William Goldman (August 12, 1931 – November 16, 2018) was an American novelist, screenwriter and playwright who wrote 16 novels and numerous screenplays in a career spanning seven decades. He received the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and Best Screenplay from the BAFTAs and Golden Globes for his first original screenplay, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), and he received the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for All the President's Men (1976). Both of these films have been inducted into the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress, along with The Princess Bride (1987) which he adapted from his 1973 novel, and all three were included on the 2006 list by the Writers Guild of America of the 101 Greatest Screenplays. Among his other accolades were three Writers Guild of America Awards, including the 1985 Laurel Award for Screenwriting Achievement, two Edgar Awards for Best Motion Picture Screenplay, and a Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation.
Goldman collaborated twice each with George Roy Hill, Peter Yates, Rob Reiner and Simon West, and thrice with Richard Attenborough. He adapted his novels Marathon Man (1974, filmed in 1976), Magic (1976, filmed in 1978), and Heat (1985, filmed in 1986 and as Wild Card in 2015.) His screenplays for Misery (1990), Hearts in Atlantis (2001), and Dreamcatcher (2003) were all adapted from works by Stephen King, and he later adapted Misery for the stage in 2012. His other produced plays, Blood, Sweat and Stanley Poole (1961) and A Family Affair (1962) were collaborations with his brother James Goldman, also an Academy Award-winning writer. Goldman's other screenplays include The Stepford Wives (1975), A Bridge Too Far (1977), Chaplin (1992) and The Ghost and the Darkness (1996), and he was an uncredited script doctor on Twins (1988), A Few Good Men (1992), Indecent Proposal, Last Action Hero (both 1993), and Fierce Creatures (1997). In his later years he served as a mentor to a number of writers, including A Few Good Men writer Aaron Sorkin. His nonfiction books include The Season: A Candid Look at Broadway (1969), the memoirs Adventures in the Screen Trade (1983) and Which Lie Did I Tell? (2000), and the essay collection The Big Picture (2001).
Though Goldman was self-effacing of his own work, Sean Egan said his achievements were made "without ever lunging for the lowest common denominator. Although his body of work has been consumed by millions, he has never let his populism overwhelm a glittering intelligence and penchant for upending expectation."
Goldman was born in Chicago on August 12, 1931, the second son of Marion (née Weil; 1904–1993) and Maurice Clarence Goldman (1893–1947). He grew up in Highland Park, Illinois, and was raised Jewish. Goldman's father was a successful businessman, working in Chicago and in a partnership, but he suffered from alcoholism, which cost him his business. He "came home to live and he was in his pajamas for the last five years of his life," according to Goldman. His father died by suicide while Goldman was still in high school. It was a 15-year-old Goldman who discovered the body. His mother was deaf, which created additional stress in the home.
Education and military service
Goldman attended Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio, and he began to write when he took a creative-writing course there, according to his memoir Adventures in the Screen Trade (1983). His grades in the class were "horrible". He was an editor of Oberlin's literary magazine, and he submitted his short stories to it anonymously. He recalls that the other editors read his submissions and remarked, "We can't possibly publish this shit."
Goldman graduated from college in 1952 during the Korean War, and he was soon drafted into the Army. He was assigned as a clerk in the Pentagon Defense headquarters because he knew how to type, and he was discharged with the rank of corporal in September 1954.
He returned to graduate studies under the G.I. Bill, earning a Master of Arts degree at Columbia University and graduating in 1956. Throughout this period, he was writing short stories in the evenings, but he struggled to have them published.
Goldman did not originally plan to become a screenwriter. His main interests were poetry, short stories, and novels. In 1956, he completed a master's thesis at Columbia University on the comedy of manners in America.
His older brother James Goldman was a playwright and screenwriter. They shared an apartment in New York with their friend John Kander, also an alumnus of Oberlin. Kander was working on his Ph.D. in music, and the Goldman brothers wrote the libretto for his dissertation. Kander was the composer of more than a dozen musicals, including Cabaret and Chicago, and all three of them eventually won Academy Awards.
On June 25, 1956, Goldman began writing his first novel The Temple of Gold, completing it in less than three weeks. He sent the manuscript to agent Joe McCrindle, who agreed to represent him; McCrindle submitted the novel to Knopf, who agreed to publish it if he doubled the length. It sold well enough in paperback to launch Goldman on his career. He wrote his second novel Your Turn to Curtsy, My Turn to Bow (1958) in a little more than a week. It was followed by Soldier in the Rain (1960), based on Goldman's time in the military. It sold well in paperback and was turned into a film, though Goldman had no involvement in the screenplay.
Goldman and his brother received a grant to do some rewriting on the musical Tenderloin (1960). They then collaborated on their own play, Blood, Sweat and Stanley Poole (1961), and on the musical, A Family Affair (1962), written with John Kander. Both plays had short runs.
Goldman began writing Boys and Girls Together, but found that he suffered writer's block. His writer's block continued, but he had an idea for the novel No Way to Treat a Lady (1964) based on the Boston Strangler. He wrote it in two weeks, and it was published under the pseudonym Harry Longbaugh—a variant spelling of the Sundance Kid's real name, which Goldman had been researching since the late 1950s. He then finished Boys and Girls Together, which became a best seller.
Cliff Robertson read an early draft of No Way to Treat a Lady and hired Goldman to adapt the short story Flowers for Algernon for the movies. Before he had even finished the script, Robertson recommended him to do some rewriting on the spy spoof Masquerade (1965), in which Robertson was starring. Goldman did that, then finished the Algernon script. Robertson disliked it, though, and hired Stirling Silliphant, instead, to work on what became Charly (1968).
Producer Elliot Kastner had optioned the film rights to Boys and Girls Together. Goldman suggested that Kastner make a film of the Lew Archer novels of Ross Macdonald and offered to do an adaptation. Kastner agreed, and Goldman chose The Moving Target. The result was Harper (1966) starring Paul Newman, which was a big hit.
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Goldman returned to novels, writing The Thing of It Is... (1967). He taught at Princeton and wished to write something, but he could not come up with an idea for a novel. Instead, he wrote Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, his first original screenplay, which he had been researching for eight years. He sold it for $400,000, the highest price ever paid for an original screenplay at that time. The movie was released in 1969, a critical and commercial success that earned Goldman an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. The money enabled Goldman to take some time off and research the nonfiction book The Season: A Candid Look at Broadway (1969).
Goldman adapted Steven Linakis's novel In the Spring the War Ended into a screenplay, but it was not filmed. Neither were scripts of The Thing of It Is, which came close to being made several times in the early '70s, and Papillon, on which he worked for six months and three drafts; the book was filmed, but little of Goldman's work was used. He returned to novels with Father's Day (1971), a sequel to The Thing of It Is…. He also wrote the screenplay for The Hot Rock (1972).