Word: cagneys
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...Time of Your Life. William Saroyan's best-of-possible barrooms, boozily abuzz with whimsoid barflies, attractively impersonated by James Cagney and an enthusiastic cast (TIME, June...
...story, such as it is, evolves among five characters: a sort of bush-league saint (James Cagney) who tries to make people happy; a dim Man Friday (Wayne Morris); a B-girl* (Jeanne Cagney) who claims to have been prominent in burlesque; a fine old pathological liar (James Barton) in fringed buckskins; an itinerant sadist (Tom Powers) who has to supply, singlehanded, Saroyan's conception of the power and proportion of evil in this world...
...play, The Time of Your Life made its author a modest fortune. Whether it will do as much for the Cagney brothers, who turned it into a movie, remains to be seen. It is a skillfully calculated improvisation for live actors on a rigid stage, and has an almost cabaret dependence on flesh-&-blood intimacy with the audience. Wisely, in this case, the screen imitates the stage rather closely. The whole rhythm of entrance & exit, bit and buildup is strictly theatrical, and the camera scarcely ever leaves the redolent barroom...
...performances-notably those of James Barton, Reginald Beane and James Cagney, are as deft a compromise between stage & screen as you are likely to see. Nevertheless, a good deal which would be as taut and resonant as a drumhead on the stage is relatively dull and slack on the screen. On the other hand, those who made the picture have given it something very rare. It's obvious that they love the play and their work in it, and their affection and enjoyment are highly contagious. They have done so handsomely by Saroyan that in the long run everything...
...remarkable amount of footage is devoted to the way Miss Scott walks, chews over a line like a bit of Sen-Sen before getting it out, and tools a high-powered convertible around a curve. This is, in fact, one of the most auto-maniacal movies since James Cagney's racing classic, The Crowd Roars...