| The Time of Your Life | |
|---|---|
 First edition 1939 | |
| Written by | William Saroyan |
| Date premiered | October 25, 1939 |
| Place premiered | Booth Theatre New York City, New York, United States |
| Original language | English |
| Genre | Drama |
| Setting | San Francisco bar, October 1939 |
The Time of Your Life is a 1939 five-act play by American playwright William Saroyan. The play is the first drama to win both the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award. The play opened on Broadway in 1939.
The play is set in Nick's Pacific Street Saloon, Restaurant and Entertainment Palace, a run-down dive bar in San Francisco. Much of the action of the play centers around Joe, a young loafer with money who encourages each of the bar's patrons in their eccentricities. Joe helps out a would-be dancer, Harry, and sets up his flunky, Tom, with a prostitute, Kitty Duval. The bar is frequented by a number of colorful characters, including a frenetic young man in love, an old man who looks like Kit Carson, and a wealthy society couple.
Nick's saloon is based on the café operated by Izzy Gomez in San Francisco, which Saroyan frequented. [1]
The play was produced by the Theatre Guild. It premiered on Broadway at the Booth Theatre on October 25, 1939, closed on January 27, 1940, and re-opened at the Guild Theatre on January 29, 1940 to April 6, 1940 and September 23, 1940 to October 19, 1940, for 249 performances. [2] Direction was by Eddie Dowling, who also starred as Joe, and William Saroyan. The cast featured Julie Haydon (Kitty Duval), Celeste Holm (Mary L.), Charles De Sheim (Nick), and Gene Kelly (Harry). [2] [3]
The Time of Your Life has been revived three times on Broadway: in 1940 with Dowling and Saroyan directing again, in 1969 directed by John Hirsch and in 1975 directed by Jack O'Brien.
The play was revived on March 17, 1972 at the Huntington Hartford Theater in Los Angeles where Henry Fonda, Richard Dreyfuss, Ron Thompson, Gloria Grahame, Strother Martin. Jane Alexander, Richard X. Slattery and Pepper Martin were among the cast with Edwin Sherin directing. [4]
The play was adapted for film in 1948 with H. C. Potter directing James Cagney as Joe and his sister, Jeanne Cagney as Kitty Duval. In 1958 an adaptation by A.J. Russell was presented in a live television broadcast directed by Tom Donovan with stars Jackie Gleason, Jack Klugman, and Dick York for the Playhouse 90 series.
William Saroyan was an Armenian-American novelist, playwright, and short story writer. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1940, and in 1943 won the Academy Award for Best Story for the film The Human Comedy. When the studio rejected his original 240-page treatment, he turned it into a novel, The Human Comedy.
Our Town is a three-act play written by American playwright Thornton Wilder in 1938. Described by Edward Albee as "the greatest American play ever written", it presents the fictional American town of Grover's Corners between 1901 and 1913 through the everyday lives of its citizens.
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Time of Your Life may refer to:
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The Time of Your Life is a 1948 American comedy drama film directed by H. C. Potter and starring James Cagney, William Bendix, Wayne Morris and Jeanne Cagney. A Cagney Production, The Time of Your Life was produced by Cagney's brother William and adapted by Nathaniel Curtis from the 1939 William Saroyan play of the same name. Cinematography was by James Wong Howe.
"The Time of Your Life" is a 1958 live television version of William Saroyan's play starring Jackie Gleason, directed by Tom Donovan, and adapted by A. J. Russell. The telecast was shown on October 9, 1958 and was the third episode of the third season of the anthology series Playhouse 90. The supporting cast features Jack Klugman, Dick York, Betsy Palmer, Bert Freed, Gloria Vanderbilt and Dina Merrill.
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