| The Time of Your Life | |
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1st edition cover (Harcourt Brace) |
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| Written by | William Saroyan |
| Date premiered | 25 October 1939 |
| Place premiered | Booth Theatre New York City |
| Original language | English |
| Genre | Drama |
| Setting | a San Francisco bar, October 1939 |
| IBDB profile | |
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 25 October 1939 at the Booth Theatre in New York City. It was produced by the Theatre Guild and with staging by Eddie Dowling, who also starred as Joe, and William Saroyan.
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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 an affluent society couple.
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 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.
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