William Goldman

From Free net encyclopedia

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

William Goldman (born August 12, 1931) is an American novelist, playwright and two-time Academy Award-winning screenwriter.

Contents

[edit]

Biography

Goldman grew up in a Jewish family in Highland Park, Illinois, a Chicago suburb, and obtained a BA degree at Oberlin College in 1952 and an MA degree at Columbia University in 1956. William Goldman is the brother of playwright James Goldman, though the two had been estranged for many years before James's death in 1998.

William Goldman had published five novels and had three plays produced on Broadway before he wrote 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.

[edit]

Credits

[edit]

Broadway

[edit]

Screenplays

[edit]

Television

[edit]

Novels

[edit]

Non-fiction and memoirs

[edit]

Children's books

  • Wigger (1974)
[edit]

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
  • Goldman speaks candidly about his writing process in American Film Foundation's series Screenwriters: Words into Motion.de:William Goldman

es:William Goldman he:ויליאם גולדמן pt:William Goldman sv:William Goldman

Retrieved from "http://www.netipedia.com/index.php/William_Goldman"