When Bo Goldman, the two-time Academy Award screenwriter of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and “Harold and Maude,” passed away on July 25, 2023 at the age of 90, the world lost a master dramatist and a razor-sharp observer of human behavior.
Hailed by his Hollywood peers as a “screenwriter’s screenwriter,” Goldman possessed an unerring ear for dialogue and a cliche-eschewing sense of narrative.
Be it a wistful satire of the American dream or a bruisingly authentic depiction of divorce, his name on the poster guaranteed an honest, offbeat view of humanity.And it almost never happened.
Goldman was born in the midst of the Great Depression on September 10, 1932.
His father owned a chain of department stores that had fallen on hard times, but that didn’t stop the besieged patriarch from sending his son to the prestigious likes of Phillips Exeter and Princeton University.
It was at the latter institution that Goldman discovered a love for theater,…
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