To Kill a Mockingbird: The Screenplay and Related Readings

Horton Foote was born in Wharton, Texas on March 14, 1916. He studied acting at the Pasadena Playhouse in California for two years before going to New York and joining Mary Hunter's American Actors Company. While there, he wrote a one-act play called Wharton Dance. After that, he continued to pursue acting and appeared in a few other plays, but primarily focused on writing. After World War II, he moved to Washington D. C. to run the King Smith School with Vincent Donehue. While he was there, he opened the King Smith Theater to all races, the first integrated audiences in the nation's capital. In addition to plays, he wrote for television and film. He was one of the writers for The Gabby Hayes Show on NBC. He wrote numerous plays including The Chase, The Carpetbagger's Children, and The Orphans' Home. He wrote numerous screenplays for movies including Baby, the Rain Must Fall and The Trip to Bountiful. He won the Pulitzer Prize for The Young Man from Atlanta and two Academy Awards for To Kill a Mockingbird and Tender Mercies. He died on March 4, 2009 at the age of 92. Nelle Harper Lee was born in Monroeville, Alabama on April 28, 1926. She studied law at the University of Alabama from 1945 to 1949, and spent a year as an exchange student in Oxford University, Wellington Square. She moved to New York where she worked as an airlines reservations clerk while pursuing a literary career. In 1959, she accompanied Truman Capote to Holcombe, Kansas, as a research assistant for Capote's novel In Cold Blood. Her first book, To Kill a Mockingbird, was published in 1960 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1961. The book was adapted as a feature film in 1962 and a London stage play in 1987. Her second book, Go Set a Watchman, was published in 2015. She died on February 19, 2016 at the age of 89.