What do you think?
Rate this book
Talking Pictures - Acting Edition
6M, 5W. 1929, Harrison, Texas. Myra Tolliver makes her living playing the live music for the silent pictures. She makes barely enough to survive, caring for herself and her teenage son, Pete. As borders in the home of the Jacksons, Myra supplements her rent by giving piano lessons to the Jackson's two daughters. Mr. Jackson is a railroad man who, during the course of the play, is bumped from his engineer's position stationed in Harrison, to one stationed elsewhere, and bumped back again. They'll stay in Harrison, meaning Myra and Pete can stay; that is if Myra can continue to find work since talkies are about to take over the town picture show and Myra won't be needed anymore. While trying so hard to provide for her son, his father, Gerard, keeps trying to lure Pete away from Myra to live with him. Changing girlfriends, jobs and being a showoff, Gerard doesn't know anything about bringing up their son, but Myra doesn't realize how much Pete believes his father's promises of a better life. Through all this, Myra is courted by Willis, a bricklayer abandoned by his wife five years earlier. Smitten with Myra, everyone knows Willis will soon ask her to marry him. Though taken with Willis, Myra may not be in love with him. He will be a good provider though, and a kind, loving companion, so when he does ask Myra to marry him, she accepts. Pete announces he will go to live with his father, nearly breaking Myra's heart. She won't stop him though, for fear he will hate her. Yet when Gerard casually announces he is married again and he is postponing Pete's move, Pete knows things will never turn out the way he wanted. Myra, now happy Pete is staying with her, faces a hard life since the talkies have come to Harrison.
- GenresPlays
72 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1996
4 people want to read
About the author
Horton Foote
123 books48 followersAlbert 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.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
November 7, 2022
On the printed page, Horton Foote's dramas are often easy to look down upon. The characters feel so ordinary and quaintly old-fashioned, their speech flat and prosaic. But spend some time with the people of TALKING PICTURES and the realization hits: they are going through my life--all the little struggles about marriage, family, work that I fret about are here, moving quite synchronously through the simply landscapes of small town Texas.
These are people who seem things in extremes and are trying to find their way by touch back to the center. It is the little acts of movement that form this play--not one or two characters' individual struggles but the struggle of all of us to cope with life's constant uncertainty and change.
And there are dozens of rifts on movies--one of Foote's favorite subjects. As the title suggests, the shift from silent to talking pictures works as a central metaphor for all their lives, but the play adds other "movie" touches that range from bringing back to the surface the stars and films of Hollywood's earliest era to writing in a form that more resembles a movie script that edits together scene after scene of action to tell a story without setting up a hard Act I, Act II format. Indeed, the play's actual Act break hardly seems a break at all.
In the end we either come to love and forgive these characters or shallowly be bored by them--just as many of us are bored with our daily lives. But especially the young daughters who open and end the play are Foote's glimmers of hope that in all the shifting there is a possibility of progress.
Also impressive is the way Foote addresses race in the play--not the usual Southern tropes of white and black, but the migration of Latinx culture into a world the characters conceive only in terms of white or at least of intense segregation.
Admittedly, many of these ideas are seen more easily in a performance (I'm only caught a few clips on line) than on the page, but a close reading finds them.
I encourage anyone interested in tackling the seemingly simple issues of life against a backdrop of 1920s Texas to give this play a read--or better yet, ask you local theater company to bring it to life.
These are people who seem things in extremes and are trying to find their way by touch back to the center. It is the little acts of movement that form this play--not one or two characters' individual struggles but the struggle of all of us to cope with life's constant uncertainty and change.
And there are dozens of rifts on movies--one of Foote's favorite subjects. As the title suggests, the shift from silent to talking pictures works as a central metaphor for all their lives, but the play adds other "movie" touches that range from bringing back to the surface the stars and films of Hollywood's earliest era to writing in a form that more resembles a movie script that edits together scene after scene of action to tell a story without setting up a hard Act I, Act II format. Indeed, the play's actual Act break hardly seems a break at all.
In the end we either come to love and forgive these characters or shallowly be bored by them--just as many of us are bored with our daily lives. But especially the young daughters who open and end the play are Foote's glimmers of hope that in all the shifting there is a possibility of progress.
Also impressive is the way Foote addresses race in the play--not the usual Southern tropes of white and black, but the migration of Latinx culture into a world the characters conceive only in terms of white or at least of intense segregation.
Admittedly, many of these ideas are seen more easily in a performance (I'm only caught a few clips on line) than on the page, but a close reading finds them.
I encourage anyone interested in tackling the seemingly simple issues of life against a backdrop of 1920s Texas to give this play a read--or better yet, ask you local theater company to bring it to life.
Displaying 1 of 1 review