This is Texas Originals. From Humanities Texas, for the advancement of heritage, culture, and education.
The quiet cotton farming community of Wharton, Texas, is the touchstone for the career of playwright and screenwriter Horton Foote.
Born in 1916 and raised in Wharton, Foote first dreamed of becoming an actor. But he soon discovered his true genius lay in writing, not performing.
He began writing plays about everyday people living in small Texas towns like his boyhood home, and his work was praised for its authenticity. One critic compared him to Faulkner, noting Foote's "ability to make his own corner of America stand for the whole."
In 1953, Foote's television drama The Trip to Bountiful aired on NBC to great acclaim. The story—about an elderly woman's determined journey back to the Texas town where she was born—was a Broadway hit, and later, a popular film.
Foote went on to win Academy Awards for his adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird and for his original screenplay for the film Tender Mercies. In 1995, Foote received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
But no matter how wide an audience his work reached, Foote continued to write about the kind of people he knew from his childhood. "I believe very deeply in the human spirit," he once said. "I've known people that the world has thrown everything at. . . . And yet something about them retains a dignity. They face life and they don’t ask quarters."
More information about this Texas Original is available at Texasoriginals.org. This program is produced by KUHF Houston Public Radio and Humanities Texas, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities.