William Goldman was an American novelist, playwright, and screenwriter.
55 Facts About William Goldman
2.
William Goldman first came to prominence in the 1950s as a novelist before turning to screenwriting.
3.
William Goldman won Academy Awards for his screenplays Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and All the President's Men.
4.
William Goldman's father initially was a successful businessman, working in Chicago and in a partnership, but he suffered from alcoholism, which cost him his business.
5.
William Goldman "came home to live and he was in his pajamas for the last five years of his life," according to Goldman.
6.
William Goldman's father committed suicide while Goldman was still in high school.
7.
William Goldman's mother was deaf, which created additional stress in the home.
8.
William Goldman received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Oberlin College in Ohio in 1952.
9.
William Goldman was discharged with the rank of corporal in September 1954.
10.
William Goldman returned to graduate studies under the GI Bill, earning a Master of Arts degree at Columbia University, graduating in 1956.
11.
William Goldman's older brother James Goldman was a playwright and screenwriter.
12.
Kander, an alumnus of Oberlin, was working on his PhD in music, and the William Goldman brothers wrote the libretto for his dissertation.
13.
On June 25,1956, William Goldman began writing his first novel The Temple of Gold, completing it in less than three weeks.
14.
William Goldman 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.
15.
William Goldman wrote his second novel Your Turn to Curtsy, My Turn to Bow in a little more than a week.
16.
William Goldman began writing Boys and Girls Together, but found that he suffered writer's block.
17.
William Goldman then finished Boys and Girls Together, which became a best seller.
18.
Cliff Robertson read an early draft of No Way to Treat a Lady and hired William Goldman to adapt the short story Flowers for Algernon for the movies.
19.
William Goldman suggested that Kastner make a film of the Lew Archer novels of Ross Macdonald and offered to do an adaptation.
20.
William Goldman returned to novels, writing The Thing of It Is.
21.
William Goldman taught at Princeton and wished to write something, but he could not come up with an idea for a novel.
22.
William Goldman sold it for $400,000, the highest price ever paid for an original screenplay at that time.
23.
The money enabled William Goldman to take some time off and research the nonfiction The Season: A Candid Look at Broadway.
24.
William Goldman adapted Steven Linakis's novel In the Spring the War Ended into a screenplay, but it was not filmed.
25.
William Goldman wrote the screenplay for The Hot Rock.
26.
William Goldman's novel writing moved in a more commercial direction following the death of his editor Hiram Haydn in late 1973.
27.
William Goldman sold movie rights to Marathon Man for $450,000.
28.
William Goldman did the screenplays for the film versions of Marathon Man and Magic.
29.
William Goldman wrote the screenplay for The Stepford Wives, which he says was an unpleasant experience because director Bryan Forbes rewrote most of it; Goldman tried to take his name off it, but they would not let him.
30.
William Goldman was reunited with director George Roy Hill and star Robert Redford on The Great Waldo Pepper, which Goldman wrote from an idea of Hill's.
31.
Redford hired William Goldman to write the script of All the President's Men.
32.
William Goldman wrote the famous line "Follow the money" for the screenplay of All the President's Men; while the line is often attributed to Deep Throat, it is not found in Bob Woodward's notes nor in Woodward and Carl Bernstein's book or articles.
33.
In Michael Feeney Callan's book Robert Redford: The Biography, Redford is reported as stating that William Goldman did not actually write the screenplay for the movie, a story that was excerpted in Vanity Fair.
34.
William Goldman wrote a novel about Hollywood, Tinsel, which sold well.
35.
William Goldman wrote two more films for Levine, The Sea Kings and Year of the Comet, but did not write a third.
36.
William Goldman did a script about Tom Horn; Mr Horn, was filmed for TV.
37.
William Goldman wrote a number of other screenplays around this time, including The Ski Bum; a musical adaptation of Grand Hotel that was going to be directed by Norman Jewison; and Rescue, the story of the rescue of Electronic Data Systems employees during the Iranian Revolution.
38.
William Goldman focused on novels: Control, The Silent Gondoliers, The Color of Light, Heat, and Brothers.
39.
The latter, a sequel to Marathon Man, was William Goldman's last published novel.
40.
William Goldman attributed his return to Hollywood to signing with talent agent Michael Ovitz at Creative Artists Agency.
41.
William Goldman went to work on Memoirs of an Invisible Man, although he left the project relatively early.
42.
Hollywood's interest in William Goldman was reawakened; he wrote the scripts for film versions of Heat and The Princess Bride.
43.
The latter was directed by Rob Reiner for Castle Rock, which hired William Goldman to write the screenplay for Rob Reiner's 1990 adaptation of Stephen King's novel Misery, considered "one of [King's] least adaptable novels".
44.
William Goldman published a collection of sports writing, Wait Till Next Year and an account of his time as a judge at both the Cannes Film Festival and the Miss America Pageant, Hype and Glory.
45.
William Goldman began to work steadily as a "script doctor", doing uncredited work on films including Twins, A Few Good Men, Indecent Proposal, Last Action Hero, Malice, Dolores Claiborne, and Extreme Measures.
46.
William Goldman was credited on several other movies: Year of the Comet, which was eventually filmed by Castle Rock, but was not a success; the biopic Chaplin, directed by Richard Attenborough; Maverick, a popular hit; The Chamber, from a novel by John Grisham; The Ghost and the Darkness, an original script based on a true story; Absolute Power for Clint Eastwood; and The General's Daughter, from the novel by Nelson DeMille.
47.
William Goldman adapted Misery into a stage play, which made its debut on Broadway in 2015 in a production starring Bruce Willis and Laurie Metcalf.
48.
Three of William Goldman's scripts have been voted into the Writers Guild of America hall-of-fame's 101 Greatest Screenplays list.
49.
William Goldman won two Academy Awards: one for Best Original Screenplay for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and Best Adapted Screenplay for All the President's Men.
50.
William Goldman won two Edgar Awards, from the Mystery Writers of America, for Best Motion Picture Screenplay: for Harper in 1967, and for Magic in 1979.
51.
William Goldman was married to Ilene Jones from 1961 until their divorce in 1991; the couple had two daughters, Jenny and Susanna.
52.
William Goldman said that his favorite writers were Miguel de Cervantes, Anton Chekhov, Somerset Maugham, Irwin Shaw, and Leo Tolstoy.
53.
William Goldman was a die-hard fan of the New York Knicks, having held season tickets at Madison Square Garden for over 40 years.
54.
William Goldman contributed a writing section to Bill Simmons's bestselling book about the history of the NBA, in which he discussed the career of Dave DeBusschere.
55.
William Goldman died in Manhattan on November 16,2018, due to complications from colon cancer and pneumonia.