Obit: Horton Foote, playwright, Mar 2009

Subject: Obit: Horton Foote, playwright, Mar-09
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 05 Mar 09 - 11:47 AM

Alas--we have lost the wonderful Horton Foote!

link to Washington Post

Horton Foote, 92, a celebrated dramatist of the gentle rhythms, familial perplexities and generational burdens of small-town life and an Academy Award winner for his screenplay adaptation of the Harper Lee novel "To Kill a Mockingbird" (1962), died March 4 in Hartford, Conn. He was in Hartford preparing for a fall production of "The Orphans' Home Cycle," his award-winning collection of nine plays. No cause of death was reported.

Mr. Foote forged a writing career that spanned seven decades and encompassed film, theater and most especially television during the 1950s heyday of the "human condition" drama. One of his best-known works of the period, "The Trip to Bountiful," starred Lillian Gish as an elderly woman who runs away from her family to revisit the small Texas town where she grew up, only to find it abandoned. A later film version won an Oscar for Geraldine Page.

Mr. Foote was never widely embraced in the manner of Arthur Miller or Tennessee Williams. He was occasionally out of fashion in the theater world, though he experienced moments when his reputation skyrocketed after a particularly terrific production. Such was the case last year with "Dividing the Estate," which starred his daughter Hallie as a scheming heiress in a Texas family squabbling over an inheritance. Mr. Foote also won a 1995 Pulitzer Prize for his play "The Young Man From Atlanta," about a Houston couple in the 1950s trying to comprehend the mysterious death of their son.

Besides writing the movie version of "To Kill a Mockingbird," which is often held up as one of the finest and most literate visual translations of a book, Mr. Foote won an Oscar for his original screenplay "Tender Mercies" (1983), starring Robert Duvall as down-on-his-luck country singer Mac Sledge. Duvall, who also won an Oscar for "Tender Mercies," appeared in Mr. Foote's "Tomorrow," a critically acclaimed 1972 movie adaptation of a William Faulkner short story.

(follow the link above for the rest)

His work was sublime.

SRS

Subject: RE: Obit: Horton Foote, playwright, Mar-09
From: GUEST,DWR
Date: 05 Mar 09 - 02:43 PM

You could go on and on, my favorite(s) would be the Courtship/On Valentine's Day/1918 trilogy with his daughter Hallie Foote and William Converse-Roberts in the lead roles. Not as well known as those mentioned above, but just as good in their own way. I think I'll have to get out my DVDs and watch them again. It's a somewhat biographical story of a family for a period of years up to and including The Great War . . .

No, wait, I really loved Tender Mercies, but then there's To Kill A Mockingbird, I guess I've seen it the most, How can you choose? I think it comes down to the whole body of work, unequaled by any other writer.

The man made magical things, Tender Mercies indeed.

Thank you, Horton Foote for all the blessing you've given me.

Subject: RE: Obit: Horton Foote, playwright, Mar-09
From: frogprince
Date: 05 Mar 09 - 02:58 PM

You knew the characters he created. They were no bigger, or smaller, than life.

Subject: RE: Obit: Horton Foote, playwright, Mar-09
From: Wesley S
Date: 05 Mar 09 - 03:17 PM

And I understand that he had to be talked into being a writer. He wanted to act. I'm glad he made the change.

Subject: RE: Obit: Horton Foote, playwright, Mar-09
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 05 Mar 09 - 07:30 PM

I saw The Trip to Bountiful and loved the splendid characters he created. I told my mother about it and she didn't watch it, and I told her again, and she still didn't. I finally pointed out that it has NOTHING to do with Utah, and she watched it and loved it. I don't know what she was expecting, but that is such a classic story of a trip that so many people take at some time or other in their lives.

We had a week-long celebration of Foote's work on our university campus a couple of years ago and he and Hallie spent at least two days there participating in events. It was wonderful, and even at age 90, when he gave his talk and Hallie sat beside him to watch his pages and occasionally keep them from sticking, that also was a great testament to he and his family--the message was important, and if the messenger was a little frail, someone would help and not make a big deal about it.

I had the opportunity to ask him about his screenplay for To Kill a Mockingbird, and how he managed to get so much of the story into the two-hour film. We could see some characters were gone, others were conflated, but still, it was a challenge. He said that the first thing he realized he'd have to do was compress a two-year story into one year. That eliminated a lot of the coming and going. And the fact that it is almost a perfect film, from an almost perfect novel, is that they found such a marvelous writer to do that screenplay. (And by the way, he did write a much fuller Mrs. Dubose, but she ended up mostly on the cutting-room floor.)

SRS

Subject: RE: Obit: Horton Foote, playwright, Mar 2009
From: Padre
Date: 05 Mar 09 - 10:24 PM

"Tomorrow" has to be my favorite Horton Foote film - Robert Duvall was perfect in the part of Jackson Fentry.

Padre

Subject: RE: Obit: Horton Foote, playwright, Mar 2009
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 06 Mar 09 - 11:51 AM

Here is a very nice article in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram:

Texas' pre-eminent playwright, Horton Foote, dies at 92.

SRS