The Time of Their Lives is a 1946 American fantasy comedy film directed by Charles Barton and starring the comedic duo Abbott and Costello alongside Marjorie Reynolds, Gale Sondergaard and Binnie Barnes.

In 1780, master tinker Horatio Prim arrives at the Kings Point estate of Tom Danbury.

Danbury's fiancée, Melody Allen, standing outside the window, witnesses this betrayal and enlists Horatio's help to ride off and warn Washington's army.

In 1946, after the estate has been rebuilt and restored with much of its original furnishings, playwright Sheldon Gage invites his fiancée, June Prescott, her Aunt Millie, and his psychiatrist, Dr. Ralph Greenway, a descendant of Cuthbert, to spend the weekend.

From clues offered by Horatio, Melody and Tom's repentant spirit, they discern the identities of the ghosts and the existence of the letter which can free them.

As in the duo's preceding film, Little Giant, Abbott and Costello do not play friends or partners, but are individual characters.

Also as in the previous movie, Costello's character is largely the hero, while Abbott plays a somewhat unsympathetic dual role.

[2] This change in the comics' onscreen formula was reportedly due to both disappointing box office receipts for their 1945 films The Naughty Nineties, Here Come the Co-Eds, and Abbott and Costello in Hollywood, and personal tensions that led to a brief break up that year.

The audience present at the previewing of The Time of Their Lives at the Forum Theater in Los Angeles all but rolled in the aisles with merriment, exactly as in the good old days.