Robert S. Goldman ’53

Bo, award-winning playwright and screenwriter, died in Helendale, Calif., July 25, 2023. 

“Bo,” as he was called, came to Princeton from Phillips Exeter Academy and majored in English, writing his thesis on Virginia Woolf. He was a member of Ivy Club, president of the Triangle Club, and was a member of Theatre Intime. 

After graduation, Bo served a three-year stint in the Army as a personnel sergeant stationed on Enewetak, an atoll in the Marshall Islands of the central Pacific Ocean used for nuclear bomb testing. 

Returning to New York, Bo began a career in theater that led to two Academy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, and two Writers Guild of America Awards, as well as the guild’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 1998. Among his screenplays were One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) and Melvin and Howard (1980). He also wrote The Rose (1979), Shoot the Moon (1982), Scent of a Woman (1992), and Meet Joe Black (1998). Eric Roth wrote in The New York Times: “The great Bo Goldman. He’s the pre-eminent screenwriter — in my mind as good as it gets.” 

Bo was predeceased by his wife of 63 years, Mab Ashforth. He is survived by four daughters, one son, seven grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren.