William Goldman (born August 12, 1931 in Highland Park, Illinois, near Chicago)
American novelist, screenwriter, and co-playwright.

He was born in Highland Park, Illinois and obtained a BA degree at Oberlin College, 1952 and an MA degree at Columbia University, 1956. He published five novels, and had 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 memoires looking at his professional life on Broadway and in Hollywood (in one of these he remarked that in Hollywood "Nobody knows anything"), and wrote an number of novels. Adapting his novel The Princess Bride to the screen marked his reentrance 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 his work, The Princess Bride. Goldman claims S. Morgenstern is the original Florinese author of The Princess Bride while he credits himself as the abridger who's bringing the classic to an American audience. Goldman has also written The Silent Gondoliers under Morgenstern's name.

He has won two Academy Awards. He married Ilene Jones: they were divorced in 1991

Table of contents showTocToggle("show","hide")

1 Credits

1.1 Broadway
1.2 Screenplays
1.3 Television
1.4 Novels
1.5 Non-Fiction & Memoires
1.6 Children's books
1.7 Other

Credits

Broadway

Blood, Sweat, and Stanley Poole[?] (with James Goldman)
A Family Affair[?] - 1962 (lyrics; book was by James Goldman, music by John Kander)

Screenplays

Masquerade (with Michael Relph) - 1965
Harper[?] - 1966
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid - 1969: Academy Award
The Hot Rock[?] - 1972
The Stepford Wives[?] - 1975
The Great Waldo Pepper[?] - 1975
All the President's Men - 1976: Academy Award
A Bridge Too Far - 1977
Magic[?] - 1978
Heat - 1987
The Princess Bride,[?] - 1987
Misery[?] - 1990
Memoirs of an Invisible Man[?] - 1992
Year of the Comet[?] - 1992
Chaplin - 1992
Maverick[?] - 1994
The Chamber[?] - 1996
The Ghost and the Darkness[?] - 1996
Fierce Creatures - 1997
Absolute Power[?] - 1997
The General's Daughter[?] - 1999
Hearts in Atlantis - 2001
Dreamcatcher - 2003

Television

Mr. Horn[?] - 1979

Novels

The Temple of Gold[?] - 1957
Your Turn to Curtsy, My Turn to Bow - 1958
Soldier in the Rain[?] - 1960
Boys and Girls Together - 1964
No Way to Treat a Lady[?] - 1964
The Thing of It Is . . . - 1967
Father's Day - 1971
The Princess Bride - 1973
Marathon Man - 1974
Magic: A Novel[?] - 1976
Tinsel: A Novel[?] - 1979
Control[?] - 1982
The Silent Gondoliers: A Fable by S. Morgenstern[?] - 1983
The Color of Light[?] - 1984
Heat - 1985
Brothers[?] - 1986
Absolute Power[?]
William Goldman's Boys & Girls Together[?]

Non-Fiction & Memoires

The Season: A Candid Look at Broadway[?] - 1969
The Story of 'A Bridge Too Far'[?] - 1977
Adventures in Screenwriting[?]
Adventures in the Screen Trade: A Personal View of Hollywood and Screenwriting[?] - 1983
Wait Till Next Year (with Mike Lupica) -1988
Which Lie Did I Tell? (More Adventures in the Screen Trade)[?] - 2000
Hype and Glory[?] - 1990
Four Screenplays (1995)
Five Screenplays (1997)
The Big Picture: Who Killed Hollywood? and Other Essays (2001)

Children's books

Wigger (1974)

Other

New World Writing Number 17 (1960)
A collection of stories, poems and articles by several authors, with an 11-page story entitled "Da Vinci" by Goldman
The Craft of the Screenwriter by John Brady (1981)
Includes a profile on Goldman and a lengthy interview about his craft
The Movie Business Book by James E. Squire (Editor) (1992)
Includes an As Told By William Goldman piece
Writers on Directors by Susan Gray (1999)
Goldman has a piece on Rob Reiner in this book, and another on Norman Jewison
The First Time I Got Paid For It: Writers' Tales From the Hollywood Trenches (2000)
Introduction by Goldman