On Borrowed Time (1939)

On Borrowed Time is a 1939 film about the role death plays in life, and how humanity cannot live without it. It is adapted from Paul Osborn's 1938 Broadway hit play. The play, based on a novel by Lawrence Edward Watkin, has been revived twice on Broadway since its original run. Academy Award winner Harold S. Bucquet (for his 1937 Torture Money) directed.

Set in small-town America, the film stars Lionel Barrymore, Beulah Bondi and Sir Cedric Hardwicke. Barrymore plays Julian Northrup ("Gramps"), a wheelchair user (Barrymore had broken his hip twice and was now using a wheelchair, though he continued to act), who, with his wife Nellie, played by Bondi, are raising their orphaned grandson, Pud. Hardwicke plays Mr. Brink, the personification of death.

Synopsis

Brink (Sir Cedric Hardwicke) has recently taken Pud's (Bobs Watson) parents in an auto wreck. Brink later comes for Gramps (Lionel Barrymore). Believing Brink to be an ordinary stranger, the crotchety old Gramps orders Mr. Brink off the property. Pud comes out of the house and asks who the stranger was. Gramps is surprised and relieved that someone else could see the stranger; he was not merely a dream or apparition.

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