The Man from home

   This four-act play by Booth Tarkington and Harry Leon Wilson opened on 17 August 1908 at the Astor Theatre for 496 performances. Its nationalistic views caused some critics to dismiss it, but The Man from Home remained a popular play in stock for a decade and was made into motion pictures in 1914 and 1922. Daniel Voorhees Pike, a lawyer from Kokomo, Indiana, travels to Italy to check up on his ward, Ethel Granger-Simpson. He is horrified to find her engaged to the feckless son of the duplicitous Earl of Hawcastle. Through various machinations, Pike exposes the Earl's corruption and brings Ethel and her brother, Horace, who has also run afoul of European sophisticates, back to the homey safety of rural Indiana. Tarkington and Wilson collaborated on several other plays over more than twenty years.