The Time of Your Life

Another of the movies that I recently watched was The Time of Your Life.

Based on a play by William Saroyan, the movie tells the story of Nick's, a dive bar on the San Francisco waterfront run by bartender Nick (William Bendix). More than that, it looks at the stories of several habitues of the bar, as observed by Joe (James Cagney). Joe spends all day at the bar, and there's no indication of how Joe earns a living to be able to do this. Nick, for his part, wants to play the ponies, and considering how little people buy, it's a good question how he makes his money, too.

Tom (Wayne Morris) is Joe's "stooge", looking up to Joe for reasons I don't get and running all sorts of bizarre errands for Joe. Then Kitty (Jeanne Cagney) walks into the bar. She claims to be an actress, although she has a past, as will be revealed at the end. Tom falls in love with Kitty, and he's eventually going to get a real job to be able to support himself and Kitty.

There's also Harry (Paul Draper), a man who can dance and offers to be entertainment if Nick were ever to have a floor show, although again there are the questions of how Nick could pay for any of this. He's joined by Wesley (Reginald Beane) the pianist. Other denizens of the bar are the pinball player Willie (Richard Erdman) and Dudley (Jimmy Lydon), who is in love with Elsie (Nanette Parks), who is not a denizen of the bar.

There are a few more patrons, including a slumming couple (Natalie Schaefer, best known as Lovey Howell on Gilligan's Island, is the wife), an obnoxious cowboy, and a couple of cops who pass through.

There's not much of a plot here, although most of the characters other than Joe and Nick have their own subplots. And to be honest, that's one of the big problems with the movie. A second problem is that it felt very stagey to me, since it's based on a stage play by William Saroyan and is mostly set in the bar. Then there's the fact that there are a couple of overlong dance sequences and other musical numbers. But most of all is that I found all the characters irritating.

Perhaps this is material that would work better on the stage, and perhaps other people are going to like it more than I did. But I have to admit I didn't care for it at all. Still, it's available on DVD so you can watch and judge for yourself.