Horton Foote is one of America's leading dramatists. He received his first Academy Award in 1962 for his screenplay of
To Kill a Mockingbird, and his second in 1983 for
Tender Mercies. Foote received the Pulitzer Prize in 1995 for
The Young Man From Atlanta, the story of an older couple attempting to cope with a son's death and the possibility of his homosexuality.
Foote wrote plays for television's Playhouse 90, Philco Playhouse and U.S. Steel Hour. He then went to Hollywood where he wrote an adaptation of Harper Lee's novel
To Kill a Mockingbird. Mr. Foote wrote the screenplay
Tender Mercies especially for Robert Duvall, and it garnered Academy Awards for Duvall and Foote. In 1985, Mr. Foote's play
A Trip to Bountiful was nominated for an Academy Award.
Foote's book,
Farewell: A Memoir of a Texas Childhood, published in 1999, is an account of life in his birthplace, Wharton, Texas.
In 1989 he was awarded the William Inge Award for Lifetime Achievement in the American Theatre. More recently, he was honored with a Gold Medal for Drama from the Academy of Arts and Letters (1998), a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Writer's Guild of America (1999), and the Master American Dramatist Award of the Pen American Center (2000).
