Robert Spencer Goldman was born in 1932 to a Jewish family in New York City.[1][2] He was the son of Lillian (Levy), a hat model, and Julian Goldman.[2] Goldman's father was a Broadway producer, and owned a chain of well known eastern department stores called The Goldman Stores, and as an early pioneer of "time payments", his business thrived, though the family would struggle amid the Great Depression.[2]The New York Times wrote that Goldman's upbringing was "strangely hand to mouth in a 12-room apartment on Park Avenue".[1]
Eleanor Roosevelt admired the work of Helen Parkhurst and was in the midst of expanding the population and resources of the Dalton School by promoting a merger between the Todhunter School for girls (founded by Winifred Todhunter). Julian Goldman became an early backer, and it was this school where Bo would begin his education. He followed this by skipping his last year at Dalton in favor of fast tracking through Phillips Exeter Academy, an experience that informed a script he would write years later, Scent of a Woman.[3]
Goldman attended Princeton University where he wrote, produced, composed lyrics, and was president of the famed Princeton Triangle Club, a proving ground for F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Stewart, and director Joshua Logan.[2] His 1953 production, Ham 'n Legs, was presented on The Ed Sullivan Show – the first Triangle production ever to appear on National Television. In his early years, he went by the nickname Bob; however, when writing for The Daily Princetonian, his first name was misprinted in one article as "Bo". He adopted it as his pen name and later legally changed his name.[2]
Goldman is not related to prestigious screenwriter William Goldman, who, like Bo, also won Oscars for Best Original Screenplay and Best Adapted Screenplay.
Now married, and with four small children at home, he soon found a steady income working in the new world of live television at CBS.[5] Goldman was mentored by Fred Coe (the "D.W. Griffith of dramatic television") and became part of the twilight of The Golden Age, associate producing and script editing Coe's prestigious Playhouse 90's, Days of Wine and Roses directed by a young John Frankenheimer, The Plot To Kill Stalin starring Eli Wallach, and Horton Foote's Old Man. Goldman went on to himself produce and write for public television on the award-winning NET Playhouse. After working together at NET Burt Lancaster encouraged Goldman to try his hand at screenwriting, which resulted in an early version of Shoot the Moon. The script became Goldman's calling card, and he would soon be "known for some of the best screenplays of the 1970s and 80s".[6]
Goldman next wrote The Rose (1979), which was nominated for four Academy Awards. This was followed by his original screenplay Melvin and Howard (1980) which garnered Goldman his second Oscar, second Writers Guild Award, and the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Screenplay of the Year.[2] Goldman's calling card, Shoot the Moon, was then filmed by Alan Parker and starred Diane Keaton and Albert Finney. The film received international acclaim and was embraced by some of America's most respected film critics: However, due to a previous agreement Warren Beatty had negotiated with MGM the studio was bound that no film could be released with Diane Keaton in the same year as Beatty's Reds.[10] Consequently, Shoot the Moon released with little or no fanfare the following February – long after the fourth quarter "awards season."[11] Nonetheless, Goldman's peers remembered and the following year he earned his third Writers Guild Award nomination.[9]
Shoot the Moon received international acclaim and was embraced by America's most respected film critics with Pauline Kael – The New Yorker writing "Shoot the Moon is perhaps the most revealing American movie of the era."[12]David Denby – New York Magazine added "The picture seems like a miracle. A beautiful achievement."[13]David Edelstein – The New York Post wrote "One of the best films of the decade."[14]
"The great Bo Goldman. He's the pre-eminent screenwriter – in my mind as good as it gets."[15]
Los Angeles – The Screen Writers Guild strike brings motion picture and television production very nearly to a halt. Several famous writers are shown here picketing at the 20th Century-Fox Studios; including Richard Brooks, Bo Goldman, Gore Vidal and Billy Wilder (1981)
Janet Maslin – The New York Times wrote "Mr. Pacino roars through this story with show-stopping intensity. Bo Goldman's screenplay provides him with a string of indelible wisecracks. Mr. Pacino's contribution, in the sort of role for which Oscar nominations were made, is to remind viewers that a great American actor is too seldom on the screen."[16]Roger Ebert – Chicago Sun-Times declared, "The screenplay is by Bo Goldman (Melvin and Howard), who is more interested in the people than the plot. By the end of "Scent of a Woman," we have arrived at the usual conclusion of the coming-of-age movie, and the usual conclusion of the prep school movie. But rarely have we been taken there with so much intelligence and skill."[17] The film has an 88% score on the critic site Rotten Tomatoes. Next up was Harold Becker's City Hall (1996) again starring Al Pacino and also John Cusack. Pacino played the corrupt Mayor of New York City. The film is peppered with musical theatre references, an homage to Goldman's father and his own Broadway days.[2]
After this was Meet Joe Black (1998) starring Brad Pitt and Anthony Hopkins.[2] Critics gave the film mixed reviews. Pitt and the director, Martin Brest, took the biggest thumping. The main complaint centered not on content, but pace. Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times wrote, "Where Meet Joe Black runs into most of its trouble is that everything happens so terribly slowly. Martin Brest has felt the need to inflate the tale until it floats around like one of those ungainly balloons in Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Not helping the time go faster is the way star Brad Pitt has ended up playing Death. Ordinarily the most charismatic of actors, with an eye-candy smile and a winning ease, Pitt approaches this role largely on a leash, hanging around more like the protagonist of I Walked With a Zombie than a flesh-and-blood leading man."[18]
Goldman did a rewrite of The Perfect Storm in 2000. The film went on to earn $329,000,000.[19]
Influence
In a 1998 interview with The New York Times screenwriter Eric Roth said, "The great Bo Goldman. He's the pre-eminent screenwriter – in my mind as good as it gets. He has the most varied and intelligent credits, from Cuckoo's Nest to Shoot the Moon, the best divorce movie ever made, to Scent of a Woman, to the great satire Melvin and Howard. He rarely makes mistakes, and he manages to maintain a distinctive American voice. And he manages to stay timely."[15]
Roth once again expressed his admiration for Goldman in an October 2017 New York Magazine article titled "The 100 Best Screenwriters of All Time." Here Roth writes, "The man whose work made the biggest impression on me, because of his audacious originality, his understanding of social mores, his ironic sense of humor, and his outright anger at being human, and all with his soft spoken grace and eloquent simplicity is Bo Goldman. This degenerate horse player of a man lived his life like he lived his politics, never shying from a fight. His words were silk, never wasted or misplaced, and he would throw away what others would consider glorious and did it all without a moment’s fanfare.”[20]
Personal life and death
Goldman married Mabel "Mab" Ashforth in 1954 and they remained married until her death in 2017.[2] They spent their later years in Rockport, Maine, with their daughter, Serena, and son-in-law, filmmaker Todd Field.[2][21] In April 2023, Goldman moved to Helendale, California, to live with his son Justin, until his death three months later on July 25, 2023, at the age of 90.[2][22]
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