Rest in Peace: Horton Foote

Award-winning US writer Horton Foote dead at 92

NEW YORK, March 5 (Reuters) - Horton Foote, whose plays and scripts about the longing and struggles of small-town life won him two Academy Awards, an Emmy and a Pulitzer Prize, has died at the age of 92.

Foote, whose best-known works included the Oscar-winning scripts for "To Kill a Mockingbird" and "Tender Mercies," died on Wednesday in Hartford, Connecticut, after a brief illness, his daughter, actress Hallie Foote, told the New York Times.

Many of Foote's tales were set in the fictional town of Harrison, which was based on his hometown of Wharton, Texas, a farming community about 50 miles (80 km) southwest of Houston.

Foote's works brimmed with influences and observations from Wharton and one admirer said the writer was to Texas what John Steinbeck was to California and Woody Allen is to New York...