# William Goldman - Maker: Novelist - Date: 1931–2018 - Canonical: https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/william-goldman/ > Two-time Oscar-winning screenwriter who hid a fairy tale inside a fake abridgment and gave the world The Princess Bride, first as a 1973 novel and then as Rob Reiner's 1987 cult film. **Why it matters:** Goldman proved that fantasy could be swashbuckling, romantic and self-mocking all at once; The Princess Bride became one of the most quoted fantasy films ever made and a template for knowing, affectionate genre comedy. ## Quick answers **Who was William Goldman?** Two-time Oscar-winning screenwriter who hid a fairy tale inside a fake abridgment and gave the world The Princess Bride, first as a 1973 novel and then as Rob Reiner's 1987 cult film. **When was William Goldman born?** William Goldman was born in 1931 in Chicago, Illinois and died in 2018. **What is William Goldman known for?** William Goldman is best known for The Princess Bride. **Why does William Goldman matter to fantasy and games?** Goldman proved that fantasy could be swashbuckling, romantic and self-mocking all at once; The Princess Bride became one of the most quoted fantasy films ever made and a template for knowing, affectionate genre comedy. ## Life William Goldman was born in Chicago on August 12, 1931, and grew up in suburban Highland Park, Illinois. His childhood was shadowed: his father's alcoholism cost the family its business, and when Goldman was fifteen he discovered his father's body after his suicide. He later said the darkness of those years explained why his most sympathetic characters so often suffered, and why he was the writer who put Westley into the Machine. He studied at Oberlin College, where his submissions to the literary magazine were rejected, served in the Army as a Pentagon clerk during the Korean War, and earned an MA at Columbia in 1956. That summer he wrote his first novel, *The Temple of Gold*, in under three weeks. He shared a New York apartment with his older brother James, later an Oscar-winning screenwriter, and their friend the composer John Kander. Goldman died in Manhattan on November 16, 2018, at 87, of colon cancer complicated by pneumonia. ## Work Goldman wrote sixteen novels and dozens of screenplays across seven decades. Hollywood noticed him with *Harper* (1966), and his first original screenplay, *Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid* (1969), sold for a then-record $400,000 and won the Academy Award. A second Oscar followed for *All the President's Men* (1976). He adapted his own thrillers *Marathon Man* and *Magic*, wrote *A Bridge Too Far* and *Misery*, and served as an uncredited script doctor on films from *A Few Good Men* to *Last Action Hero*. His memoir *Adventures in the Screen Trade* (1983) supplied Hollywood's most repeated maxim about its own business: "Nobody knows anything." [The Princess Bride](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/the-princess-bride/) (1973) was the book he loved most. It started as stories told to his two daughters, one of whom wanted princesses and the other brides; the early names, he admitted, were "silly names: Buttercup, Humperdinck." Around that core Goldman built an elaborate joke. The novel claims to be his abridgment of *S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure*, a stodgy Florinese satire from which he has cut everything but "the good parts," interrupted by grumbling commentary about his own fictional family and the dreary life that the fairy tale lets him escape. Inside that frame sits a perfectly sincere adventure of the Cliffs of Insanity, the Fire Swamp, the Dread Pirate Roberts, and Inigo Montoya's vengeance. The metafiction extended beyond the page: readers who wrote in for an omitted "reunion scene" received letters describing Goldman's invented legal war with the Morgenstern estate. Goldman wrote a screenplay the same year, but it was fourteen years before Rob Reiner filmed it. The 1987 movie, with Cary Elwes and Robin Wright, earned only modest box office, then found its audience on home video and became a cult touchstone of [Fantasy Film](https://www.lanternhall.org/atlas/fantasy-film/). It won the 1988 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation and was added to the U.S. National Film Registry in 2016. ## Legacy The Princess Bride arrived in the same fantasy-film decade as [Labyrinth](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/labyrinth-film/) and [Willow](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/willow-film/), but it aged differently. Its tone of sincere romance undercut by wry narration shaped a whole strand of [Comic Fantasy](https://www.lanternhall.org/atlas/comic-fantasy/) and [Fairy-Tale Fantasy](https://www.lanternhall.org/atlas/fairy-tale-fantasy/), and its quotations ("As you wish," "Inconceivable!") became shared vocabulary among the gamers and fans who grew up on it. Roleplayers in particular recognized its structure: a party of misfits with distinct skills (the swordsman, the giant, the schemer) talking their way through a series of set-piece encounters. The book has repeatedly crossed into games. Worldwide Biggies released *The Princess Bride Game* for PCs in 2008, with members of the film's cast voicing their characters. PlayRoom Entertainment's *Storming the Castle* board game appeared the same year; Game Salute took the tabletop license in 2013; Toy Vault published a roleplaying game written by Steffan O'Sullivan in 2019; and Ravensburger's cooperative *Princess Bride Adventure Book Game* followed in 2020. Jason Reitman's 2020 quarantine-era miniseries *Home Movie: The Princess Bride*, a scene-by-scene remake shot by actors at home, showed how thoroughly the story had become communal property. Goldman teased a sequel, *Buttercup's Baby*, adding an opening chapter to later editions such as the 25th-anniversary edition, but it never appeared. The novel he considered one of only two things he had written without embarrassment remains his great gift to fantasy. ## Facts - The Princess Bride began as bedtime stories for his daughters, then seven and four: one asked for a story about princesses, the other about brides. - The novel pretends to be Goldman's "good parts" abridgment of a classic by the invented Florinese author S. Morgenstern. - He won Academy Awards for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) and All the President's Men (1976). - His Princess Bride screenplay waited 14 years; Rob Reiner's 1987 film won the 1988 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation. - Readers who wrote to the publisher for Goldman's promised "reunion scene" instead received a letter about invented legal battles with the Morgenstern estate. - The Princess Bride has spawned a 2008 PC game with voices from the film's cast, a 2019 tabletop RPG by Steffan O'Sullivan, and Ravensburger's 2020 Adventure Book Game. ## Sources and further reading - [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Goldman) - [The Princess Bride (novel) on Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Princess_Bride_(novel)) --- From The Lantern Hall (https://www.lanternhall.org/), a museum of fantasy literature and roleplaying games.