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    "ocrText": "Search - 1.07 Results - headline (horton foote)\n  http://www.lexis.com/research/retrieve?_...Wk&_md5=290e4898418397cb70fb6a22283bcl'\nVallish, his future wife.\nThey were married 48 years, and when Lillian Foote died in August 1992, Foote was devastated. It's\na subject that is still too painful for Foote to discuss, although he willingly talks about almost\nanything else.\n\"Losing our mother was really tough,\" Hallie Foote says. \"It's still tough. He depended on my mother.\nShe was very bright and had a really good eye. She would often be a sounding board for him - she\nwas good at spotting acting talent, good at producing, very supportive and had total faith in him as\nan artist. She kind of bolstered him up. Writing can be very isolating.\nIt was Lillian Foote who \"discovered\" the intense young actor Robert Duvall. The Footes first saw him\nin an off-Broadway play and were impressed. Sometime later, when Pakula was looking to cast the\npart of the feebleminded Boo Radley in \"To Kill a Mockingbird,\" Lillian suggested Duvall. It was to be\nhis screen debut. Since then, Foote and Duvall have been great friends and have worked on\nnumerous projects together.\nWhile continuing to write for the New York stage, Foote also starting writing for the new medium of\ntelevision in what has come to be called the Golden Age of TV. The first script he wrote for\n\"Television Playhouse\" was \"The Trip to Bountiful,\" a magical and moving story of an elderly woman\nand her longing to return home. Trapped in a Houston apartment she shares with her son and\nshrewish daughter-in-law, she finally runs away and takes a bus to Bountiful, her old hometown.\nGish starred in the 1953 TV drama, which proved so popular it was made into a movie. Foote also\nexpanded it into a three-act play that ran on Broadway. Thirty years later he rewrote the story a\nsecond time for a movie version directed by Masterson and starring Geraldine Page as the mother\nand Glynn as her shrewish daughter-in-law. Page won a best-actress Oscar, and Foote's screenplay\nwas nominated for an Oscar.\n\"I was praying not to win, because I adored Geraldine, and she said such a gracious thing about me\nwhen she got up,' Foote recalls. \"But I knew Lillian Gish was watching, and she had been wonderful\nin \"Bountiful,\" and I thought: 'How am I going to include them both without hurting the other?' I just\ndidn't want to go through it.\"\nOriginally, Foote had wanted to cast Gish in the movie role, but years had passed, and by the time\n\"Bountiful\" was made she was too old. As much as he loved her and appreciated her wonderful acting\nskills, Foote says, he had to be realistic. It's that kind of decision, friends say, that shows the\nunsentimental side he can take toward his work.\n\"He can be very tough, but he makes every effort not to be disagreeable,\" says Glynn, who also\nplayed Lily Dale in \"The Young Man From Atlanta.\"\nThe success of \"Bountiful\" reintroduced Foote to a whole new generation of fans, Glynn says. In the\n'70s, Foote's work went out of vogue, though he kept writing, and he and his family moved to New\nHampshire.\n\"My mother felt it was important for him to get away from New York City,' Hallie Foote says.\n\"Creatively, he felt boxed in, and in New Hampshire no one knew him, so he had the freedom to fail.\"\nIn many ways, Foote loved those years of getting up early and being involved in his children's\nactivities. He speaks proudly of his children and is deeply involved and interested in their lives. Hallie\nhas made a name for herself as an actress, interpreting her father's work; Horton Jr. is an actor who\nrecently opened a restaurant in New York. Walter is an attorney who only recently began writing\nscreenplays, surprising everyone. Daisy, the youngest, is a playwright, and Foote plans to direct a\nplay of hers next June in New York.\n8 of 10\n12/13/2000 12:59 PM"
}