The Man who came back

   Opening on 2 September 1916 at the Playhouse, the melodrama by Jules Eckert Goodman was produced by William A. Brady and ran for 457 performances. Henry Hull gave a full-blast performance as the wastrel son of a wealthy man. His progressive degradation takes him to the lurid depths of a Shanghai opium den, where a San Francisco dance hall girl (acted by Mary Nash) hits bottom with him. Together the prodigal and his girl struggle to recover their humanity before the moment when he must choose between his dying father and the floozy. He chooses the latter "to the audible satisfaction of the first and second balconies" (New York Times, 4 September 1916).