81R15778 JGH-D
By: Zerwas H.R. No. 966
R E S O L U T I O N
WHEREAS, Devotees of fine dramatic writing across Texas and
around the nation and the world are mourning the loss of playwright
and screenwriter Horton Foote, who died on March 4, 2009, at the age
of 92; and
WHEREAS, Albert Horton Foote, Jr., was born in Wharton on
March 14, 1916, to Albert Horton Foote and the former Hallie Brooks;
at the age of 16, Mr. Foote moved to Dallas to study acting; he later
studied for two years at the Pasadena Playhouse in California, then
moved to New York, where he joined the American Actors Company; and
WHEREAS, After Mr. Foote performed an improvisation based on
his boyhood, someone suggested that he write about life in the small
town where he grew up; that evening, Mr. Foote began a one-act play,
Wharton Dance, about the Friday night dances of his youth; a few
years later, his first full-length play, Texas Town, was performed
in New York to good reviews; for the rest of his life, Mr. Foote
continued to write plays set in the fictional Texas town of
Harrison, based on Wharton; and
WHEREAS, To support himself at the beginning of his career,
Mr. Foote worked as a night elevator operator and a clerk in a
bookstore, where he met his future wife, Lillian Vallish; they were
married in 1945 and remained together until her death in 1992; as a
young couple, they moved to Washington, D.C., where he helped run
the King-Smith School of the Creative Arts and was the first to open
the school's theater to all races; and
WHEREAS, Returning to New York in 1950, Mr. Foote continued
to write plays while making his living writing for television; his
play The Trip to Bountiful was first produced for television, then
played on Broadway, and was later made into a film; his television
work included adaptations of stories by William Faulkner; and
WHEREAS, Mr. Foote began writing for the movies in the 1950s,
and he won his first Academy Award for the screenplay he adapted
from the novel To Kill a Mockingbird in 1962; he won his second
Academy Award for his script for the 1983 film Tender Mercies, which
he wrote for his friend, actor Robert Duvall; and
WHEREAS, Returning to stage writing in the late 1960s, Mr.
Foote began The Orphans' Home, a nine-play cycle based on his
family's history and spanning the first quarter of the 20th
century; with his wife as producer, two of the plays from the cycle,
1918 and On Valentine's Day, were made into films that were shot in
Waxahachie and starred Mr. Foote's daughter, Hallie; and
WHEREAS, Mr. Foote created critically acclaimed work until
the end of his life; in 1994 and 1995, the Signature Theater in New
York devoted an entire season to his plays, and one of them, The
Young Man from Atlanta, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1995; his 2002
play, The Carpetbagger's Children, played to sold-out audiences,
and his recently rewritten play, Dividing the Estate, won glowing
reviews in the fall of 2008; and
WHEREAS, Along with his Academy Awards and Pulitzer Prize,
Mr. Foote received the National Medal of Arts from President Bill
Clinton; his contributions to Texas letters and film were
recognized with the Bookend Award from the Texas Book Festival, a
Texas Medal of Arts, and induction into the Texas Film Hall of Fame;
and
WHEREAS, A courtly and good-humored man, Horton Foote wrote
with great tenderness and insight about the struggles and small
triumphs of ordinary Texans, but so evocatively that audiences
around the world saw their own dreams and disappointments reflected
on the stage or the screen; the young man who departed Wharton in
1932 spent the rest of his life celebrating the resilience and
dignity he learned there, and wherever his success may have taken
him, in his heart and in his work, he never left Texas; now,
therefore, be it
RESOLVED, That the House of Representatives of the 81st Texas
Legislature hereby pay tribute to the life of Horton Foote and
extend sincere condolences to the members of his family: to his
children, Hallie, Daisy, Horton, and Walter Foote; to his two
grandchildren; and to his other relatives and friends; and, be it
further
RESOLVED, That an official copy of this resolution be
prepared for his family and that when the Texas House of
Representatives adjourns this day, it do so in memory of Horton
Foote.