WHY MY FATHER WROTE THE PLAY, by Anne Wolrige Gordon, who completed the play from her father's notes after his death:
"The great issue in the modern world is almighty man or Almighty God. At a time wh en all negative forces are chipping and filing away at the Rock of Ages, we must perceive the danger and the challenge, and fearlessly in the midst of misunderstanding and misrepresentation and opposition, even from within the compromised camp of Christianity, build Almighty God once more as a modern and revolutionary factor into the lives of millions of our fellow men."
So wrote Peter Howard a few months before his death in 1965. It was upon this great conflict of man or God that the theme of his last play, Happy Deathday, was based. Each one of Howard's plays is different. This is not from sheer twist of imagination, or from a sudden flash of genius, but because every day of his life Howard saw and met the needs of specific people. His plays were written with definite people in mind. Often those people represented needs common to everyone. Happy Deathday was written primarily for an eighteen-year-old girl.
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