The First Talking One-Man Picture Show: A Note on Tom Troupe
By Matan Tal
I want to talk about Tom Troupe. He was a theater actor, a TV actor, a film actor. And the sole performer in one of the most memorable films I've ever seen.
The film is Sofi, from 1968. A film rendition of Gogol's Diary of a Madman. One man. No one else. The whole thing.
I caught glimpses of it back in the 90s. Some images stayed with me in a way I couldn't explain. Then, about fifteen years ago, I found a full copy online somehow, watched it all the way through, and never forgot it. Now the copy seems to have disappeared. I still get messages from people asking if I have it. I don't.
What Tom Troupe did in Sofi — and I say this with some conviction — was the first feature-length English-speaking one-man picture show in cinema history (first overall solo-actor film was the indian film Yaadein from 1964). In the silent era there were one-man films, mostly short, but some longer. Sound changes the equation entirely. A single voice carrying an entire feature. That's what he did. In 1968. And almost nobody noticed.
I find this form extremely intriguing. The one-man film. The one-man show translated to screen. It's something I keep coming back to.
"Would be so honored to meet you if you decide to make the trip here in January."
At some point I managed to track him down and write to him. I told him what Sofi meant to me. He wrote back — warm, generous. He told me he had performed the stage version of Diary of a Madman for several years before the film, starting in Los Angeles, then touring cities across the US and Canada. The film came after all of that. Which explains something about the performance — the ease of it, the lack of strain.
He even invited me to his home in Los Angeles.
I wrote back that maybe one day we'd work together. He liked that.
I never went.
I'm writing this now, in February 2026, because I just heard that Tom Troupe passed away in July 2025. I had been meaning to write him a proper letter — on paper, the real kind — thanking him for those emails. I kept putting it off. This is the letter instead.
He was a sweet man. A kind man. A great actor.
It's a shame I didn't get to meet him in real life. But his work — specifically Sofi — will always stay dear to me.
Rest in peace, Tom Troupe.
