William Goldman

Goldman was born and raised in Chicago. His father was a successful businessman while Goldman was very young, but due to alcoholism he lost his business and committed suicide when Goldman was in high school. Goldman attended Oberlin College and soon after graduation was drafted into the Army. Following his discharge, he earned his Master of Arts at Columbia University. Throughout college, Goldman edited his school literary magazine and took writing courses, but even his own magazine wouldn’t publish his anonymously submitted written work. After helping his brother and roommate with several scripts for musicals, Goldman wrote his first novel, The Temple of Gold, and his career took off from there. He wrote novels, plays, and screenplays, most notably Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, for which he won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay in 1969. Goldman was openly critical of the film industry and wrote several nonfiction books and memoirs about his experiences with it. As he writes in The Princess Bride, it is true that he bought back his own screenplay when nobody would greenlight it after the novel's publication, and he was very involved in the filming and casting process. He was married for 30 years but divorced in 1991. Goldman died in 2018 after suffering pneumonia and complications from colon cancer.