He was born in Highland Park, Illinois and obtained a BA degree at Oberlin College, 1952 and an MA degree at Columbia University, 1956. He published five novels, and had had three plays produced on Broadway before going to Hollywood to write screenplays, including several based on his novels. In the 1980s he wrote a series of memoires looking at his professional life on Broadway and in Hollywood (in one of these he remarked that in Hollywood "Nobody knows anything"), and wrote an number of novels. Adapting his novel The Princess Bride to the screen marked his reentrance 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 his work, The Princess Bride. Goldman claims S. Morgenstern is the original Florinese author of The Princess Bride while he credits himself as the abridger who's bringing the classic to an American audience. Goldman has also written The Silent Gondoliers under Morgenstern's name.

He has won two Academy Awards. He married Ilene Jones: they were divorced in 1991

Credits

• Blood, Sweat, and Stanley Poole[?] (with James Goldman)
• A Family Affair[?] - 1962 (lyrics; book was by James Goldman, music by John Kander)

Screenplays

• Masquerade (with Michael Relph) - 1965
• Harper[?] - 1966
• Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid - 1969: Academy Award
• The Hot Rock[?] - 1972
• The Stepford Wives[?] - 1975
• The Great Waldo Pepper[?] - 1975
• All the President's Men - 1976: Academy Award
• A Bridge Too Far - 1977
• Magic[?] - 1978
• Heat - 1987
• The Princess Bride,[?] - 1987
• Misery[?] - 1990
• Memoirs of an Invisible Man[?] - 1992
• Year of the Comet[?] - 1992
• Chaplin - 1992
• Maverick[?] - 1994
• The Chamber[?] - 1996
• The Ghost and the Darkness[?] - 1996
• Fierce Creatures - 1997
• Absolute Power[?] - 1997
• The General's Daughter[?] - 1999
• Hearts in Atlantis - 2001
• Dreamcatcher - 2003

Television

• Mr. Horn[?] - 1979

Novels

• The Temple of Gold[?] - 1957
• Your Turn to Curtsy, My Turn to Bow - 1958
• Soldier in the Rain[?] - 1960
• Boys and Girls Together - 1964
• No Way to Treat a Lady[?] - 1964
• The Thing of It Is . . . - 1967
• Father's Day - 1971
• The Princess Bride - 1973
• Marathon Man - 1974
• Magic: A Novel[?] - 1976
• Tinsel: A Novel[?] - 1979
• Control[?] - 1982
• The Silent Gondoliers: A Fable by S. Morgenstern[?] - 1983
• The Color of Light[?] - 1984
• Heat - 1985
• Brothers[?] - 1986
• Absolute Power[?]
• William Goldman's Boys & Girls Together[?]

Non-Fiction & Memoires

• The Season: A Candid Look at Broadway[?] - 1969
• The Story of 'A Bridge Too Far'[?] - 1977
• Adventures in Screenwriting[?]
• Adventures in the Screen Trade: A Personal View of Hollywood and Screenwriting[?] - 1983
• Wait Till Next Year (with Mike Lupica) -1988
• Which Lie Did I Tell? (More Adventures in the Screen Trade)[?] - 2000
• Hype and Glory[?] - 1990
• Four Screenplays (1995)
• Five Screenplays (1997)
• The Big Picture: Who Killed Hollywood? and Other Essays (2001)

Children's books

• Wigger (1974)

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

See also S. Morgenstern.

Check http://smorgenstern.com for more on William Goldman.