Hollywood script legend William Goldman, Oscar winner for ‘Butch Cassidy’, dead at 87
- Goldman, who wrote his first novel in 10 days, also won an Oscar for ‘All The President’s Men’
- He turned his own novels, including ‘The Princess Bride’ and ‘Marathon Man’, into movies, but regarded scriptwriting as a craft, not an art
William Goldman, the Oscar-winning screenwriter and Hollywood wise man who won Academy Awards for B utch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and All the President’s Men and summed up the mystery of making a box office hit by declaring “Nobody knows anything,” has died. He was 87.
Goldman’s daughter Jenny said her father died early Friday in New York due to complications from colon cancer and pneumonia. “So much of what’s he’s written can express who he was and what he was about,” she said, adding that the last few weeks, while Goldman was ailing, revealed just how many people considered him family.
Goldman, who also converted his novels Marathon Man, Magic,The Princess Bride and Heat into screenplays, clearly knew more than most about what the audience wanted. He was not only a successful film writer but a top script doctor, the industry title for an uncredited writer brought in to improve or “punch up” weak screenplays.
Goldman also made political history by coining the phrase “follow the money” in his script for All the President’s Men, adapted from the book by Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein on the Watergate political scandal. The film starred Robert Redford as Woodward and Dustin Hoffman as Bernstein.
Standing in the shadows, Hal Holbrook was the mystery man code-named Deep Throat who helped the reporters pursue the evidence.