William Goldman
William Goldman was a prolific American screenwriter, novelist, and playwright, born on August 12, 1931, in Highland Park, Illinois. He graduated from Oberlin College and earned a master's degree in English from Columbia University. Goldman's career began in the realm of theater, where he wrote three Broadway plays, although they were not successful. He later gained recognition in literature with novels like *Soldier in the Rain* and *Boys and Girls Together*. His film career took off with the screenplay for *Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid* (1969), earning him an Academy Award and setting a record with a $400,000 sale.
Goldman was noted for his versatility, adapting his own novels into films, such as *Marathon Man* and *The Princess Bride*, the latter becoming a beloved classic. He was also acclaimed for his adaptation of *All the President's Men*. Throughout his career, Goldman wrote over twenty novels and screenplays, and authored the influential memoir *Adventures in the Screen Trade*. Despite facing personal challenges, including a divorce and the loss of his daughter, he continued to write until his passing due to complications from cancer and pneumonia on November 16, 2018, at the age of 87.
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William Goldman
Writer
- Born: August 12, 1931
- Birthplace: Highland Park, Illinois
- Died: November 15, 2018
- Birthplace: New York City, New York
Biography
William Goldman, screenwriter, writer, and playwright, was born August 12, 1931 in Highland Park, Illinois, near Chicago. He graduated from Oberlin College in 1952 and Columbia University, where he earned a master's degree in English, in 1956. By his early twenties he was writing professionally. Professional writers seemed to run in Goldman’s family; his brother James was an acclaimed playwright, and the two of them collaborated on an unsuccessful musical in 1962.
Goldman wrote three plays, all of which opened on Broadway and were total disasters. He also began writing novels, including Soldier in the Rain (1960) and Boys and Girls Together (1962), which were more well received. After the former work was adapted into a 1963 film the actor Cliff Robertson asked Goldman to write a screenplay for him. At the time, Goldman had never written for film; in fact, he’d never even seen a copy of a screenplay. Needless to say, his first effort was rejected. However, he was able to successfully coauthor 1965's Masquerade. In 1966 he wrote the script for the film Harper, which turned out to be a major success starring Paul Newman, based on the novel The Moving Target (1949) by Ross MacDonald.
During the 1960s and 1970s Goldman's time was divided between teaching creative writing and writing screenplays and novels. His big breakthrough came with his first original screenplay, for the film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) starring Newman and Robert Redford. The screenplay sold for $400,000, setting a new record and giving Goldman a level of attention rarely achieved by writers in the movie industry. The film was a major success and earned the writer an Academy Award. He followed his screenwriting success with the publication of his two best-known novels. Goldman was preparing to tell his two daughters a bedtime story when one requested a story about a princess and the other requested one about a bride. He decided to mix the two, sparking the creation of The Princess Bride (1973), a novel in the form of a witty fairy tale with elements of romance, comedy, and adventure. 1974 saw the publication of his tense thriller novel Marathon Man, showing his ability to effortlessly switch between genres and voices.
Goldman proved equally adept at adapting the works of other authors to the screen, as with his acclaimed screenplay for director Alan J. Pakula's All the President’s Men(1976) starring Redford and Dustin Hoffman, which brought him another Academy Award, and adapting his own novels into films, as with the movie version of Marathon Man (1976) starring Hoffman. After an amazing string of hit films, however, Goldman for a time disappeared from the world of cinema, largely because he had signed a contract with a producer who, it turned out, could not afford to make the films being written for him. In the meantime he continued to write novels and also published a successful memoir about his career, Adventures in the Screen Trade: A Personal View of Hollywood and Screenwriting (1983). The book made him generally recognized to be the originator of the catchphrase, "Nobody knows anything." By the late 1980s Goldman was back to screenwriting, and another adaptation of his own work led to director Rob Reiner's film The Princess Bride (1987), which became a comedy classic. He also became well known for uncredited work improving other writers' scripts, though he denied widespread rumors that he wrote the award-winning film Good Will Hunting (1997).
All told, Goldman wrote more than twenty novels and more than twenty screenplays. Two of his twenty-first century film projects, Hearts in Atlantis (2001) and Dreamcatcher (2003), were adaptations of Stephen King novels. He also continued to write occasional nonfiction, including The Big Picture: Who Killed Hollywood? and Other Essays (2000). He won three lifetime achievement awards for screenwriting, two screenwriter of the year awards, and numerous other awards.
Goldman and Ilene Jones divorced in 1991 after thirty years of marriage. Their daughter Susanna died in 2015. Goldman was eventually diagnosed with colon cancer, and died of complications of that illness and pneumonia at the age of eighty-seven on November 16, 2018.
Bibliography
Boone, Christopher. "Spend 90 Minutes with William Goldman and Learn about His 'Inconceivable' Writing Career." No Film School. NONETWORK, 28 June 2013. Web. 20 Apr. 2016.
Cubbison, Cameron. "10 Screenwriting Lessons from William Goldman." ScreenCraft. ScreenCraft, 19 Feb. 2015. Web. 20 Apr. 2016.
Goldman, William. Adventures in the Screen Trade: A Personal View of Hollywood and Screenwriting. New York: Warner, 1983. Print.
Goldman, William. Which Lie Did I Tell? More Adventures in the Screen Trade. New York: Pantheon, 2000.
Grierson, Tim. "The Greats: William Goldman." Paste. Paste Media Group, 21 Mar. 2014. Web. 20 Apr. 2016.
Rifkin, Glenn. "William Goldman, Screenwriting Star and Hollywood Skeptic, Dies at 87." The New York Times, 16 Nov. 2018,www.nytimes.com/2018/11/16/obituaries/william-goldman-dead.html. Accessed 7 Dec. 2018.
"William Goldman Biography." FilmMakers.com. FilmMakers.com, 2011. Web. 20 Apr. 2016.