On Borrowed Time

New Zealand Listener, Volume 39, Issue 988, 25 July 1958, Page 17

On Borrowed Time

‘THE old have a habit of getting their own way with life, combining a stubborn refusal to admit defeat with a full use of their long experience in coping with problems. But in On Borrowed Time, the play to be heard from YAs and 4YZ on Monday, July 28, an old man gets his own way with Death. When Death: arrives, in the person of Mr Brink, Gramps is too concerned over the future of his grandson Pud to go

quietly; instead he manages to get Mr Brink up a tree-an appletree, to be precise. How he succeeds in holding him there, and how a satisfactory future for Pud is worked out, form the events of a comedy which successfully mixes fantasy and homespun humour. In this VOA production, in their American Theatre of the Air series, Gramps is played by Howard Lindsay, and his wife Dorothy Stickney plays Granny, the role she created in the original Broadway production. This husband and wife team are perhaps best known in the United States for their roles in Life with Father, of which Mr Lindsay was co-author. On Borrowed Time, first produced on Broadway in 1938, has since been filmed, televised, and frequently revived. Its author, Paul Osborn, who adapted the play from the novel by Lawrence E. Watkin, has since been writing scenarios for films and television, including The Yearling, East of Eden, Sayonara and South Pacific.