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I enjoyed The Time of Your Life so much on the weekend that I looked up the 1939 stage play, which occasionally still gets performed despite the large cast required, and which sounds brilliant—and perhaps a touch more biting than the movie, which I guess even as an independent production still had to get past the Breen Office. The original stage cast included Gene Kelly (don’t know if it was his breakout role) and Will Lee (later Mr. Hooper on Sesame Street).
Then I read that the play was inspired by a real San Francisco café where Saroyan used to hang out, and I looked up the owner (“Frisco’s most beloved violator of the Volstead Act”) and:
Does that particular combination of name, face and body type (what you can see of it) seem just a little familiar? I can’t confirm, or even find anyone else making the suggestion, and Charles Addams lived on the other coast, but then Izzzy Gomez was apparently famous enough to be profiled in Life magazine in the early 1940s, so he might have caught eyes across the country.
Then I read that the play was inspired by a real San Francisco café where Saroyan used to hang out, and I looked up the owner (“Frisco’s most beloved violator of the Volstead Act”) and:
Does that particular combination of name, face and body type (what you can see of it) seem just a little familiar? I can’t confirm, or even find anyone else making the suggestion, and Charles Addams lived on the other coast, but then Izzzy Gomez was apparently famous enough to be profiled in Life magazine in the early 1940s, so he might have caught eyes across the country.
no subject
Date: 2019-09-11 12:10 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2019-09-11 01:07 pm (UTC)From:He played Willie, the Pinball Fiend.
no subject
Date: 2019-09-12 03:56 pm (UTC)From:I had not heard of the Volstead Act before, so I googled it, expecting it to be one or more of
- comedians using swear words / talking about sex on stage;
- LGBT people dancing together;
- cross dressing
and was surprised to discover, no, it is Prohibition!
So that was a surprise!