The Books: “The Old Beginning” (Horton Foote)

Next in my Daily Book Excerpt:

Next play on the script shelf:

Selected One-Act Plays of Horton Foote. Horton Foote is an amazing dude. He wrote two Academy Award winning screenplays (To Kill a Mockingbird and Tender Mercies), and also one Oscar-nominated screenplay (Trip to Bountiful). Foote is also an accomplished playwright (so many of our greatest screenwriters, actors, and directors in the 20th century came from a theatre background first. That’s probably not so true now, what with the vogue of “film schools” taking over the planet. There was no “film school” in the 1940s and 50s. No. You learned your trade by … er … DOING your trade.) Anyway, Horton Foote writes what he knows – and what he knows is Texas. I love this series of one-act plays, because so many of them take place in the same town, and the same characters come in and out of different plays. It’s like different glimpses into this small community. (It’s called Harrison, Texas, by the way). Foote’s plays about Harrison reflect anxieties about change – Harrison is a quiet farming town, and the forces of modernization and urbanization puts a lot of stress on the traditional values of this place. All of his “Harrison” plays, to some degree, deal with that anxiety. But what his plays are REALLY about are the people. He just creates these amazing characters – funny, gossipy, tragic, human – and they just leap off the page.

First play in the collection is The Old Beginning. This is one of his “Harrison Texas” plays. Harrison is a small Gulf Coast town, that used to serve the cotton industry and the plantation society before WWI. Harrison’s past is tainted by racism, but at the same time, Harrison is a stable place – a place where you can feel comfortable raising your kids, etc. But there’s an uneasiness behind all of it. In the play The Old Beginning, which takes place in 1950 – the tensions in this small town are illuminated. It’s really about old vs. new. (Which I think any small town in America, or actually – in any culture – can relate to. This isn’t specific to Harrison, Texas. Fear of change, fear of losing what is good in our traditions – is a very common fear that crosses cultural boundaries.)

So in the 1950s, Harrison experiences a boom of sorts. Old buildings torn down, new oil wells drilled … H.T. Mavis (who shows up in many of the Harrison plays) is a real estate development, and the guy who is at the forefront of the changes. His son Tommy works for him. It is not an easy relationship.

I dated a guy like Mavis. It’s not a good memory.

The following excerpt is a confrontation between father and son:

EXCERPT FROM The Old Beginning, by Horton Foote:

(Tommy goes back to his paper. H.T. Maven comes bustling in R. He walks across sidewalk, up C. sidewalk, and enters his office. He is heavyset and in his middle fifties. He chews a cigar nervously)

MAVIS. (sharply) Tommy.

(Tommy puts his paper down. He seems embarrassed and ill at ease at his father finding him reading the paper.)

TOMMY. Yes sir.

MAVIS. Never read during business hours. It doesn’t look businesslike.

TOMMY. Well, I was just waiting …

MAVIS. No excuses, Son. No excuses. (He kisses his wife) Hello, Roberta. Hello, Mrs. Nelson.

ROBERTA. Poor Mrs. Nelson’s house leaks and we can’t afford to fix it. Isn’t that too bad?

MRS. NELSON. Somebody had better fix it. I’m not going to. The roof is just going to fall iln if it isn’t fixed.

MAVIS. Did you read your contract, dear lady?

MRS. NELSON. The house needs painting. The paper is hanging in shreds.

MAVIS. Read the contract, dear lady. All of these problems are carefully taken care of in our contract. Tommy, get Mrs. Nelson a copy of the contract.

TOMMY. Yes sir. (He jumps up. He goes over to the file cabinet)

MAVIS. Under N, Tommy. Hurry. (Tommy begins looking through the file cabinet.) Hurry, Son. Hurry.

ROBERTA. H.T., stop making the boy nervous. How can you expect him to do anything if you shout at him that way?

TOMMY. Are you sure this is the right file cabinet? (MR. Mavis is busy looking at papers on his desk and doesn’t answer.) Dad, where is it? I can’t see it?

MAVIS. Now where would it be, Son? Think carefully. Think.

TOMMY. It should be under N, but it isn’t.

MAVIS. Then look again. It’s bound to be under N.

ROBERTA. Oh, H.T., stop teasing the boy and help him to find it. I’m in a hurry.

MAVIS. He’s twenty-four, Roberta. I’m leaving him in charge of my business. It’s time he learned to think things through for himself. Have you found it, Tommy?

(Tommy looks through the files)

TOMMY. I tell you it’s not here.

MAVIS. Then you have the wrong file cabinet.

TOMMY. OK. But you said …

MAVIS. Never argue with your father in front of customers. Son, just look in the other one.

TOMMY. All right. (He starts for the next one)

MAVIS. You must have had the wrong file cabinet.

TOMMY. I didn’t have the wrong one. You told me to look there.

MAVIS. Quickly, Son, never keep a customer waiting.

(Tommy gives him a look and goes to the other cabinet)

ROBERTA. Help him, H.T. We have so much to do this afternoon.

MAVIS. Now, Roberta. Let me handle this. Tommy is twenty-four. He has to learn about things. By the time I was twenty-four, Mrs. Nelson, I had saved twenty thousand dollars.

ROBERTA. Tommy is twenty-three, H.T. He is not twenty-four.

MAVIS. Well, do you think he’s going to save twenty thousand dollars in the next year?

ROBERTA. He might surprise us.

TOMMY. (quietly and desperately) Dad, if it’s here I can’t find it.

MAVIS. I find that difficult to believe, Tommy. (He goes to the file cabinet. He begins to search. He finds it.) Right here, boy. Right here where it was supposed to be.

TOMMY. You said it was under N. You got it from under T.

MAVIS. Where’s your initiative, boy? If a thing isn’t under N, look elsewhere. You know it hasn’t got legs to get up and walk out of the file cabinet. (He hands the contract to Mrs. Nelson) My boy is a dreamer, Mrs. Nelson, just like his mother. But he’ll learn. We just have to all be patient. Now, my dear lady, do me the honor of reading this contract. Read carefully and slowly and then I’ll let you tell me what it says about papering and painting.

ROBERTA. I was explaining to her, H.T., it has all to do with taxes.

MAVIS. Taxes have nothing to do with it, Roberta.

ROBERTA. It hasn’t? I thought you said …

MAVIS. Nothing at all. It is a matter of principle, that’s all. Tommy, show Mrs. Nelson into the other office so she can read quietly and calmly.

TOMMY. Yes sir. Come on, Mrs. Nelson. (He goes out the door, she follows him.)

MAVIS. I get very discouraged with Tommy sometimes, Roberta.

ROBERTA. Now you have to be patient. It wasn’t under N. You kept shouting at him to look under N.

MAVIS. It should have been under N. He probably moved it. I hate to think of what those file cabinets will look like when I get back. I wonder if I’m not being hasty going on this trip. After all, the boy …

ROBERTA. He’s twenty-three years old, H.T.