Beginnings: A Memoir

by Horton Foote

Since 1939, Horton Foote, "the Chekhov of the small town," has chronicled with compassion and acuity the experience of American life both intimate and universal. His adaptation of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird and his original screenplay Tender Mercies earned him Academy Awards. He has won a Pulitzer Prize, the Gold Medal for Drama from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the PEN/Laura Pels Foundation Award for Drama, and the President's National Medal of Arts.
Beginnings is the story of Foote's discovery of his own vocation. He didn't always want to write. When he left Wharton, Texas, at the age of sixteen to study at the Pasadena Playhouse, Foote aspired to be an actor. He remembers the terror and excitement of leaving home during the Depression, his early exposure to the influences of German theater, and the speech lessons he took to "cure" him of his Southern drawl. He eventually arrives in New York to search for acting jobs and to study with some of the great Russian and American teachers of the 1930s. But after mixed results on the stage, he finally recognizes his true passion, writing.
From Martha Graham to Tennessee Williams, from Agnes de Mille to Lillian Gish, Horton collaborates with great artists in both dance and theater. The world he describes of fierce commitment and passion regardless of financial rewards is both captivating and inspiring. Through it all Horton maintains his genuine Southern charm, and he often travels home to Wharton, the town that nurtured him as a storyteller and has inspired his writing for the past sixty years. From one of the most moving and distinctive voices of our time, Beginnings is a rare, personal look at a fascinating era in American life, and at the making of a writer.

Genres: Nonfiction, Biography, Memoir

272 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 12, 2001

About the author

Albert Horton Foote, Jr. was an American playwright and screenwriter, perhaps best known for his Academy Award-winning screenplays for the 1962 film To Kill a Mockingbird and the 1983 film Tender Mercies, and his notable live television dramas during the Golden Age of Television. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1995 for his play The Young Man From Atlanta.

Reviews

[John Brewer · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had only a passing familiarity with Horton Foote when I picked up this biography of his early years. I had read a profile of him in Texas Monthly magazine and was a fan of his film Tender Mercies, which he wrote. I enjoyed the book, not only for insight into Foote but as a history of theater, which was reaching its peak in importance in American Arts just before the rise of television and movies. The book is written in an easy conversational style.

[Peggy Walls · Rating 5 out of 5]

A masterful story teller!

[Wendy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Having read this a Farewell, I would just say his plays were more interesting than his autobiographies. I thought by reading them, I would learn more about the man, but I didn't learn too much.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book begins where Farewell leaves off: Horton Foote heading to Pasadena to study acting at the Pasadena Playhouse. No author of recent memory can make me cry as much as he can. I enjoyed this one almost as much as the first one, but would warn others who are not interested in theatre and the history of theatre during its great American renaissance of the 1930s to keep an open mind. He refers to the great teachers, like Jilinsky and Boleslavsky, who defected from the Moscow Art Theatre and set up schools in New York City where, after Pasadena, he eventually went to study. He explains how Agnes DeMille, the great contemporary of Martha Graham, encouraged him to write his first play. Also, he tells of his meetings with Lee Strasberg, Katherine Cornell, Eva La Gallienne and other great luminaries of the American stage. A very interesting, informational read for the right person.

[Branden · Rating 3 out of 5]

meh. strangely boring, read a bit like an extended biography no one asked for, but fine and easy to rip through.

[Fishsanwitt]

stamped, catalogued