William Bendix, who plays Nick, originated the part of Krupp on the stage. Broderick Crawford is Krupp in the film.
McCarthy (Ward Bond) is labeled as a "blatherskite" in the opening credits. The Oxford Dictionary defines a blatherskite as "a person who talks at great length without making much sense."
The original Broadway production of "The Time of Your Life " by William Saroyan opened on October 25, 1939 at the Booth Theater, ran for 185 performances, won the Pulitzer Prize in Drama in 1940 and closed on April 6, 1940.
The failure of the original copyright holder to renew the film's copyright resulted in it falling into public domain, meaning that virtually anyone could duplicate and sell a VHS/DVD copy of the film. Therefore, many of the versions of this film available on the market are either severely (and usually badly) edited and/or of extremely poor quality, having been duped from second- or third-generation (or more) copies of the film.