One couplet is the following:

"Zip, Walter Lippman wasn't brilliant today." "Zip, will Saroyan ever write a great play?"

It is a little ironic that this barb was directed to William Saroyan, as the star of PAL JOEY was Gene Kelly, who played "Harry, a natural born hoofer" in Saroyan's one and only Broadway success, THE TIME OF YOUR LIFE. Why the barb? Well William Saroyan was a popular short story writer and novelist, especially for books like MY NAME IS ARAM, about the life of the Armenian-American immigrants in California. However, try as he might he never wrote a monumental dramatic masterpiece. THE TIME OF YOUR LIFE is not in the same level of dramaturgy as A LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT, THE DEATH OF A SALESMAN, A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE, or WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF. THE TIME OF YOUR LIFE is a pleasant play, and still gets revived, but it is a lesser work for the stage. Even Thornton Wilder's OUR TOWN is considered a greater play.

The problem with THE TIME OF YOUR LIFE is that it shows the interactions of a set of characters in Nick's Bar. As was pointed out in another comment on this board, O'Neill's THE ICEMAN COMETH also is set in a bar. But the denizens of the bar at Harry Hope's flop house hotel are all failures, who drink to forget their failures and reassure themselves that they can pull themselves out of the failure sooner or later (none of them really can). Hickey, who comes to the hotel, tries to convince them they'll be happier giving up their "pipe dreams" if they admit they are not heroic or brave or capable of reform. You see, there is a theme that is uniting that play's characters. Saroyan is not (as was said) O'Neill. He was more optimistic, and he tried to show that the characters were capable of helping each other. At the end they join together to defeat the evil Blick.

Saroyan, like Wilder, was a master of Americana. In one sequence he has two characters get involved in a contest to see how much gum can be chewed at one time. O'Neill (even in a play like AH WILDERNESS, which is a comedy) never could be so Hamish. Saroyan invents very colorful characters, like his old timer "Kit Carson", who claims to be an old Indian fighter. The central figure in the play, Joe (or Joseph T.) is also colorful - he seems to be a former newspaperman who was successful, but began to regret getting involved in the awful world of the news - he has retreated to the bar where he'll hopefully find more gentle people. He is visited at one point by a woman, probably his former fiancé, and acknowledges her, but won't return to the madness he willingly left. The character is interesting, but none of the other characters reflect his point of view.

So we are left with a well acted, entertaining play - turned into a good movie. Cagney is remarkably subdued - look at the scene when he examines the little wind-up toys he has Wayne Morris buy for him. He maintains our interest until the end, but the lively Cagney does not show up until he confronts Blick.

William Bendix does his usual great job, especially when confronting Blick as a potential blackmailing scum. His Nick runs a respectable bar, and the threat Blick is hinting at is that a prostitute may be using the bar (Jeanne Cagney). Bendix knows nothing of this, but is concerned. Oddly enough, although the bar is a nice neighborhood one, Howard Freeman and Natalie Schaefer go to the bar (they are wealthy people) as though they are slumming.

The current film version does not have all the scenes that Cagney originally had shot. Wayne Morris's growing romance with Jeanne Cagney is cut down in the film (which is regrettable). There is also an interesting change in the conclusion (as in Saroyan's play itself) as to what happens to Blick. But the film is a good one, and a worthy addition to Jimmy Cagney's film record.