Immediately after The Time of Your Life, Saroyan’s plays had some difficulty on Broadway. Love’s Old Sweet Song did not deliver the expected returns, and the following shows, The Beautiful People and Across the Board on Tomorrow Morning, did not fare much better.

In 1941, as Saroyan was about to embark on his sojourn to Hollywood, John Houseman and David O. Selznick premiered a new Saroyan play: Hello Out There. The play featured few characters, and many reviews called it Saroyan’s most realistic play. The initial stars, Harry Bratsberg and Phylis Walker, were also well-received. The Santa Barbara News-Press praised Bratsberg, then added, “but more sensational was the gifted performance of an amazing newcomer named Phylis Walker, under contract to David O. Selznick.”

An interesting note is that neither of the leads is best known by the name they appeared under. Bratsberg is better known as Harry Morgan; Walker is known as Oscar-winner Jennifer Jones. By 1949 both were far better known by their more famous monikers.

The one act play displays the interactions between Photo Finish, a young man being held in a jail cell who is accused of rape, and Ethel, a lonely young woman who is a cook at the jail. The two strike up a conversation where Photo Finish reveals his predicament while Ethel sympathizes and becomes enamored. Photo Finish appears to be falling deeply in love at first sight, though at some points it seems that it might be merely a ruse to get her to help him escape.  The entire scenario barrels towards an end which appears to be clear once we have the full view of Photo Finish’s situation.

The show came to Broadway, produced by Saroyan and the Theatre Guild, in 1942. As one-half of a double bill, the play starred the leads of The Time of Your Life’s initial stars: Eddie Dowling and Julie Haydon. Slightly before the Broadway opening, a tour of three short plays appeared in New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. The play was popular as a show that was simple to stage and gave ample space for actors to create memorable performances.

By the late 1940s, short films were being produced not only by the major studios, but by smaller producers. One of those producers was a millionaire owner of the A&P grocery chain, Huntington Hartford. He had made a massive fortune and moved to Hollywood to break into the movie business, much like Howard Hughes. He first attempted to buy established studios. His attempts to purchase RKO and Republic were rebuffed, and so he went out on his own. He produced an Abbott & Costello film, Africa Screams, which ran over budget but ended up making some profit.

In the UK, a compilation film, Quartet, was released. It took four short films based on stories by M. Somerset Maugham, and packaged them as a single feature film. That approach was quite successful, and led to a sequel, Trio. This led to American producers considering the same thing. Hartford decided to create a series of short films based on one-act plays. Hartford put together a team starting with the director, James Whale.

Whale was one of the most influential directors of the 1920s and 30s. He helped define American Horror with his direction of Frankenstein and The Bride of Frankenstein. He directed a star-studded version of Show Boat, and was a major director whose career faltered following his 1937 film The Road Back. The film was the sequel to All’s Quiet on the Western Front, and during the filming process, it came to the attention of the local representative of the Nazi Party, Georg Glyssing. He sent a letter of protest to Universal, the production studio, claiming that it presented an “untrue and distorted picture of the German people.” This led to the Nazis sending letters threatening future career difficulties for those involved, and especially Universal. The Hollywood Anti-Nazi League and the Screen Actors Guild came to the defense of the film, and of Whale himself, and the German government backed down. The initial test screenings were very successful. The tested version was Whale’s final edit of the film, but at some point, between test screenings and release, the picture was altered. First, new scenes were shot and added, and others cut entirely. All the alterations were done without Whale’s knowledge. Whale complained, and Universal’s head, Charles Rogers, tried to get out of Whale’s deal with the studio. Whale refused, which led to Rogers assigning him to a string of lower-budget pictures. His last significant film, The Man in the Iron Mask, was a success. After that, he retired from directing films in 1942, though did return to attempt to shoot a single training film for the Army.

Whale had been a stage director, and leaned into that profession after his time in Hollywood. His theatrical work wasn’t successful, but he did keep working. He had investments that allowed him to live well and travel the world.

In 1948, Hartford approached him to direct one of the episodes of his anthology film. He had already cast one of the roles, even before Whale came on board: Marjorie Steele, who happened to be his wife.

Steele had appeared in a single film prior, Tough Assignment, though had studied acting at The Actors’ Lab. To make ends meet, she worked as a cigarette girl at a Hollywood club, Ciro’s, and there caught the eye of Huntington Hartford. He courted her, and they were married in 1949, when she was 19. He cast her in two of the three short films that would make up the anthology picture Huntington was producing, including the lead in Hello Out There.

It’s not certain when the casting took place, but the choice to play Photo Finish actually had a deep connection to the initial production of the play in Pasadena. The character was portrayed by Harry Bratsberg, already going by Harry Morgan at that point. Morgan’s association with Saroyan’s work started with that production of Hello Out There, and he had been Saroyan’s first choice for the lead in The Good Job, though he ended up being unavailable. He had worked with The Group Theater in New York, but had come to Hollywood and immediately found work in films like The Ox-Bow Incident and Orchestra Wives. He was a likable figure and highly respected as an excellent actor, though he seldom got the chance to play the lead on film. He did host a radio program, Mystery on the Air, which starred Peter Lorre. He was a working actor, and absolutely knew the material here and how to approach it.

This does bring up a question: what involvement did Saroyan have with the production?

Digging through the Saroyan papers at Stanford, there are letters between Huntington Hartford and William Saroyan, though only after the production had wrapped. There are none between Morgan or Steele and Saroyan.  

It’s clear that they approached the material in much the same way that Saroyan wrote it. Long stretches of the piece mirror the stage version exactly. The performances read much like those noted in the reviews of the Dowling-Hayden Broadway version. It would seem very much like the source material, especially the dialogue, was highly respected and allowed to remain present in the picture.  

The short was created in early 1949 and shot at the studios of Los Angeles’ oldest TV studio: KTLA. It was a single set, a jail cell and the area in front of it. That is a difficult constraint for a film, as various locations help keep the audience from feeling confined. The solution to this is dynamic shooting, which is something James Whale insisted on in Frankenstein (working with cinematographer Arthur Edeson) and that his cinematographer on Hello Out There, Karl Struss, had incredible talent at providing.

Struss had been shooting films since 1920, and had been an art photographer prior to that. His work on the film Sunrise, directed by F.W. Murnau, was known for its cinematography and German Expressionist style. That style lends depth and texture through the high contrast of the filming, and it certainly is what’s on display here. The shadows that Photo Finish and Ethel are surrounded by are deep, and serve to isolate them. The look of the short is wonderful, and it makes good use of the bars as a defining element which both characters interact with. The collaborative form of film production means that it is not only the cinematographer and his team who must understand the look of the film, but the entire team. The set designer must understand the desired lighting so as not to obscure important detail. Here, the bars of the jail cell are not a simple square, but a complex shape, somewhat pinched at one end, with the top leaning forward, creating those longer shadows. The costumers must understand what will be highlighted and masked.  The costumes are incredibly simple here. The director must guide the actors through the emotional states that will work with the script. James Whale knew how to put his stamp on everything he would direct, and here it is clear that he got it, that he gave the film a dynamic that calls to mind his work on Frankenstein and the doctor’s lab.

The actors must come to the idea that they are inhabiting a world where this is how it looks. That might be the most difficult part of things for expressionistic pieces like Hello Out There. The lighting is, often, unnatural, and that can mean that performances must eschew the traditional emotional reactions to setting, and character. Here, we see Morgan’s Photo Finish almost duplicate the lighting palette with his performance. He is emotionally high-contrast; his anger is heavy and dark, the passion and caring light and illuminating. Some have seen this as a weakness in Morgan’s performance, though I think audiences of the time would have latched on to the idea that this is a complicated character and the performance would actually have landed much harder, and with less questioning, with the audiences of the late 1940s.

Steele’s performance is interesting. Many modern critics and viewers indicate that she feels like an amateur, especially in contrast to Morgan’s highly disciplined, if at times bombastic, performance. I could not disagree more on that matter. Emily (in the original play called ‘Ethel’) is supposed to be inexperienced, naïve, timid at points. She is at least somewhat easily led by Photo Finish, and here, that plays out in Steele’s performance. The commentary on current versions of the film available on YouTube and other platforms take on Steele’s performance as weak, but I believe they are approaching it with the idea that late 20^th century acting as the basis for those comments. What is interesting in that regard is that both Morgan and Steele were trained in techniques that actually take similar approaches based on their training. The Group Theatre was one of the birthing grounds for Method acting, while Steele had studied under the Actors’ Lab, which also worked within early ideas of The Method, but with a more political edge, foreshadowing the philosophical approach of mediation of performance through analytical power dynamic expression and reaction. She seems to put this into play throughout, as the dynamic between an incarcerated man and a free woman is explored simply and cleanly.

The film was never officially released. Huntington Hartford’s two other films for the intended feature, The Secret Sharer and The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky, were eventually paired and released as Face to Face in 1952. It’s not certain why Hartford did not include Hello Out There in the film, as originally intended, but some point to the dark atmosphere and more artsy style of the film not being a strong fit with the other two, more naturalistic films.

It’s not clear how the film came to public awareness, though by the 1960s, Hartford was showing it himself, sometimes at the museum he had built at 2 Columbus Circle in New York: The Gallery of Modern Art. It was in some circulation among collectors by the 1980s and 90s, but it wasn’t until 2024 that it became generally available via YouTube.

Huntington Hartford would go on to fund arts and building projects for the rest of his life. He and Steele divorced in the early 1960s. He continued philanthropy, and some say a one-sided feud with Howard Hughes, throughout the 1960s and 70s. Hartford passed away in 2008.

Harry Morgan would continue acting and in the 1960s take a recurring role on Dragnet, the radio program. He so impressed the crew, especially creator and lead actor Jack Webb, that he was cast in several other of Webb's projects, and then brought on permanently to play Bill Gannon, partner to the legendary cop, Sgt. Joe Friday. He would reprise the role in the 1987 comedy film Dragnet, with Dan Ackroyd and Tom Hanks. He would go on to greater fame playing Col. Sherman T. Potter on M*A*S*H, another series where he played a one-off guest star only to be brought on later as a main character.

Morgan continued acting through the 1990s, and passed away in 2011 at the age of 96.

James Whale, one of the most influential filmmakers of the early sound era, never worked in film again after Hello Out There, though he did produce and direct at least one touring play, Pagan in the Parlor. Personal and professional setbacks mounted, and in 1957, Whale drowned himself in his pool in Pacific Palisades, California.

Hello Out There has had a long history of productions since the 1949 filmed version, including some very important productions. In 1951, famed director Preston Sturges directed a version in Los Angeles that received rave reviews. Al Pacino’s first starring stage role was in Hello Out There in 1963. In 1960, composer Jack Beeson created an operatic version of the play, using almost the entire original script Saroyan had written. The opera was released as an LP and was revived on-stage in the 1980s and early 2000s. Versions in various languages have been produced, both for stage and screen, and it is still a piece often used for theatre directing capstone projects at universities. There are a dozen versions available on YouTube, ranging from a 1980 videotaped version to a Philadelphia stage version from 2024.

Perhaps the most interesting adaptation was a Latvian rock opera, Ei, Jus Tur. It was created in 1971 by Imants Kalnins. It was not produced in a theatre for six years, until the Liepaja Theatre produced it with the Latvian rock back Līvi. A version was filmed in 1986 and is available on YouTube today.

Hello Out There remains one of Saroyan’s most adapted works, alongside The Time of Your Life and My Heart’s in the Highlands for his plays, and arguably his most adapted work within its realm is a song, co-written with his cousin, Ross Bagdasarian. In the early 1950s, Saroyan began shopping around a treatment for a film based on the song, and in our next episode, we’ll be looking at what could have been the film Come Ona My House.

By the 1970s, Saroyan’s The Time of Your Life had become an American classic. Early in the decade, Henry Fonda fronted a touring production of the play staged by the Plumstead Playhouse. This was a very popular, and financially successful, revival. In 1974, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon, presented The Time of Your Life. Saroyan himself was not a fan of the Plumstead version, saying that Fonda was too old to be playing Joe, and may not have been aware of the Oregon production.

One production of the 1970s was staged by The Acting Company, a new touring theatre group founded by American stage legend John Houseman using graduates from what would become the premier American school of acting: Juilliard.

Juilliard was founded as the Institute of Musical Art in 1905, initially as a school to train American composers and players who otherwise would go to Europe to study. In 1951, Juilliard added a Dance department, and by the end of the 1950s, the school’s governors voted to move the school to become a part of a new project to build an Arts Center in Manhattan. The center would become Lincoln Center, future home of the Metropolitan Opera, the New York Philharmonic, the New York Ballet, and the new Juilliard. As a part of the massive project, the school did not pay for the construction, but agreed to only instruct advanced students and add a Drama division.

The initial director was John Houseman. His career stretched back to the late 1920s, but he gained fame in the 1930s through his collaborations with Orson Welles and the productions they undertook with the Works Project Administration’s Federal Theatre Project, such as MacBeth and The Cradle Will Rock. They left the WPA and co-founded The Mercury Theatre with Welles. During the period when The Mercury Theatre was rising, Houseman also took a job teaching acting at Vassar. He would continue collaborating on Welles’ radio and early film work, as well as other projects on his own, until a falling out with Welles soured their relationship for good.  Houseman went to Hollywood, working first for David O. Selznick Productions, where he co-wrote Jane Eyre (which starred Welles) and produced and directed Saroyan’s play Hello Out There for its world premiere starring Harry Bratsburg in Pasadena Playhouse. Over the following decades, he would work for many Hollywood studios, notably RKO and MGM, mostly as a producer, but also as an actor and screenwriter.

When he joined Juilliard, he was famously tough on actors. Patti LuPone said in 1975. “They really worked us, 12, 13 hours a day, class, rehearsals, shows. Only 14 graduated. Some dropped out, some were eliminated, there were a few nervous breakdowns and a couple of attempted suicides.”

Even though he was incredibly exacting, he was less than willing to see his exceptional group of actors go to the winds following graduation. Along with Margot Harley, Houseman founded the Group 1 Acting Company, specifically to tour shows by that initial group from Juilliard. Harley, a fellow Juilliard instructor, was producer while Houseman was Artistic Director. The initial idea was to tour various shows. Houseman believed that touring made for better actors, but there was a more practical financial reason. Harley said "We knew perfectly well that in order to keep them together we had to tour, because nobody would come and see, over a long period of time, a young company in New York. And touring is historically a great training ground for an actor."

The Group 1 Acting Company became simply The Acting Company after new actors joined to replace the initial actors, who had been a part of Juilliard’s Group One drama students.

In 1974, The Acting Company started touring a set of plays Edward II by Christopher Marlowe, Play by Samuel Beckett, The Orchestra by Jean Anouilh, Love's Labour's Lost by William Shakespeare and The Time of Your Life by William Saroyan

The play toured across North America with a cast of actors who would go on to have incredible careers in Hollywood and on Broadway. Nicolas Surovy played Joe. Surovy has appeared in dozens of films and several television series over the last five decades. Patti LuPone played Kitty Duvall, and was clearly the breakout star of the initial group. Shortly after leaving The Acting Company, she began regularly appearing on Broadway, winning the Tony for Best Actress in Evita in 1979. She has appeared in dozens of films, won two more Tony Awards, two Grammy Awards, and twice been nominated for Emmy awards. Kevin Kline would win three Tony awards and an Oscar for his comedic work in A Fish Called Wanda. In the Acting Company production, he played the philosophical longshoreman McCarthy.

The role of Kit Carson has always been considered one of the most prized in modern American theatre. David Schramm was given the role. He would later become known for his role on the television series Wings, but was involved in theatre until his death in 2020.

Benjamin Hendrickson played the barkeep Nick. His career would include appearing in the film Manhunter, and later spending twenty years playing Hal on the soap opera As the World Turns.

Tom was played by Norman Snow, who would also appear in Manhunter. He would be best known as a character actor in television, though he still appeared often in stage productions.

The production toured, and at the end of the tour, the play was filmed as a television episode for Great Performances.

Great Performances grew out of New York Television Theatre, a series produced by WNDT and later WNET. These were eventually shown on National Educational Television, NET, which became PBS in the early 1970s. In 1973, a grant from Exxon and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting funded Theatre in America, which showed plays that had been produced for New York Television Theatre as well as some NET Playhouse programs, including the Opera version of Saroyan’s My Heart’s in the Highlands in 1970. In 1976, the program was re-named Great Performances, with varying kinds of shows themed as Theatre in America, Music in America and Dance in America. The series was created by Jac Vanza. He was one of the driving forces in bringing the arts first to NET and later PBS, producing programs for more than 40 years. He created Live from Lincoln Center, which later became a part of Great Performances.  His creation of NET Playhouse is considered revolutionary in that it showed complete theatrical performances as they would have appeared on stage.

The Time of Your Life was produced as a Theatre in America production. It was filmed on a sound stage and not a staged production filmed, as often was the case for Great Performances.  The set is fairly simple, simpler than the Cagney film set, and less stage-like than the Gleason version. Shooting on a stripped-down set allowed for greater access to actors for close-ups, multi-character shots, and non-static set-ups. This shows the advances made in television production. Cameras in the 1950s were large, and those that could move were typically large and on wheels. By the 1970s, smaller cameras, with less cabling, meant that the use of cameras on jibs and cranes became more and more common, and wheeled cameras and even handhelds, began to be used more widely.  

After the introduction by Hal Holbrook, the first voice we encounter is William Saroyan’s.

Saroyan had written a well-known and loved prologue to the play, and is usually reprinted in nearly every program when the play shows. This was the only time Saroyan appeared in any form in an adaptation of The Time of Your Life, though his photo does show up briefly in the Cagney version. He is clearly not a young man anymore. He had recorded a number of speeches and stories as early as the 1940s, but here he sounds older, maybe a bit slower. It’s still powerful and sets a fascinating tone for what becomes an incredible document of the next generation of American actors.

On my recent re-watch, the camera movement is the first thing that comes to mind. While there is some simple movement in both the feature film and Playhouse 90 versions, the videography in this version is so much more fluid, and it takes the immediacy of video and uses the techniques of film cinematography. One thing that was seldom employed in television videography was multiplanar staging. The way this version is shot uses foreground characters as anchors, even as the dialogue and emotional focus of the scene are in the mid-ground, and then the sense of place and time are established in the deep background. That idea also allows for status to be played up. When our two slumming rich folks are in the absolute foreground, they are removed from the world that flows in and out around Joe, and Nick, in the background, is the key to the entire scene, as he is clearly observing. He plays the closest thing to God that appears in the play, watching and judging, and only stepping in when his people are harmed. It’s impressive shooting, delivering not just visual interest, but also meaning.

The performances here show why this has always been seen as an actor’s play. It is full of monologues, complicated characterizations, and themes that can be mined or buried depending on an actor’s choice. Here, performed by a group of actors who have trained under some of the most advanced techniques known to actors at the time, the range of reactions is impressive. Considering these, you have to start with Joe. He is the driver, and here Nicolas Surovy gives him a unique take that seems to push forward different aspects based on his own drunkenness.

Or, perhaps better stated, the traditional path of a night of drinking.

Things start out light, even, kinda easy. Joe is playful, sending his lackey Tom out to buy him toys, and then as the play goes on, and he gets more and more champagne drunk, he gets more emotional, at times impulsive. He has Tom buy him a gun. He starts singing. He’s more and more talkative, even silly at times, and then he gets seriously testy. As the climax happens, off-screen, he comes to realization and, at least somewhat, regret. The way he approaches it makes that idea consistent and powerful.

Tom is played with a kind of Gosh Wow! along with the slightly put-upon, and sometimes whiny, way that it was played in both the Playhouse 90 and Cagney versions. Norman Snow’s take is exceptionally open, and his reactions are both more naturalistic and pronounced. There’s never a question that he is moving through the story with the goal of being with Kitty. There is a read of the character that he wants to save her, but Joe is already doing that, and here that feels like it’s pushed behind Tom’s emotional connection. Tom, in fact, counts on Joe to save Kitty as much as he did when Joe nursed him back to health three years before our play rolls out.

Kitty you can talk about for ages. The Cagney and Palmer performances are far more traditional than LuPone’s, which seems somewhat restrained until you see the entirety and realize that she’s actually hitting every note with direction. She’s guiding her reactions to the other players through a series of difficult emotional peaks and valleys. She’s sadder, more fragile, damaged. She’s clearly not steady on her emotional feet. She sways with the waters she waded too far into, and she reaches out and hopes to find purchase. When she is with Joe, she is at her strongest and can be any emotional state. With Tom, she’s bringing her softest self. When she is left with Blick…it shows her devastation.

And the scene of the heel cop forcing her to do a Burlesque strip number is crushing. No other recorded version gives it the weight that it holds here, and LuPone’s intensity takes it from something that is a powerful moment into something that defines the entire dénouement of the play. She’s incredible, and it shows the advances in acting techniques. She is so incredibly natural, if you buy into the idea that she is either suicidally depressed or perhaps bipolar. Both of these readings of her performance can be completely backed, and the harm done by the interaction with Blick is crushing.

Blick is pure malevolence. There is no subtlety in Blick’s view towards everyone who haunts Nick’s, but the performance is only very briefly anything more than a calm delivery of bestial hate. There is rarely a performance that is so straight ahead that doesn’t feel as if it is simply predetermined to cause anguish. Saroyan wrote this that way, and it makes clear that Saroyan is on the side of the common man by presenting him without any redeeming qualities, in a way that is more a defence of the common man than any of McCarthy’s monologues. Blick is a force of harm, and he naturally tries to place that harm on the people inhabiting Nick’s.  

While traditionally Kit Carson is a showy role, and here it’s still a lot of fun, but he’s folded in more actual reality than in other versions. As big and bold as James Burton’s performance was, David Schramm’s performance here is feeling out the edges of the room, as if each wild story that he tells is sending out a lure to find a bite. It’s tricky stuff, and it works. His interactions with Joe, especially, feel almost like a crazy uncle with his nephew. His interactions with Blick are fascinating as they show a number of aspects of his character, that he is a defender of the weak, at least in his mind, and when he takes action to show, we have to question whether or not the rest of the tall tales are fantasies or not. Schramm’s choices here make the idea that Kit Carson is, in fact, the actual hero of the stories he tells not only a stronger possibility, but almost a certainty.

Perhaps no one gets as much out of every second of time on-screen as Richard Ooms as The Arab. The role that is best known for the repeated line “No foundation all the way down the line.” It is often used as a punctuation for scenes and moments. Ooms brings more to the role, including a devastatingly powerful monologue about work that he delivers exactly how an immigrant would not only deliver, but feel at their very heart. His vocal work in the role is incredible, and Ooms is

The reaction to the show was strongly positive. The Los Angeles Times praised performances. “Patti LuPone is splendid as Kitty and Norman Snow matches her as Tom,” and goes on to praise Schramm’s turn as Kit Carson as “a gem of character acting.”

As always, there were those who took it otherwise, though more against the source material than the performances of this particular version. The New York Daily News said that “…the groping naïve souls who frequent Nick’s waterfront bar somehow don’t interest us.”

The Acting Company’s initial stars, especially LuPone and Kline, would leave over the following year. Great Performances would become one of PBS’ most important shows. One missing part of the story is what Saroyan thought of this version. While he agreed to be a part of it, possibly because of Houseman’s involvement, we’ve been unable to find any reference to his having seen it. At the time of its premiere, he was in Europe, so perhaps that’s why he never made mention of it in his journals.

Next to, we’re stepping back to 1948 and a short film, Hello Out There, which also happens to be the last film directed by a Cinema Legend:  James Whale.  

William Saroyan saw what television was going to mean, likely after his experiences writing and being adapted for radio…though that’s a topic for a future podcast. Saroyan was being contacted by producers about bringing his plays and stories to television.

In 1948, television was in its infancy. There were televisions on sale across the country, and more and more stations were popping up. The three networks that dominated the 1950s through 1980s, NBC, CBS, and ABC, were already established, as well as the DuMont network, which would fold by 1955. These networks were not the cash cows that radio was, so budgets tended to be fairly low. Programs that could be recorded without having to stage them entirely, like baseball, boxing, wrestling, and live music or religious presentations, were very popular with network executives. As more money started rolling in, budgets improved, and one of the most popular forms of continuing series was the anthology program. These were shows without a continuous storyline, but a series of plays or stories. These brought to life many classic short stories and theatrical presentations. Saroyan had pieces produced for two of the earliest programs.

The first was an episode of Actors Studio. Debuting in September 1948 on ABC, the series produced episodes adapting stories like Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart, Oscar Wilde’s The Canterville Ghost, and William Saroyan’s My Heart’s in the Highlands. By the time that Actors Studio presented Saroyan’s play, it had been cancelled by ABC and had moved to CBS. The episode starred Jack McQuade, and the screenplay was written by Howard Rodman. The play was well-received, but sadly no copy of it has been found.

The second time My Heart’s in the Highlands was produced for television was in 1950 by the popular series The Silver Theatre. While many of the anthology shows were shot live, The Silver Theatre shot on film, which allowed the episodes to be archived and re-packaged. Plays shot originally for The Silver Theatre were later shown as episodes of Bigelowe Theatre. This version of My Heart’s in the Highlands featured American film and theatre legend Howard Da Silva as Jasper McGregor. Just a few months later, Da Silva would be blacklisted for allegedly being a Communist and pleading his 5^th Amendment rights at a House Un-American Activities Committee hearing. Though this episode was shot on film, there are no known surviving copies of the episode.

Saroyan had many adaptations of his work appear on TV in the 1950s, as well as appearing on talk shows and news programs himself. He was not only popular for American anthology programs, but had productions of his plays on Dannish, Polish, British, and Russian television in the 1950s as well.

The first televised production of The Time of Your Life was British. Franchot Tone, famed actor known for roles in the 1930s like Mutiny on the Bounty, had been doing mostly television by 1955, when he played Joe in a touring run of the show. It was later brought to Europe, playing at the Brussells World’s Fair in 1958, and later was performed in the UK for Armchair Theatre. That version also starred Susan Strasberg and Ann Sheridan, and was a rousing success in the UK, with excellent notices from The Guardian.

Saroyan had been shopping around The Time of Your Life for a US television adaptation in the early 1950s. In 1953, the Cagney deal’s rental period on the rights lapsed, and William Cagney wanted to re-up and re-issue the film. Ned Brown, then at MCA Artist representation, contacted Saroyan looking to secure the rights. Saroyan was uninterested:

“Dear Ned:

“I see no reason why I should even talk business with the Cagneys, even through an agent, in view of the fact that to begin with they mucked up a very valuable property by casting and producing and directing it in a manner entirely out of order, insisting on the course they took even though I urged them again and again to follow the course that was natural for this play and in view of the fact that since the event of the production of a fiasco they have refused to respond promptly or fairly or intelligently to every reply I have made to their enquiries---replies that I have made instantly upon being informed of their questions.

“I have plans of my own for The Time of Your Life---for another film, possibly 3-D, directed by myself; as a Musical for Broadway; and as a Television Property, to go on indefinitely. “

This was the first clear mention of Saroyan looking at the play as a television property that we’ve been able to locate. This may have strictly been an idea at that point, but as he was regularly having plays made into television episodes, a half-dozen plays by 1953, it seems like a natural. The only issue was that the regular television format at the time didn’t allow for a play as long as The Time of Your Life. In fact, in a letter from Ben Medford, he said “don’t settle for anything less than 90 minutes.”

One of the most important and respected television anthology programs of the 1950s was Playhouse 90. Starting in 1956, CBS ran Playhouse 90 as a prestige program. It started with a Rod Serling-penned episode Forbidden Area, which starred Charlton Heston. The second episode, also written by Serling, was a remarkable and important episode: Requiem for a Heavyweight. That won multiple Emmys, a Golden Globe, and a Peabody Award. That alone established Playhouse 90 as one of the most important series, and further episodes featured major actors and writers. John Frankenheimer directed more episodes than anyone else, and would go on to direct many motion pictures, including The Birdman of Alcatraz and The Manchurian Candidate.

One of the producers for Playhouse 90 was Martin Manulis. He had been producing for television since 1951, including two CBS series that he created: The Best of Broadway and Climax!. During his time producing those, he was in touch with Saroyan. In a letter dated October 4, 1954, Saroyan refers to a letter from Manulis dated September 30^th, and sends an 89 page teleplay version of The Time of Your Life. Saroyan notes that he had cut out an entire storyline, the Dudley-Lorene-Elsie telephone love connection storyline, and Saroyan declared, “I think the play is in first-class shape now.”

This likely would have been written for The Best of Broadway, though the show was cancelled in May of 1955, and if the script was delivered in October, 1954, it’s unlikely it would have been intended for the 1954-1955 season.

Manulis also was a producer on Playhouse 90, though he had left the series by 1958, when Playhouse 90 presented The Time of Your Life.

One of the driving forces appear to have been not only producer Manulis, but another long-time Saroyan friend: John Houseman. Houseman had directed the premiere of Hello Out There at the Pasadena Playhouse with Darryl Zanuck producing. Houseman was not a regular producer, but was on the team, which made sense as he was one of the best-known figures of the American stage.

While those two may have been a path towards getting it made, there’s certainly a role in that production for the star of the episode: Jackie Gleason.

One of the biggest stars in the early days of television was Jackie Gleason. He had come to television after years as a comedian and a decade appearing in films. After WWII, where he was found to be unfit for service due to his weight and a poorly healed broken arm, he appeared somewhat erratically in film and radio programs.

In 1949, his big small screen break happened in the form of the role as the title character in the Life of Riley. The original radio version starred William Bendix, who incidentally had appeared in both the original stage and film versions of The Time of Your Life. Gleason starred in the program until 1950, when he became the host of Cavalcade of Stars on the DuMont network. There, he developed characters through a series of skits. One of those characters, Ralph Kramden, became very popular.

In 1952, CBS offered a contract to Gleason that gave him a five hundred percent raise. The series was also renamed The Jackie Gleason Show. This became one of the most popular shows on television, and in 1955, the series ended, and the next year The Honeymooners, based on the Ralph Kramden character, ran on CBS for two years.  

Gleason and Saroyan met by early 1942, and possibly earlier. It’s known that Saroyan and Carol Marcus, then early in their relationship, had been joined at the nightclub Ugene’s in early 1942. The two seem to have been in contact off-and-on, though not frequently. They certainly ran in similar circles in Hollywood, and both were exceptiopnally fond of drinking. 

Ties to Gleason are all over the episodes cast and crew list. Gleason had been a featured player in a Manulis-produced episode of The Best of Broadway – The Show Off. Writer A.J. Russell, credited as adapting the play for TV, had worked as a writer on the Jackie Gleason Show and had written The Laugh Maker for Studio One starring Gleason. Actors Tom Gorman and Burt Freed had worked with Gleason previously, and Gloria Vanderbilt had socialized with Gleason and Saroyan both!

It’s clear that Gleason’s hand was in action with the production, and Manulis was also bringing his influence, as many of the names had appeared on The Best of Broadway and Climax!. The play itself was a guiding principal. Vanderbilt had appeared in the Franchot Tone version, and Kit Carson was played by James Barton, who was reprising his role from the Cagney production a decade earlier.

The entire cast was a strong one. Gleason, with his boozy persona being very public and beloved, as Joe was a natural. Betsy Palmer was a young actress cast as Kitty DuVall. She was a regular on anthology programs, and would only make a few film appearanes until 1980, when she played Mrs. Voorhees in Friday the 13^th, which launched her as an icon in horror films for the rest of her life. Jack Klugman was a major star, appearing both on screen and Broadway. He would go on to fame as Oscar Madison in The Odd Couple, both on stage and television. He played Nick, the barkeep, with a comedic stoicism that marked several other performances of the role, especially William Bendix’s in the 1949 film. Dick York, who would become a major star for his turn as Darren in Bewitched, played Joe’s lackey, Tom. Burt Freed played Blick, the corrupt cop. He was a career actor known for playing heavies. Reprising their roles from previous productions were Vanderbilt as Elsie, and Barton as Kit Carson.

The episode was aired October 9^th, 1958. The initial reaction to the production was highly positive.

Jack Gould reviewed the episode on October 10^th:

“The Time Of Your Life,” William Saroyan’s warm and boozy appreciation of the human race, was revived with care and feeling last night on “Playhouse 90” over Channel 2. It was a decided hit.

“Jackie Gleason, in quite possibly his most winning appearance on TV, gave a surprisingly touching and compassionate performance as Joe, the philosophic bar-fly who loves people. If any viewers thought he would employ the broad strokes of his vaudeville characterizations, they found themselves in happy error.

“Mr. Saroyan’s work had to be trimmed somewhat for television by A. J. Russell, but the adaptation was a sound job. There was no serious loss of the beautiful mood as Mr. Saroyan’s undisciplined theatrical poem wandered off first one way and then the other in its fondness for human beings. The San Francisco honky-tonk remains one of civilization’s most cherished places.”

Gleason’s performance was lauded, as were Klugman’s and James Barton’s. Betsy Palmer’s performance was more pronounced than Jeanne Cagney’s in the film, with a bit more fire to her delivery. Her interactions with Gleason are not nearly as warm as the interactions between Jeanne and Jimmy Cagney, and here that works incredibly well. Kitty was angrier, and better situated to television of the time.

The Independent said “Producer Gordon Duff and director Tom Donovan assembled a fine cast, headed by Gleason, and including Betsy Palmer, Dick York, Jack Klugman, Bobby Van, Dina Merrill, Bert Freed and the great James Barton recreating his stage role as Kit Carson. Individual performances were superb, an adjective I haven’t been able to use for quite a few months. Gleason submerged his own personality in the characterization of Joe, and Dick York, last seen on Playhouse 90 as Paul Muni’s son in “The Last Clear Chance,” delivered just the right contrast as Tom, Joe’s not-too-bright friend.”

Ben Gross said, “Jackie Gleason, the robust comedian who is also determined to become a great actor, tested his talents again in a “straight” role during Playhouse 90’s production of William Saroyan’s “The Time of Your Life” Thursday night. In another step toward this laudable goal, he gave an affectionate, at times moving performance, worthy of anyone’s respect.”

Praise was not universal, though certainly higher than for the earlier film version. The United Press International’s reviewer, William Ewald said “I did not enjoy it. It’s a piece that should be played like a merry-go-round: with an om-pah-pah, a swirl of pink horses and a shout. Instead it was played almost solemnly – something like a coronation procession or a stately gavotte.”  The Associated Press’ review was “The Time of Your Life is mediocre television for the middle aged.”

Gleason had been trying to become a more dramatic actor, and this might have been the most interesting in his early attempts at being a serious actor. Three years later, he would earn rave reviews as Minnesota Fats in The Hustler.

Saroyan, who could be exceptionally tough on those adapting his work, actually sent the actor a note after he saw the episode. He said that Gleason had provided “an excellent Joe.”

Once again, The Time of Your Life would see several revivals following a media adaptation. While none made it to Broadway, there were several touring and local productions in 1959 through 1961. Over the next 15 years, there would be several other significant stagings, including one with Henry Fonda. When Julliard’s head of drama, Saroyan’s buddy John Houseman, wanted to start a touring company for his students to gain experience on the road, one of their early productions was The Time of Your Life. As the group, eventually known as The Acting Company, ended its tour of the play, it was recorded for PBS. This production was full of young actors who would go on to become major stars of stage, television, and film. Our next episode will look at the production of The Time of Your Life featuring Patti LuPone, Kevin Kline, and an appearance by William Saroyan himself.