Horton Foote

Albert Horton Foote, Jr. was born March 14, 1916 to Albert Horton Foote, Sr. and Harriet Gautier Brooks Foote in Wharton, Texas. His name Albert is a Foote family name and the name Horton was his grandmother’s maiden name. Horton was in third generation of the Foote family to be born in Texas. His great grandfather S. D. Foote had come to the state in the 1800s.

Horton’s father was a dry goods merchant in Wharton. The family story was that Horton, Sr. and Harriet had eloped and married on Valentine’s Day, 1915. The wedding ceremony was performed by a local Baptist minister after the Methodist minister had declined to marry them. Horton, Jr. was their oldest son and was followed by two brothers, Tom and John. Tom Horton was a crewman on a B-17 of the 97th Bomb Group and lost his life in World War II when his aircraft was shot down over Germany after completing a bombing mission. John Speed Horton remained in Texas and worked in a medical related field.

Horton, Jr. was educated in Wharton and briefly attended Wharton Junior College before moving to California to study acting at age 17. He spent the next two years as an apprentice at Pasadena Playhouse before moving to New York around 1932. There he made the acquaintance of choreographer Agnes de Mille and shared with her some of his stories about growing up in Texas. Ms. de Mille suggested that he begin to write down some of his recollections.

In New York, Horton continued to pursue acting but in 1940 he staged his first play, a one act production called “Wharton Dance.” Next he followed up with a full length work called “Texas Town” which played in New York. Horton began to write for television early in the life of that medium. His first credit was for an episode of “The Gabby Hayes Show.” He then wrote episodes for other series. His credits included six episodes for a weekly NBC series called “Philco Television Playhouse.” It was during this period that he wrote “A Trip to Bountiful” which was televised in 1953. It was later adapted to a full length theatrical production and ran for two months in New York.

Horton married the former Lillian Vallish in 1945 and the couple had four children, two sons and two daughters. Lillian was a few years younger, born in Pennsylvania. During her career, she produced a number of his films. They remained married until her death at 69 in 1992.

Horton frequently expressed his affection for Texas in his work. In an article recapping his life and writing in the Berkshire (California) Eagle issue of March 7, 2009, it was expressed well, “The stories and lives of the people Foote loved in Texas became the bedrock for many of his plays, with the fictional Harrison, Texas, standing in for Wharton.” The article continued by saying while other playwrights in the 1970s and 1980s wrote about issues, Horton wrote about everyday people who dealt with common problems, redemption, a search for home and love.

He continued to write for television. Between 1963 and the early 1960s, his credits include over a dozen episodes of various series including Kraft Theater, Omnibus, Playhouse 90 and others. One of his early screen works was the adaptation of Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Foote remarked that he previously had not known much about adapting other work or writing for the screen, but the project was a financial and critical success. Released in 1962, it was nominated for 8 academy awards and won 3: Gregory Peck for best actor in a leading role, Foote for best writing based on material from another medium and Alexander Golitzen, Henry Bumstead and Oliver Emert for best art direction – set direction, black and white. It won numerous other awards from other organizations.

Harper Lee had said that she strongly approved of Foote being engaged to adapt her book for the screen. Likewise, Foote spoke positively about working with her, a task that could have been difficult under other circumstances. They appear to have established a friendly rapport and a good working relationship.

Foote went on to adapt one of his plays for the screen for the film “Baby, the Rain Must Fall.” One account said that this particular experience might have discouraged him from working in films for a time, because he felt that the author/writer had less control over his own creation. However, he did not abandon the medium and continued to adapt other writer’s works to film, including works by William Faulkner which resulted in the films “Tomorrow,” “Barn Burning” and “Old Man.” He also did the screenplay adapted from the John Steinbeck novel “Of Mice and Men.”

Foote is usually remembered for his 1980s films, including “Tender Mercies” released in 1983 and “A Trip to Bountiful” released 1985. He also wrote what has been called a semi-autobiographical work called “The Orphans’ Home Cycle” which is described as nine one act plays in groups of three. Written after the deaths of his mother and father in the mid 1970s, it is a fictional account of life in the early twentieth century following the death of a father. As described by Playbill, the collections are as follows: Part I (The Story of a Childhood), Part II (The Story of a Marriage) and Part III (The Story of a Family). It is performed on stage and is also available in print.

Horton Foote was a Christian Scientist. Several articles and interviews touch on religious themes in his plays. His stories in movies like “Tender Mercies” and “Trip to Bountiful” have themes throughout that seem more religious than secular. They are not heavy-handed in their presentation but include characters who either receive or are in need of grace, redemption, kindness, compassion, those who are searching for peace, characters who are prodigals, people who are experiencing suffering, characters who exhibit faith and look to God for refuge, characters who exhibit or desire dignity. Foote was comfortable using church hymns as part of his movie soundtracks. The phrase “tender mercies” is not exclusive to the Bible, of course, but that exact expression appears 11 times in the King James Version of the Bible.

In addition to his Academy Award for “To Kill a Mockingbird,” Horton Foote was nominated for two more Academy Awards. In 1983, he received an Academy Award for the screenplay of “Tender Mercies” in the category Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen. In 1985, he was nominated for another Academy Award for for his screenplay for “The Trip to Bountiful” in the category Screenplay Adapted from Another Medium.

His other honors include receiving honorary doctorates from Spalding University in 1987 and Carson-Newman University in 2006. He was awarded the American National Medal of the Arts from the National Endowment for the Arts in 2000. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1995 for his play “The Young Man from Atlanta.”

Horton Foote died in his sleep on March 4, 2009 at his home in Hartford, Connecticut. He was 92 years old. Both he and his wife Lillian are interred in the City Cemetery in Wharton, Texas.

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