Morris). Joe drinks champagne, watches all of the people who come and go, and sends Tom on errands, sometimes to place bets on the horse races, sometimes to buy a bunch of strange items. Nick (William Bendix), the tough but kind owner of the saloon, doesn't understand why a man of Joe's station would waste his time in a joint like his when he could be uptown in some swanky place. Through the course of the film, a variety of characters enter Nick's, some to looking for a job, other's just looking for a drink and a friendly ear. These include Wesley (Reginald Beane), who Nick hires to play the piano; Harry (Paul Draper), the tap-dancing comedian; Kit Carson (James Barton), a cowboy who can tell tall tales; Kitty Duvall (Jeanne Cagney), a former singer; an Arab philosopher (Pedro de Cordoba); Willie (Richard Erdman), a pinball maniac; and Mary (Gale Page), a woman of quality. When Kitty comes into the saloon, Tom falls head over heels for her, so Joe sets about getting the two together. But there's a tough stool pigeon named Blick (Tom Powers) who's trying to frame Kitty for prostitution. Joe gets Tom a job as a truck driver, finds Kitty and Joe a place to live, and beats up Blick with the help of Kit and the others. In the end, the bad guys are dispatched, the lovebirds are a happy couple, and Joe goes right back to drinking champagne and watching humanity pass before him.
I like this movie a lot. The Time of Your Life is an incredibly underrated film, filled with wonderful characters and a plot that moves along at its own pace until it reaches its satisfying conclusion. My two favorite characters are Kit Carson and Mary. When Kit arrives, he starts spinning yarns about his days as a cowboy, as he downs pint after pint of beer. The story gets wilder and wilder, until Kit stops and asks Joe whether or not he believes him. Joe responds with one of my all-time favorite lines: "Living is an art, it's not bookkeeping. It takes an awful lot of rehearsal for a man to get to be himself." Truer words were never spoken. When Mary comes in, it's obvious that she has wealth and station. Although they appear to be strangers, Mary and Joe begin a dialogue about a time when they were once lovers. He couldn't tell her how he felt; she married another man to please her family. Joe reminisces about the children they never had. It's a poignant scene filled with regret and sadness, and when Mary leaves she does so slowly, as if she'd much prefer to stay with Joe than return to her wealthy husband. The movie never explains why Joe spends his days at Nicks, or where he gets the money that he seems to spend at will, and that's a good thing. This is an instance when too much information would have spoiled the film. Joe remains something of a mystery, so we can form our own opinions about him, about why he's here, about whether or not he and Mary really were together all those years ago in Mexico City.
The Time of Your Life is rated G, and is available only in unrestored black and white.
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