Search - Time Of Your Life, The on DVD

Like no other Cagney film you have seen!

Writer and Thinker | California | 01/04/2010

(4 out of 5 stars)

"I found this DVD by accident and took a chance. You have to be willing to stay with it as the production is somewhat overwhelming as it appears that the story was originally intended for the stage - and that is how it is played. But the characterizations that Cageny encounters and orchestrates are mesmerizing. You will never look at Cagney quite the same way again."

"In the time of your life, live!"

Annie Van Auken | Planet Earth | 09/01/2010

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Transfers of ECHO BRIDGE (aka "Platinum Disc") public domain movies is about average. No sign of restoration on their 60 and 70 year old films, with none dubbed from pristine studio prints. Minor downside: this company superimposes a faint logo on-screen every so often.


THE TIME OF YOUR LIFE is an adaptation of William Saroyan's Pulitzer Prize winning 1939 dramedy that's set in a waterfront San Francisco saloon.

Nick (Bendix) is the long-suffering owner/barkeep whose window sign, "Come in and be yourself" has drawn together a strange little group. Cagney's Joe (who observes people) amuses himself with the doings of those around him at Nick's watering hole. He loves champagne and indulging his own whims. Tom (Morris) is Joe's stooge and friend, Kitty Duvall (Jeanne C.) is a call girl on the run from Chicago, Knapp (Crawford) is a bewildered policeman, McCarthy (Bond), the blatherskite.

The romantic angle is instant love that blossoms between Kitty and Tom, a union sanctioned and abetted by Joe. Lydon reprises that famous "coming mother!" Henry Aldrich voice as Dudley Raoul Bostwick, a young fellow trying to reach an uninterested Elsie by phone. When he gets a wrong number, Dudley foolishly invites the gal that answers to meet him at Nick's. Riano's Mary L. is much older and probably less attractive than Elsie; Dudley flat out ditches her when she shows up for their blind date.

Draper is Harry (the natural-born tap dancing comedian). He tells "funny stories" that no one laughs at and accents them with tap moves. Harry's new political piece is pure interpretive dance. Nick doesn't see the value in this hoofer's art until a starving young man named Wesley (Beane) wanders in. After some nourishment from Nick's kitchen, Wesley sits at the piano and plays marvelously. Harry dances along and an "act" is born. Nick hires them both as workers and entertainers.

Barton's Kit Carson (a cowboy also called Murphy) is a good-natured, bewhiskered tale-spewing barfly whose stories interest Joe so much he commits them to memory, then combines elements of each into one giant whopper that makes old Kit guffaw. Erdman is Willie (the pinball machine maniac) who after many spent nickels finally beats Nick's machine, which then puts on a July 4th-like fireworks show. Miller is a comic tippler who wanders into the bar occasionally. Nick immediately shows him the door almost every time.

Young Rees is a newsboy who repeatedly sells Joe every paper he carries. His angelic soprano on "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling" is a highlight. Joe's tastes in music run mainly to selections #6 and #7 on the jukebox. The former, "Wait 'Til the Sun Shines Nellie" always gets him chiming in on a break. Finally, there's society slummers Schafer and Freeman. Their bemusement with a lower societal strata quickly ends when violence erupts, in the form of Powers as Freddy Blick (a stool pigeon and frame-up artist), who's out to get both Nick and Kitty. Good thing Joe's around to stop him!

This unique filming of a play without a specific plotline is ideal for Joe's spiritual brethren, that is, interested observers of humanity. Highly recommended!


Parenthetical number preceding title is a 1 to 10 imdb viewer poll rating.

(6.2) The Time of Your Life (1948) - Jimmy Cagney/Bill Bendix/Wayne Morris/Jeanne Cagney/Broderick Crawford/Ward Bond/James Barton/Paul Draper/Gale Page/Jimmy Lydon/Richard Erdman/Pedro de Cordoba/Reginald Beane/John 'Skins' Miller/Tom Powers/Natalie Schafer/Howard Freeman/Renie Riano/Lanny Rees"