William Goldman, one of the most successful and highest paid screenwriters in Hollywood history who went on to win two Oscars for writing "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" (1969) and "All the President’s Men" (1976), has passed away at the age of eighty-seven. He had been struggling with colon cancer and died from complications on November 16th.
He was born in Highland Park, Il. and loved going to the movies as a child. He planed on becoming a novelist and attended Oberlin College in Ohio. However, Goldman didn’t initially show much promise as a writer for he could not get a single story published in the school's literary magazine. After receiving a master’s degree, he began working on his first novel “The Temple of Gold” which was published in 1957. He wrote several other books which were met with mixed reviews and only modestly successful. Goldman also wrote a few plays that went in to production but only had short runs.
Actor, Cliff Robertson, after reading Goldman’s book, “No Way to Treat a Lady,” approached Goldman about writing a screenplay adaption of the novel, “Flowers for Algernon" which he was going to star in. And while they didn’t use his draft (which was later given to another writer, renamed "Charly" and won Robertson a Best Actor Oscar in 1968), Goldman was asked to rewrite a script for another project that would star Robertson. He received his first writing credit with the 1965 comedy-thriller, "Masquerade". Some of the other scripts Goldman would go on to write include "Misery", "A Bridge Too Far", "The Stepford Wives", "Chaplin", "Marathon Man" and "The Princess Bride" .
Despite his impressive accomplishments, Goldman famously stated that writing screenplays is not an art form but simply a skill. He felt that if all you do is write scripts, you might become successful and rich but you won’t be happy as an artist. He wrote a very revealing memoir in 1989 called, "Adventures In The Screen Trade: A Personal View of Hollywood and Screenwriting" where he talks about how to write a screenplay, barbed entries regarding his success and failures in the business and sums up the movie industry with the completely accurate line, "Nobody knows anything."
When he found difficulty getting his scripts in to production, Goldman spent his later years as a much-sought after, uncredited script doctor. One of Goldman's last major projects was a theatrical adaption of "Misery" which made it to Broadway in 2015 and starred Bruce Willis and Laurie Metcalf.
William Goldman was a confident, brutally candid artist who was always willing to speak his mind and share his honest opinion which is a rarity to find in a business that is run by fear, intimidation and fragile egos. He could find a way to tell a great story no matter the challenges of the source material, and despite his misguided opinion, that would create a memorable work of art.
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