William Goldman

This article is about the novelist. For the mathematician, see William Goldman (professor).

He grew up in Highland Park, Illinois and obtained a BA degree at Oberlin College in 1952 and an MA degree at Columbia University in 1956. He had published five novels and had three plays produced on Broadway before going to Hollywood to write screenplays, including several based on his novels. In the 1980s he wrote a series of memoirs looking at his professional life on Broadway and in Hollywood (in one of these he remarked that in Hollywood "Nobody knows anything"), and wrote more novels. Adapting his novel The Princess Bride to the screen marked his re-entry into screenwriting. He is often called in as an uncredited script doctor on troubled projects.

Simon Morgenstern is a pseudonym, a narrative device invented by him to add another layer to The Princess Bride. Goldman claims S. Morgenstern is the original Florinese author of The Princess Bride and credits himself merely as an abridger who is bringing the classic to an American audience. Goldman also wrote The Silent Gondoliers under Morgenstern's name.

Goldman has won two Academy Awards: an Academy Award for Writing Original Screenplay for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and an Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay for All the President's Men.

He was married to Ilene Jones until their divorce in 1991. Contrary to his fictionalized biography in The Princess Bride, he has two daughters and no sons.

Credits

Broadway