Tarkington, Booth

(1869-1946)

   Best known for his novels, Newton Booth Tarkington, born in Indianapolis, Indiana, also wrote plays and some of his novels were adapted for the stage. Twenty-one Tarkington plays were produced, and he was viewed as a romantic with an eye for the details of Midwestern American life, past and present, although he occasionally departed from this formula. Tarkington's plays include Beaucaire (1901), written with Evelyn Greenleaf Sutherland, which starred Richard Mansfield, followed by The Man from Home (1908), Springtime (1909), and Cameo Kirby (1909). The Man from Home, written in collaboration with Harry Leon Wilson, failed, as did their subsequent collaborations, Your Humble Servant (1910) and Getting a Polish (1910). With a similar fate for his solo effort, Beauty and the Jacobin (1912), Tarkington abandoned playwriting for several years, never quite shedding the notion that serious art was impossible in the theatre. He created vehicles for Otis Skinner (Master Antonio, 1916) and George Arliss (Poldekin, 1920) and collaborated with others on The Country Cousin (1917; with Julian Steel) and Tweedles (1923; with Wilson). His greatest stage success, and perhaps most characteristic work, Clarence (1919), provided early acting opportunities for Alfred Lunt and Helen Hayes. Later, Tarkington wrote The Intimate Strangers (1921), Rose Briar (1922), The Trysting Place (1923), Magnolia (1923), and Colonel Satan (1931), while a few of his novels were successfully dramatized by others, including Seventeen (1918), Penrod (1918), and The Plutocrat (1930).